That curious news re pro #Jeb, pro #amnesty, anti #Trump Miami TV host Helen Aguirre Ferré getting hired by the RNC sounds very, well, Dolphins-like. And when has that been good for fans or anyone since 2000?

That curious news re pro #Jeb, pro #amnesty, anti #Trump Miami TV host Helen Aguirre Ferré getting hired by the RNC sounds very, well, Dolphins-like. And when has that been good for fans or anyone since 2000?

Wow! Where to even start with this bit of curious news I could have never predicted.

The RNC’s New Hispanic Media Director Bashed Trump Nonstop For Months https://t.co/GijJhX02fU via me and @buzzfeedandrew

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) June 2, 2016

Honestly malpractice that I didn't include her saying "I'll go get honey" in order to swallow bitter Trump pill. https://t.co/drepXf8o3R

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) June 2, 2016

Problem is RNC wants a serious operative w/ experience working w/ Spanish-lang networks but not going to go thru all of their interviews.

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) June 2, 2016

This speaks to the disconnect between the RNC and Spanish language media. He's been a villain there for a year now. https://t.co/2cVbkmgx6s

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) June 2, 2016

So, pro #Jeb, pro #amnesty, anti-Donald Trump Miami TV host Helen Aguirre Ferré's 
longstanding public criticism of Trump counts for little with the powers-that-be at the RNC these days, as they've now hired her for a task that she seems particularly ill-prepared for, and even worse, will make a bad situation worse, if possible.
It's like hiring a run-oriented head football coach when you have a young, healthy Dan Marino as your QB. A #disconnect.

The story has gottten lots of traction in the national press, but so far, has stirred little public notice or critical commentary in South Florida where Ferré and her frequently condescending attitudes were not just tolerated but embraced, in large part because her Conventional Wisdom attitudes almost always were 100% in sync with those of the Miami Herald Editorial Board & the perpetually misfiring Downtown Miami Biz community's. :-(

That's why despite a mountain of self-evident facts that would show objective readers how true my criticism of Ferré and her style is, it's hardly surprising that Ferré, thus far, has received almost complete kid gloves treatment from many in the community and press who know better, including former Miami Herald reporter Beth Reinhard, now of the Wall Street Journal.
Reinhard is someone whom I have long criticized on this blog over the years for some very sound reasons about basic fairness, bias, clarity, context and accuracy, as anyone taking the time to check the blog's archives for past posts on Reinhard can discover for themselves.

See all the tweets about Helen Aguirre Ferré's hiring here, inc. the Reinhard tweet

https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Helen%20Aguirre%20Ferr%C3%A9%22%20&src=typd

Honestly, over the past dozen years, Helen Aguirre Ferré may've been the single most-over-rated and over-praised woman in all of South Florida, in or out of public policy. 

And for a TV show on a PBS affilate in Miami like WPBT-TV that 

a.) hardly anyone watches, including even me, and that 

b.) has often seemed more like a not-so-funny sketch comedy parody of a TV chat show, because of how often she and her guests are in almost complete agreement, regardless of the issue.

If Helen Aguirre Ferré was doing a good job, wouldn't I have mentioned the show more than once in the past nine years of doing this blog?

It's not been a show to take unpopular positions or inform and enlighten the South Florida electorate so much as it has often seemed to exist merely to hearten true-believers in whatever line the South Florida Establishment's status quo had taken, so Ferre could echo it like a cheerleader.

Usually against meaningful government or political reform of the sort that the South Florida Establishment was afraid of, regardless of party affiliation, geography, race or nationality. 

And forget about Ferré talking out-loud in detail about how truly awful the caliber of the South Florida media has become the past dozen years in simply covering local govt./issues/politics fairly and accurately, and why that was so. 
No, a truth-to-power, straight-talker Helen Aguirre Ferré is NOT.

That's why to me, her show has always seemed so terribly underwhelming, frustrating and disappointing, especially compared to what it could have been -and should have been for the part of the South Florida populace that actually wants to be well-informed, which to be sure, has never been a majority.

Ferré's hiring by the RNC seems destined to just draw more more media attention to her own personal track record in the public eye and her condescendning political attitudes, instead of the task at hand, which was not an easy one.

That is surely NOT what the RNC needs the next five months going into November's election.

Frankly, Ferré's hiring by the RNC has the feel of any of a hundred awful personnel moves the woebegone Miami Dolphins have made the past 15 years, to their fans' dismay. :-(

Dave 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

Déjà vu opinions from a new perch: National Journal's Beth Reinhard may've left the Miami Herald behind, but she STILL makes the same tired and unpersuasive arguments as before. You'll never guess who she writes will be the key to 2012 vote. Surprise -Hispanics! She's wrong -it's actually Catholics in the Midwest and PA

Déjà vu opinions from a new perch: National Journal's Beth Reinhard may've left the Miami Herald behind, but she STILL makes the same tired and unpersuasive arguments as before. You'll never guess who she writes will be the key to 2012 vote. Surprise -Hispanics! 

She's wrong -it's actually Catholics in the Midwest and PA

If you think that former Miami Herald political reporter and columnist Beth Reinhard can go even three sentences in this story WITHOUT mentioning the I-4 Puerto Rican voters that we've all been reading about for at least 18 months, you LOSE.

Lose, just like Herald readers did for so many years when they opened the paper and thought that if only out of randomness, perhaps that would be one of the few times in the year when they might see something original under her byline, and yet inevitably, what would follow was almost always the same banal and predictable words and "observations" about subjects that we'd all already seen.
Already seen and better-described and analyzed by other reporters and columnists MANY MONTHS before.

Yes, she even comes up with some of the predictable italicized names (for Hispanic food) to show that she's in touch.

Que Dios!

The National Journal

The Story of the Hispanic Vote Is the Story of the 2012 Campaign

Cuban-Americans aren’t the only Latinos candidates need to woo in Florida. Puerto Ricans also command attention.

By Beth Reinhard

Updated: November 1, 2012 | 9:39 p.m. 

November 1, 2012 | 2:00 p.m.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-story-of-the-hispanic-vote-is-the-story-of-the-2012-campaign-20121101?page=1

My favorite part?

Where after NOT explaining why Spanish-surnamed voters in the near-future will politically be more like Puerto Ricans than Cubans or Mexicans or Central Americans, and thereby curtail Cubans' relative power and favored role in Florida and the U.S., at the beginning of the fifth pargraph. 

Just saying it doesn't make it so.

There, she lays this gem on the table:

"Regardless of the outcome, the Hispanic vote will be one of the most important markers of the parties’ futures...'"

Sounds like backsliding and equivocating to me.

  

It's not for nothing that I once justifiably titled a blog post here -on September 3rd, 2010-
Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/addition-by-subtraction-beth-reinhard.html

What time zone is she in? And year?

More past posts that mentioned Reinhard are here:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/search?q=reinhard

The only saving grace -and I do mean ONLY- is that Reinhard doesn't make the obligatory butt-kissing reference to some Univision TV personality flacking a book like Jorge Ramos, did in 2004, complete with grandiose and self-serving reference to the power of people with tildes in their last name, something that Reinhard surely would have seen fit to do if she were still at the Herald.

What's that?
You say that you don't you recall the name of the Ramos book from 2004?
It was "The Latino Wave: How Hispanics Will Choose the Next President"
Hmm... not so much.

But because he's one of their favorites, America's Mainstream Media just pretends that boast and the book behind it never existed, and it's like Ramos never got an at-bat and struck-out.

At One Herald Plaza, right on Biscayne Bay, there still seem to be far too many people, even in the year 2012, who haven't caught on to the fact that their constant sycophantic need to make Hispanic media or Hispanic-oriented advertising executives -especially the ones in Miami whom the Herald wants to sell advertising space to or partner with, with all its attendant log-rolling- the ones quoted so extensively and so over-the-top in articles about Spanish-language media the past few years, sound like young Jones Salks, instead of car salesmen or Hi-Fi salesmen of the mid-1970's that they are, reeks of desperation.

Would you like that new stereo with "Quad" sound, sir?

The people they've quoted so promiscuously were nothing more than salesmen trying to sell something -a product or service.

That's fine, but there's nothing lofty or high-minded about selling toilet paper and air freshener and cookie and beer, so stop acting like there is.

It's sales!
That's all it is.

Coming this Fall: A 24/7 News Channel from Univision & ABC News -in English! Marriage of news & advertising convenience, necessity or desperation? And will it be hard news or soft?; Brazil abtains

Wall Street Journal: Disney's ABC, Univision May Launch News-Channel. February 7, 2012. 
http://youtu.be/pfOnlXlV8lA

Coming this Fall: A 24/7 News Channel from Univision & ABC News -in English! Marriage of news & advertising convenience, necessity or desperation? And will it be hard news or soft?; Brazil abstains

Naturally, as has been described here on the blog many times previously, given the rapturous and over-the-top way the Miami Herald has traditionally chosen to greet almost any quasi-news story that involved either Spanish-language marketing, advertising or television, always emphasizing the froth with lots of positive quotes from the people who stand to profit the most, in what is, essentially, a consumer transaction that involves selling soap to someone, possibly with a tilde, but never really looking hard at whether or not what is being offered is actually quality or not, I can hardly wait for the coming Herald article on this new way of trying to sell more advertising. 


I hereby predict that the Herald reporter, whomever it is, will say that that this move may well be "Revolutionary."
Or genius. Or overdue.
Or a guaranteed hit even before it hits the air.


We all know how the Herald gets when they have a brand-new shiny toy to talk about that has something to do with Latin America and marketing, witness their recent spate of pro-Brazil articles and editorials the past year.


Who can count the number of pieces they've done on the theme of visiting Brazilians make-the-world-go-around in Miami, which, given where we are and the current sad state of serious news coverage in local Miami TV stations, quite naturally copied the theme like nobody's business.


But when President Obama was leaving for Brazil last year, despite all the news coverage nationally in print and on TV about what the U.S. and the West wanted to do at the U.N. with regard to sanctions or counter-moves to the killings and repression in Syria, the Miami Herald NEVER wrote a single thing in the newspaper or online about Brazil abstaining from voting on the matter, did they?
Nope, and I was looking, too.


I checked not only the online archives but scrupulously checked the newspaper -everyday.
Before, during and after his trip.


The Herald said nothing even while writing about how important Brazil was asserting itself... blah, blah.
But when push came to shove, Brazil ducked.
That's many things, but what it's NOT is leadership.
Or positive.


For a country like Brazil that's forever talking so much about wanting to be taken seriously on the international scene, it hardly gets more transparent about what you really want to do than abstaining from an important vote at the U.N, does it?
Of perhaps having to vote against China and Russia.
So they did nothing.

Today's New York Times tells the tale of what that indifference has wrought months later:

In Turkey, once a strong supporter of Mr. Assad and now one of his most vocal critics, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Parliament that the veto of the United Nations resolution on Syria by Russia and China had given Mr. Assad a “license to kill,” 

The only thing missing in this and so many other news articles the past about all the people who have been maimed or killed is a note that reads "Thanks Brazil" from President Assad.


And lest you forget, last year, on March 21st, I wrote about Brazil abstaining on a vote on sanctions against Libya.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/rejecting-pixie-lotts-boys-and-girls.html


So why the South Florida news media refusal to report the facts about the Brazil abstentions on Libya and Syria, and their logical consequences?
Good question.


But not for me, for the Herald and the rest of the South Florida news media that far too often seems content to lets its own advertising bottom line dictate what actually gets covered or mentioned on-air on in print.


No, unfortunately, as I've said here before many times, the South Florida news media, and the Herald in particular, simply can't say enough good things about Latin America, whether its countries, its consumers or its markets, when there's money to be made, but rather curiously, they and their reporters only seem to seek out people for the article who will say good things.
Or who will directly or indirectly profit from it.


Where's the objective balance to the stories?
Where's the follow-up and perspective?


No, THAT won't come until months later.
Then, they may run an AP story that they post online, but which you never see in the newspaper itself.


Sort of like the one they used here to share the news:
Univision, Disney look at English news channel
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/06/2628257/univision-disney-look-at-english.html


No doubt we'll see that over-the-top story in the Herald soon, and I can already guess whom they will interview from their small list of Usual Suspects to say how great this is for everyone.
No, not really, mostly just some of the advertising folks who want to sell air time for Barack Obama political commercials.
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