FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM MAY 4, 2017 • THE QUEENS COURIER 27 oped A LOOK BACK This undated photo shows a trolley passing along Myrtle Avenue near Onderdonk Avenue in Ridgewood. We estimate this picture was taken during the 1940s just before the trolleys were replaced by electric buses. Send us your historic photos of Queens by email to editorial@ qns.com or by regular mail to A Look Back, The Queens Courier, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361. All mailed pictures will be carefully returned to you. letters & comments STOP CUTS THAT THREATEN OUR ENVIRONMENT The present administration in Washington, DC, is proposing a budget where signi��icant funding cuts will take place for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This federal agency helps to protect the environment throughout our country. One of its most important functions is to set standards for clean air and water that need to be enforced to ensure compliance to those standards. Different programs in that agency will be eliminated entirely if the current proposal is approved. Those programs include the elimination of state grants for the diesel emissions reduction act, beach water quality testing, and radon detection programs. Climate protection programs will be slashed by 69 percent, and brown- ��ields programs will also be cut signi ��icantly. The list goes on and on. Over the past decades, we have made great strides in environmental protection. There is still much work to be done. Now is not the time to disable or disassemble programs and agencies that protect our lives. If you have an opinion on this issue, I would urge you to contact your elected of��icials to voice your concerns. That includes President Trump, Vice President Pence, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand and your representative in Congress. Also contact EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. At this time, there is great debate over issues like health care, tax reform and immigration matters. All are important topics. However, without a healthy environment, we are nowhere. Henry Euler, Bayside DELIVERING PRAISE FOR THE POSTAL WORKERS I would like to praise our men and women in the United States Postal Service (USPS) whose tireless efforts bring us our mail everyday. In Glen Oaks Village, we have a letter carrier named Diane who delivers our mail and the mail of the many other people that she meets on her route. She delivers it with a smile and a kind word. Then there is my best friend, David Duffy, who had delivered mail in Queens for over 40 years and is now semi-retired. He has had good stories to tell on his the route and believed he did his best for those who depended on their mail. Lately there have be a few mail carriers who were hurt by those who did not care for these ��ine mail carriers. Our prayers go out to these men and women who serve the public with dedication and hard work and deserve to be honored for all that they do. Remember this saying about our noble mail carriers: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” That is so true. Frederick R. Bedell Jr., Glen Oaks Village Changing the Fox News culture BY JULIAN PHILLIPS The very notion of creating a news network that gave voice to a conservative viewpoint some 20 years ago was a novel idea—and very much needed at a time where liberal opinions dominated the airwaves. Television maverick Roger Ailes was certainly the right person to catapult such a concept onto the scene, which quickly found a willing audience and ultimately skyrocketed the network to the top of the cable news ratings. Th e rise—and dominance—of Fox News may have surprised many in the business, perhaps because they underestimated Ailes’ ability to promote and “sell” his product with craft y slogans like “Fair & Balanced” and “We Report, You Decide.” It all sounded great—and more importantly, looked even better. For its targeted audience, Ailes hired young, mostly white, blonde women with short skirts and pumps, accentuated by glass desks to “see all,” and dashing white men in sharp suits delivering hard-hitting headlines geared toward presenting news with a conservative agenda that had tremendous appeal to those willing to tune in. Add in the memorable “Fox News Alert” gong and a “Star-Spangled Banner” sign-off at the beginning and end of the programming day, and you have a ratings bonanza. Like it or not, Fox ruled cable news—and every other network was scrambling to catch up. For a time, Fox did deliver news and a message that gave voice to a conservative think tank that was sorely needed. However, conservative news started to shift toward a right-wing agenda. Hannity & Colmes became just Hannity. With the 2008 presidential election approaching, there was a clear shift to hammer the Republican agenda home without balancing that viewpoint with credible left -leaning analysts. In 2006, the deck was shuffl ed and changes were made across the network. Eleven years later, outside of Juan Williams hosting “Th e Five,” there is no African-American male presence hosting a prime-time show on that network. I guess that did not matter to executives at Fox, because they still command sizable ratings over their competition. But what about fairness and balance? Can a network who claims to be just that, achieve those goals with very little minority presence in front of the camera—or behind the camera in production or editorial decision making? Equally as important, can Fox maintain any sense of credibility settling sexual harassment suits now in the millions of dollars against its talent and executives? It boils down to how Fox intends to move forward. Th ey can die a slow death in the ratings with their current base—or they can change how they present news and treat their employees. I’m not suggesting they change their political focus—rather the culture in which they operate. In the end, that has everything to do with their character. Julian Phillips is an award-winning journalist and author.
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