Rumours and things

The former Seattle TV and network news anchor Aaron Brown was hired by KING-TV in 1976, and later moved over to KIRO-TV, and went national after that. I used to watch him every night. He was a good news man. He spoke the other day in his hometown of Seattle.

"There is a mis-perception out there that network executives are stupid weasels," Brown said, pausing to add: "They're not stupid."

Brown's message was that cable TV news-talk, representing the extreme right and far left ends of American public opinion, has trumped networks mainline news programs and is poisoning the national agenda.

"We have become a country short on fact and abundant on opinion," he argued. "It makes us numbed. It makes consensus harder to find." Instead of examining issues in depth, Brown added, "It is so much easier to put Ann Coulter or Michael Moore on the air."

A case in point: Cable TV shouters have spent hours arguing about the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York, but "nothing on the soaring poverty rate."

Brown delivered a left-right punch to the shouters. He took Keith Obermann to task, saying that the MSNBC host once took nine minutes to make the point that Sarah Palin wasn't very informed.

On the right, said Brown, Fox News is "the most disciplined news operation I have ever seen" -- but in a bad way. The Murdoch-owned news channel panders to its conservative viewers.

Brown praised Fox for incisive coverage of Hurricane Katrina during the first four or five days of the storm and its aftermath, but pulled back from the story when the indifferent, incompetent response of a Republican presidency began to reveal itself.

Brown is a man free to talk these days. He teaches at Arizona State University and lectures around the country. No need to think twice about alienating a future president of the United States.

"Right now, it doesn't matter what you believe in, it's what you oppose," Brown said.

He cast a rather dim eye on Washington, D.C., and several high profile Senate candidates. "The president (Obama) honestly has proven better at courtship than marriage," Brown said.

As to those Senate nominees, he added, "Apparently, stupid is 'in'."

"We are so much better than our politicians today and our media today," Brown argued.

"Do you realize that 90 percent of what's on news today is embarrassing, to those of us who worked in the business," Brown said.

How should viewers respond to demagoguery on their screens? Turn off your TV, Brown advised.

Brown is best known for going on-air at CNN, his first day at the job, on the morning of the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. Unlike others that day, he had the brains and background to remain on air hour after hour, and not to air baseless rumors.

"I don't talk about 9/11 very much," he said. "I resent people talking about it as something that happened to them."

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Profit at the world’s top furniture retailer and manufacturers had risen 11.3% in the 2009 financial year compared with the previous year.

IKEA chief executive Mikael Ohlsson told his local paper the Dagens Industri that turnover in its fiscal year, which ended August 31 rose to, up some 7.7% from the previous period. Mr. Ohlsson is working hard to give employees, suppliers and customers more information about the company

IKEA, known for low-price, self-assembly, flat-packed furniture and owned by a foundation controlled by founder Ingvar Kamprad, a family-controlled group had kept its financial workings shrouded in secrecy.

"We are admittedly never completely satisfied. But it was much better than we had expected and a much better outcome keeping in mind the extremely tough business climate in many markets," Ohlsson told the paper.

"We are definitely taking market share now," Ohlsson said, adding that low costs and efficiencies helped the company maintain its good profitability.

The Swedish group has 280 stores in 26 countries. A new one scheduled for Winnipeg next year. That will add a fourth store to Western Canada and their twelfth store in Canada. Still no plans on the books for Kelowna.