Thursday, March 26, 2020

Washington Post on whistleblowing and WHAS11 on Rand Paul testing positive for coronavirus update the top post from the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

Happy Throwback Thursday!  For today's look back at the most popular posts from the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News, I begin with the program note I used to conclude Vox and FiveThirtyEight explain social distancing.
I might take a break from the pandemic tomorrow, as I plan on posting a retrospective of the blogging year just ended, which I mentioned in the conclusion of The Washington Post and Full Frontal explain FOIA for Freedom of Information Day.
One of the episodes is "Whistleblowing 101," which I plan on using to update Rand Paul calling for publication of whistleblower's name illustrates how America fails its whistleblowers, the most read entry posted during the current blogging year.  Watch for that on January 26, the first Throwback Thursday of the tenth year of this blog — that is, if I'm not critically ill or dead from coronavirus by then.  I hope not.
So far, I'm fine.  I still plan on using the video I mentioned, but it turns out that Paul has tested positive for the virus.  That's definitely a pandemic angle, so I might use it, too.  Stay tuned.
Yes, the most read entry posted during the ninth year of this blog according to the default counter was Rand Paul calling for publication of whistleblower's name illustrates how America fails its whistleblowers, which earned ~1,990 default views and 2,023 raw views between being posted on January 31, 2020 and March 20, 2020.*  I'll explain how the entry got its views over the jump, but first I am updating both the topic of whistleblowing and the subject of Senator Paul.  I begin with The Washington Post's video Whistleblowing 101 | How to be a journalist.

Daniel Ellsberg risked his career and his safety to expose the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Washington Post’s Libby Casey explains what it means to be a whistleblower, what legal protections are and are not available, and what someone risks by speaking up.
I've written about both examples of whistleblowers on this blog.  The conflict over publishing the Pentagon Papers was the central conflict in "The Post," which won Best Drama or Comedy about Politics or Government of 2017 (Best Political Scripted Movie for short).  The "60 Minutes" segment, "The Whistleblower," won Outstanding Investigative report in a Newsmagazine at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards.  Not only were these important moments in whistleblowing and journalism, they made for award-winning media.

That's the update for whistleblowing.  For the update on Senator Rand Paul, I am sharing WHAS11 of Kentucky's report Sen. Rand Paul defends lack of quarantine.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is defending himself after coming under criticism for not quarantining himself after he was tested for the coronavirus.
Michele Travis had the following to say in a comment to the video on YouTube: "Bad thing, is he knew, he might have the Coronavirus, but he still interacted, with other members of congress and the house.  He should have put himself in Isolation, instead of interacting with others" (sic).  I agree.  He should have been a good example by practicing social distancing.  Instead, he was a bad example, not only on this issue, but others related to the pandemic.

Follow over the jump for the story on how this entry and others about impeachment earned their page views.


As I wrote above, "Rand Paul calling for publication of whistleblower's name illustrates how America fails its whistleblowers, which earned ~1,990 default views and 2,023 raw views between being posted on January 31, 2020 and March 20, 2020."  It earned its page views by being shared at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page, where it went viral, pardon the pun, garnering 1733 raw page views on February 1, 2020 alone and ending February with ~1,990 default and 2004 raw page views to make it the most viewed entry of the month.  Being read and shared on Facebook was all it took to make that happen.

I wrote the post in the context of the impeachment of Donald Trump, so I'm examining two other entries that made the top twenty five for the ninth year of this blog next.


I posted Meyers and Colbert take closer looks at last week's impeachment hearings on November 25, 2019.  It had 798 default and 854 raw page views by March 20, 2020, enough to rank it 14th according to the default counter, 19th among entries posted during the ninth year of the blog, and 24th overall during that same time.  Like most of the entries, it earned most of those page views by being shared at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page.  It ended November with 791 default and 802 raw page views to rank number one for the month.

ETA: I missed an entry about impeachment yesterday: SNL has fun with NATO summit and impeachment.  Between December 8, 2019, and March 20, 2020, it earned 787 default and 832 raw page views, enough for it to rank 16th according to the default counter and 21st according to the raw counter among entries posted during the ninth year of this blog.  When adding in the entries from the back catalog that earned more page views than the 25th most read entry from last year, it ranked 27th. The entry ranked second among entries posted during December 2019 with 766 default and 815 raw page views.  It earned those page views by being shared at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page.

Now back to the original post.


I wrote Meyers, Colbert, and Noah take closer looks at impeachment moving to the Senate and Parnas testimony to begin season 4, episode 2 of 'The Worst Wing' on January 17, 2020, when I shared it on the Coffee Party USA Facebook page.  There, it earned 729 default and 743 raw page views during January to rank as the most read entry for the month.  It ended the blogging year on March 20, 2020 with 737 default and 768 raw page views, enough to rank it 19th according to the default counter, 25th among entries posted during the ninth year of the blog according to the raw counter and 33rd overall during the same period.

That's it for the top post and other entries from the top 25 posted during the blogging year just ended.  Stay tuned for the second most read and others on the same topic tomorrow, Flashback Friday.

*It was not the most read entry overall during the year.  That honor belongs to a post about the Retail Apocalypse from the back catalog.  I'll get to it when I write the retrospectives for those two topics.

Previous posts in this series.
Entries about top posts from previous years.

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