America: A Nation Divided, Angry and Depressed

America is in turmoil.  A nation divided by politics, media, culture, regionalism, religion, celebrities, sports, race, wealth, agism and patriotism.  Many scapegoat politicians as the culprits.  But we are at war with ourselves.  The only real solution is for We The People to first change ourselves.  

It is trendy to dredge up the cliche that things have never been worse in our country.  Those who assert this hypothesis never delved into our nation's past.  America was birthed in conflict.  Our founding fathers complained bitterly about the rancor within their newly minted United States of America.

America's first President George Washington fretted about the rank partisanship in the 1790's.  It was a time of hate-filled political rhetoric.  Sound familiar? Washington blamed the malice on politicians driven by "selfish motives."  He lamented the political groups formed to spread discord and enmity.

Our second President John Adams was furious at the pamphleteers who criticized his administration.  In 1798, he signed the Alien and Sedition Act, which made it illegal to "write, print or publish any false, scandalous and malicious writings" against the president and the executive branch.

America's messy democracy with its partisan politicians and unfettered press has a long history of stirring passion, antagonism and dissension.  It is the price we pay for freedom.  What needs to change is how Americans react to politics and how we discern the truth about what is reported in the media.   

The toxicity of today's politics is as volatile as Washington's era. Partisans on all sides of the political spectrum point the finger of guilt at one of the two major parties.  However, both parties and the extremists within each, are at fault. It doesn't matter a wit which party is in control, bitterness reigns. 

If you catch yourself shaking your head in disagreement, you are frankly in denial.  In 1994, I traveled to Washington for a private conference with Oklahoma Senator David Boren.  During our meeting, he disclosed he would not seek another term.  I was stunned.  The Democrat easily could be reelected.

"Politics in Washington is no longer civil," he confided.  "At one time, Democrats and Republicans would fight like dogs in the Senate chambers over issues.  But when the session adjourned, we were still friends.  We could socialize and solve issues.  Not any more.  The level of hostility is palpable."

That meeting was more than two decades ago.  The animus has worsened.

Both parties champion compromise when they are in power.  The party out of favor resists.  The needs of ordinary Americans are no longer the priority of Washington's pampered, entitled politicians. Thousands of special interest groups, flush with money, control both parties.  Don't doubt that.

As a country founded on the principle of freedom of expression, unrestrained speech is a blessing and often a cruse. The right to voice your opinions, no matter who it offends, is guaranteed.  People are embolden to speak honestly or utter falsehoods. Today that freedom is under fierce attack.

Social media titans, including Facebook and Twitter, arbitrarily ban content their censors find objectionable. No debate is allowed on issues such as vaccination, CDC health mandates, racial issues or any controversy that the social media cabal deems contrary to the progressive narrative.   

Even worse a majority of Americans get some or all of their news from the most unreliable source on the planet: social media.  According to some reports, about a half-a-billion tweets and Snapchat photos are shared every minute.  Add Facebook in the mix, and the numbers are nearly a billion.  

People use social media to vent their anger about everything from politics to customer service.  A Pew Research Center study found social media is a "significant contributor" to users' stress.  One Austrian research study discovered Facebook users moods are lower after engaging on the platform.

The legacy media--newspapers, television networks, online news platforms--once performed a public service by sorting fact from misinformation.  Today every news source without exception is guilty of bias, political favoritism, anonymous-sourced rumors and calculated negative reporting.

Research shows this development impacts our mental health.  A study in Psychology Today reported that the steady diet of negative news interfaces with "our cognitive biases, keeping our focus on everything that's going wrong, while blinding us to all the good things around us."

This combustible environment of noxious politics and poisonous news coverage is creating a dynamic of us-versus-them.  People are sick of politics and media but continue to wallow in the negative news and political morass with insatiable appetites.  We get the media and politicians we deserve. 

Politics and news may be the main triggers of general nastiness, but there are so many other influencers eroding civility.  Take patriotism. It was once unthinkable for any American to disrespect the nation's sacred flag.  Now the symbol of freedom is labeled a dog-whistle for racism.

Our flag no longer unites us.  It segregates the country.  How did this happen?

Too many Americans take their social and moral cues from multi-millionaire athletes and celebrities.  They exert an out-sized influence on Americans with their opinions, tweets, music, movies and behavior.  These self-appointed influencers are worshiped by a culture obsessed with celebrities.

Many gliterrarti preach hatred of America, faulting white nativism and racism for the nation's friction. The vitriol seeps into our consciousness.  We become depressed, angry, tribal.  Who advocates for all humans, regardless of race, creed or religion?  In fact, doing so ends up spurring more disunity.

As if the country needed more strife, there is a growing schism between secularism and religious practice.  Elitists want church doctrine or faith principles to conform to today's political or social mores.  Churches need to change, they demand.  They dangle the threat of removing charitable status.     

Not since the Civil War, have the states been so un-united.  There are self-identified red states and blue states.  States collectively band together to fight against what they view as harmful federal legislation to their region.  Some, like California, are refusing to do business with other states. 

Throw into this incendiary recipe a measure of rural-urban division. Rural communities, the fabric of America, are some of the most harmonious places in the country.  There is a sense of shared values. Urbanites and suburbanites prize progressive ideals and mock the values in rural America.   

Sports once was America's escapism.  Everyone came together and enjoyed a football, basketball or baseball game and forgot whatever anxieties and problems existed outside the stadium. Now egocentric, powerful owners and rich, spoiled athletes are turning events into forums to air grievances.

Schools and colleges are plunging into ugly political scrapes by insisting on doctrinal changes in curriculum, outraging parents. Colleges erect so-called safe zones to protect students' sensitivities. Institutions of learning discourage debate, silence speech and insist on conformity.

In past eras, Americans regardless of political affiliation united whenever our military engaged in a conflict.  World War I and II fostered rare solidarity.  Citizens bonded to support the troops, sacrifice for the good of the nation and volunteer when called. 

Beginning with the Vietnam War and continuing with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, public and political support for the military has flagged.  The soldiers who answered the call to duty have returned home to hostile receptions.  We blame the brave for what politicians have wrought.  

COVID is a perfect example of Americans inability to set aside political differences to rally to combat an enemy.  The pandemic was politicized by partisans. Soon people--not the virus--became the villains. Health experts berated Americans for not taking the virus seriously or refusing to wear masks.

Instead of rallying Americans to join in a common effort to defeat the virus, the tenor of the health advice dripped with contempt for those who dared to question the experts, including doctors and epidemiologists.  This tactic fueled suspion of science as well as the motives of health officials.  

Then governors stepped into the breech and created often ill-advised mandates that angered and confused ordinary folks. Guidelines changed and then contradictory protocols were issued.  Mistrust was rampant. Ugly confrontations erupted between masked and unmasked citizens.

Rudeness is at the heart of much of what ails this country.  Its symptoms are road rage, unruly airline passengers, public shouting matches, random shootings, street bullies and much more. Studies show that rudeness reacts like a contagion, spreading from person-to-person until it infects a whole nation.   

Perhaps, some readers reject this dystopian view.  However, there can be no disagreement this litany of schisms exist, triggering cynicism and general depression in our nation.  Suicides have risen sharply. More Americans suffer from clinical anxiety than ever before. Something is wrong.  Terribly wrong.

We deny it at the peril of ourselves and our nation.  At its core, this problem calls for unification of at least We The People.  We must temper our behavior, get involved, raise our voices, encourage others, search for common ground and pursue our better selves.  America will not change if we don't. 

Never underestimate the power of one American.  The course of our nation has been altered by lone voices over the centuries.  But we don't have to rely on just our own initiative.  

In closing, here are words of wisdom from Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who was captured and sent to a Nazi concentration camp for hiding Jews in her home and aiding their escape during World War II: 

"In you look at the world, you'll be distressed.  If you look within, you'll be depressed,  If you look at God, you'll be at rest."

COVID-19: Shameless Media Fearmongers

Once the word "pandemic" was uttered the national news media's coverage of the coronavirus shifted into overdrive.  Each new case of the virus is breathtakingly reported.  Each flu-related death triggers a breaking news alert.  The media treatment is actually scarier than the pandemic.

This inflammatory reporting incited a full fledged panic attack.  Stock markets quaked in a selling frenzy, wiping out trillions in value. Businesses issued dire reports on future earnings amid supply chain disruptions.  The havoc sent the economy teetering on the brink of a recession. 

What was missing in the scorched earth news coverage was any sense of perspective.  Without a frame of reference, people became alarmed by what was reported to be an out-of-control, foreign-born, dangerously lethal, previously unknown virus, dubbed COVID-19.

But was the incendiary coverage justified?  Judge for yourself after a review of the facts.

Because the virus was birthed in China, home of the world's most secretive Communist regime, this heightened speculation about the number of cases, the cause of the virus and the death-rates.  Instead of exercising restraint in its coverage, the media has operated irresponsibility.

As just one example, based on specious sources there was a flurry of rumors that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese biochemical warfare lab located in Wuhan.  An analysis of the virus by 27 scientists and public health officials discredited the claim in the medical journal The Lancet.

In a crisis of this nature, facts really do matter.  According to the latest World Health Organization data, there have been 89,527 cases reported and 3,056 deaths worldwide.  However, all but 183 of those deaths have been in China, which has recorded the overwhelming majority of cases: 80,174.

The death rate in China's Habel Providence, the epicenter of the virus, now stands at 2.9% of the cases.  Although experts agree, that the figure is likely inflated by China's inability to diagnose and count thousands of mild cases in the early stages.  Outside Habel, the death rate is 0.3%.

The vast majority of those contaminated with the flu in China have only exhibited mild symptoms and most have recovered.  Of the confirmed cases in China, more than 81% are rated mild, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases have declined since February 12.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures show 43 cases out of a population of 320 million.  Seventeen people have been hospitalised with the virus and two deaths recorded. Ten states have identified coronavirus cases.

The figures do not include Americans contaminated with the virus who were residing in Habel Providence or quarantined on cruise ships.  Among those returning Americans, there were 48 confirmed cases of the virus.  Most of the cases (45) were from cruise ship travelers.

As with most flu viruses, the elderly, very young and immune compromised are most at risk.  The two U.S. deaths both occurred in elderly people. Healthy individuals are at a low risk.  That is why CDC officials continue to report there is a low risk of infection.   

COVID-19 officially became a pandemic because cases have been reported in 67 countries. That is the definition of a pandemic.  The word does not imply the virus cannot be halted.  Or that it is inevitable there will be an uncontainable outbreak.  There is reason for caution, but not panic.

In its reporting, many news outlets referenced the SARS virus outbreak in 2003 in an attempt to raise the spectre of a rampant killer.  But most neglected to mention the SARS pandemic infected 8,098 people globally causing 774 deaths.   That death rate was 0.09%, less than common influenza.

The most recent and deadliest pandemic was the H1N1 swine flu virus that claimed 575,400 deaths worldwide in 2009, according to the CDC.  The agency estimated 61 million people in the U.S. suffered from the virus that caused 12,469 deaths.

As these statistics and history show, over time most civilized countries have developed better science for detecting, treating and slowing down the spread of dangerous viruses.  Information and real time health data travels faster than in the past.  That aids health officials in their efforts to battle the virus.

While each new influenza-like virus grabs headlines, hardly any attention is paid to the garden variety virus that raises its ugly head every winter in the United States.  During most influenza seasons, the average death rate is 0.1% of Americans infected with the contagion.

Annual influenza outbreaks seldom make the news.  According to the CDC, from 2010 to 2016, annual flu-related deaths ranged from 12,000 to 56,000 during the period.  In the 2016-2017 flu season, the virus surged throughout the U.S., killing nearly 80,000, the highest toll in four decades.

During that flu season, 959,000 cases required hospitalization the CDC estimated.  One contributor may have been that only 59% of adults and 43% of children were inoculated with the flu vaccine.  That means a majority of young people and four-in-ten adults were left unprotected.

Do you recall around-the-clock news coverage of this epidemic?  Me neither.  That's why the reporting of COVID-19 stands out as an indictment of today's journalism as well as politicians who attempt to use the pandemic as an excuse to attack the administration for its handling of the crisis.

Media pundits are actually suggesting the virus may create an opening for Democrats to exploit against President in the 2020 election.  One reporter insisted on calling the contagion the Trump Virus. A health crisis should be met with bipartisanship, not political backbiting.

Democrat presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg has charged Mr. Trump with making "reckless cuts" to the CDC budget.  Associated Press (AP) fact-checkers called the allegation false.  "Financing for the CDC was increased in the last budget," AP reported.

Another unsubstantiated claim that the administration was responsible for a steady erosion in CDC grants to state and local governments to deal with pandemics.  Again AP disputed the allegation. The grant reductions were "set in motion by Congressional measures that predate Trump," AP explained.

Not satisfied, some reporters are demanding to know why a flu vaccine is not available to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  "What's taking so long?" they bellow.  The answer is months of research and human trials are required before vaccines are certified safe enough to use on the general population.

This is standard procedure.  In nearly every case, by the time the new vaccines are ready for public use most pandemics have already subsided with the return of warm weather.  Rather than hoping for a vaccine, there are many precautions a family can take to avoid the flu.

Cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze.  Wash your hands thoroughly and often.  Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.  Disinfect surfaces that other people touch.  And avoid crowds, particularly on cruise ships, which are breeding grounds for all types of infections.

I know those precautions sound trite.  But they are still the best protection from contracting the COVID-19 or any flu virus.  That is what the news media should be doing:  Educating the public instead of stirring up frenzied hysteria.  Fearmongers, not a virus,  are the biggest threat to America.

America Is Drowning in Political Hatred

No matter the outcome of the contentious impeachment trial, America is destined to descend deeper into seething hatred that poses the biggest threat to our nation.  Our country has a long history of political strife, but it has witnessed nothing like today's ugliness, except for the Civil War.

Once upon a time Americans could disagree politically without rancor and name-calling.  Those days are gone replaced by hate-mongers, hate speech and hate groups.  We make villains of those who disagree with our views and embrace personal destruction as a weapon to vanquish our opponents.

Democrats loathe Republicans.  Republicans resent Democrats.  Bipartisanship has no place in today's toxic environment.  It encourages Americans to self-select into political tribes, each poised to wipe out the other camp from the face of the Earth.  Tragically, this has become the new normal.

Political disagreements have turned into grudge matches instead of battles of ideas.  Malice seduces us to rationalize demonizing others. Who's wrong?  Evil people who don't believe like I do.  Who's bad?  Morons who hold kooky views.  Who stands in the way of unity?  Idiots from the other party.

This is worse than polarization.  If you are searching for a  comparable climate, look no further than the bloody Civil War.  Politics as usual was replaced by hatred of groups and individuals.  Northerners detested Southerners. The South despised the North.  Brother turned against brother.

Some of you may consider this analogy hyperbole.  However, no one can argue there are similarities. Americans today ostracize friends who disagree politically.  Families are torn asunder by political disputes.  It is no longer North versus South but Coastal versus Middle America.

Pundits attempt to pin this bitter division on one man: Donald J. Trump.  But research shows political rage has been festering since at least George W. Bush. He was tagged the illegitimate president. A fictional movie was made about his assassination.  The media savaged his daughters.

The bitterness continued after Barrack Obama's election.  He too was called an illegitimate president because he was not a U.S. citizen.  Rumors spread virally that he was secretly a Muslim.  He was accused of being anti-American. However, the media discredited every malicious attack. 

In the past, the office of the president was a hallowed institution respected by Americans, including those who did not vote for the occupant. This tradition has disappeared.  The president is no longer the leader of all Americans but just those who voted for the officeholder.

Now sports teams routinely shun the long established custom of a White House reception out of spite. A comedian held up a severed bloody head of the Oval Office occupant. More than 60  Democrats boycotted President Trump's first State of the Union address. 

These acts are not mere smears targeting Mr. Trump.  Each demeans the office of the president.  This petulant conduct is unbecoming of our heritage.  It is vital to America's position in the world that we the people uphold the dignity of the office while disagreeing with the president. 

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott admits he is shocked by the denigration of the office of the president. He recounted  in a recent newspaper article about a 2014 speech President Obama made in his country that was viewed by Australians as a slap at the government's climate policy.

His party pressured him to publicly rebuke Obama.  He demurred because he felt it was a "discourtesy" to the "leader of the free world."  He went on to elaborate: "In a sense he's everyone's president and the world needs him to succeed almost as much as America does."

Do we need an Australian to remind Americans about civility?  That is a sad commentary on how far we have plunged into the cauldron of hatred.  Whether we like it or not, the president represents all Americans, including those who are dead set on removing him from office.

I get it.  Some of you find Mr. Trump offensive, crude and repulsive.  But hatred?  I have often had profound policy or personal differences with presidents.  But I can honestly attest I have never hated a president.  That is beneath us as Americans.  It is the stuff of a third world country.

So how did we arrive at this juncture in our history?  What is the source of this wellspring of loathing?

Both political parties are responsible for weaponizing the politics of personal destruction.  Normal Americans don't want to literally destroy those of opposing political views.  But Democrat and Republican forces consider it their mission to not just win but to vaporize the other side.

Negative ads featuring the worst dehumanizing attacks are a staple of our campaigns.  Often the claims are false.  These messages are designed to motivate us by creating a depraved view of the targeted politician.  We are encouraged to hate the object of their derision.

Parties are not interested in waging a war of ideas.  Their goal is to bully and intimidate the opposition into surrendering to their world view.  Those with differing viewpoints are mocked, insulted and branded imbeciles.  Some elected officials even want to censor opposing ideas.

Fanning the burning embers of hatred is a dishonest news media.  They knowingly promote discord, stereotypes and controversy.  In their world, the media bigwigs believe this is what gains viewers, sells newspapers or generates clicks.  Add to this cacophony the swill on social media.

Public discourse on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms is degrading.  Vile insults  people would never utter face-to-face to a person clog the sewage pipes of social media.  Politics is the grist for most of the anger and antagonism.  Any decent American should be sickened.

My Democrat friends honestly believe once Mr. Trump leaves office there will be blissful harmony.  It won't happen.  Our country now resembles a sectarian state where hatred of groups is systemic.  It will worsen because politicians and their puppet masters have a vested interest in tumult.

Rage is a useful political tool for justifying unconstitutional tactics, selective justice and any number of other misdeeds.  Unless the tide reverses, America will suffocate in its own hatred.  Americans must refuse to allow politicians or their parties to drag us into the drowning pool.

Disagreements have been a staple of the American democracy.  We must return to respecting views we cannot abide.  Contentious issues should not divide us but unite Americans in finding common ground.  That is our American heritage.  We are the United States. We need to start acting like it.

Media Shame: Savage Attacks on Catholic Teens

Wearing a red hat in America has been demonized by the news media and those who hate the president.  A small group of teens recently discovered the depth of this loathing . They were mocked, taunted and verbally assaulted for the crime of donning Make America Great Again hats.

For their grievous sin, these students from a Kentucky Catholic high school have endured media smears, death threats and character assassination.  The media fueled furor over the incident at the national March for Life forced the school to shutter its doors for fear of violence against its students.

How could this happen in America?  The blame rests squarely on the stoop shouldered news media. Journalists, a misnomer if there ever was one, jumped to conclusions based on their own biases and spread a false narrative about an incident involving the school kids, endangering their lives.

A small group of Covington Catholic High School youngsters were peacefully leaving the pro-life rally in Washington, D.C when a handful of black Hebrew Israelites and left-wing activists hurled insults at the students.  In response, the students sang their school song, refusing the hateful bait.

Then a self-appointed Native American activist entered the fray, banging a drum and confronting one of the students.  To his credit, the student only smiled without uttering a word.  Within minutes, a video appeared on social media that exploded into bombastic news coverage by the media.

America's media, its reputation for fairness long ago shredded, based its reporting mostly on a snippet of video and the comments of Native American Nathan Phillips, who claimed to be a a Vietnam War veteran. News commentators inflamed passions by hastily condemning the kids.

Television reporters denounced the youngsters as bigots.  Journalists called them "privileged" white elitists.  Hollywood actors suggested they kids should be hunted down and punched in the face.  Some on social media called for the youngsters to be killed.

Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar, an anti-Semite serving her first term in the U.S. Congress, tweeted: "The boys were protesting a woman's right to choose & yelled, "It's not rape if you enjoy it." They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants."

NBC called the incident "a troubling scene many are calling racist played out in Washington."  CNN, the network no one should trust, described the scene as a "mob of MAGA hat-wearing high school students." An MSNBC news panelist compared the students to neo-Nazis.

USA Today featured an interview with Phillips, who belittled the youngsters as "beastly" and having a "mob mentality." The New York Times labeled the teenagers "racists" for mocking a veteran.  The Washington Post lambasted the Catholic Church's sordid history of Native American abuses.

These choir boy-faced high school youths overnight became the most hated figures in America.  Then the media story began to unravel.  As more video surfaced of the incident near the Lincoln Memorial, it became obvious the teenagers were passive bystanders, not the aggressors.

No video evidence exists showing the kids shouting anything racist or mentioning rape.  The adult sponsors accompanying the youngsters publicly discredited the media's version.  A youth wearing the MAGA hat was interviewed and refuted the remarks that the activists claimed he made.

Why didn't the news media interview the sponsors and the youngsters before they rushed to judgment?  The answer is obvious.  There were not interested in the truth.  They wanted to advance the narrative of MAGA hats being a symbol of bigotry.  Their hatred for Trump was bared. 

The Native American Philips was unmasked as a career provocateur who regularly shows up a protests, representing himself.  He is not an Vietnam veteran as he claims.  He served in the Marine Reserves, spending most of his time in sunny California instead of the steamy jungles of Vietnam.

A day after the confrontation Phillips disrupted mass at Washington's Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, beating his drum and marching down the aisles.  Phillips is a trouble maker not a peacemaker.  He is a charlatan.  His real name is Nathaniel R. Stanard.

As the truth emerged, some media outlets tried to walk back the story in an attempt to salvage their tattered reputations.  But too many newsrooms decided to just let the story fade away rather than apologizing to the school and the teenagers they ran roughshod over.

Beside the obvious malicious reporting, there are two recurring themes this incident illuminates.  The first is the media has abandoned all pretense of being unbiased.  Journalists are out to tarnish the president even if a falsehood has to be dressed up as legitimate news.  It is shameful and indefensible.

The second is a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism is rising in the country.  These youngsters were singled out because of their religion as much as for their alleged behavior.  This bigoted religious bias also reared its ugly head during the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch and other Catholic judges.

The Covington Catholic High School recently reopened its doors to students.  But the fallout from the media coverage of the pro-life rally will haunt these youngsters for the remainder of their lives. They have been permanently tarnished as extremists and racists.  The stain will linger.

Meanwhile, the media will turn its attention to the next scandal, unconcerned about the damage its erroneous reporting inflicted on innocent young people.  Polling shows Americans' trust in the media has sunk to an all-time low.  In the current environment, it is a race to rock bottom.

My Journey Into Journalism

Standing in line at Wharton County Junior College in 1964, a bespectacled professor was quizzing each incoming freshman about the choice of a major.  My only goal at the time was to spend as little time as possible in class.  Now I was supposed to select a career?  And before the first class?

My best friend stood ahead of me in the queue.  When he approached the professor, he uttered those now famous words, "I want to major in journalism."  Listening, I thought to myself.  Writing.  Hmmm. How hard could that be?  I had watched a chimpanzee bang on a typewriter in a movie.

That is how I wound up in journalism.  What began as a fanciful notion, soon turned into a passion for reporting on the news  My initial foray into my freshly minted major was as a writer for the college newspaper.  I soon received my first lesson about ethics and journalism.

After some investigation, I wrote a story about our dear college president, who was secretly assisting a local manufacturing plant break a strike by hiring students.  It was hush-hush but I uncovered a couple of students who volunteered to be whistle blowers.  Now they call them unnamed sources.

The day the story appeared in the college paper my journalism professor was hastily summoned to the office of the president.  The president ordered my dismissal.  This brave journalism professor balked.  He promised to have a stern talk with me about my obvious disregard for authority.

Somehow I survived the dust-up.  Soon after, opportunity knocked.  The publisher of the local Wharton newspaper had seen my writing and wished to meet.  I figured he wanted me to do obituaries because I had almost buried a college president with a single article.

To my surprise, he showed up for the meeting with a crude radio transmitter.  The publisher also owned the local radio station.  His play-by-play sports announcer had just quit.  And the junior college had a basketball game that evening.  Would I be interested?  Well, I was a journalism major.

After a 15-minute lecture on radio transmitting and on air broadcasting, I was ready for my first radio gig.  I ended up broadcasting basketball and baseball games.  That's when I learned not everything in life is preparation.  A lot of what happens is just sheer luck no one can foresee.

Two years later I was working in the Sports Information Department at East Texas State University, my next stop on my college career path.  I needed money to pay for college and I liked sports.  Perfect match.  Then I wound up being offered the job of editor of the college newspaper.

Trouble followed.  I turned one entire edition of the paper into a buzz saw against the student government.  I skewered the student body president, tagging him a pawn of the administration. The burly guy accosted me one day on campus and threatened to dismember my body, organ by organ.

Before long, I had a call from the Greenville Herald Banner, a daily newspaper located not far from Commerce.  Their sports editor had gotten drunk and fled town.  Would I consider being sports editor for the summer?  It seemed like fate kept nudging me on the shoulder.

One day the editor raced to my desk and told me to hotfoot it to a small town a few miles outside of Greenville where a horse had broken from its rider and was racing through downtown causing general havoc.  It sounded like a yawn to me, now a big time sports editor.

When I arrived, the police were trying to corral the horse.  The boy who owned the animal was trailing behind shouting, "Whoa, Dammit!" Turns out that was the horse's name. Dammit.  It was a reporter's dream.  The headline on the front page howled: "Boy Tells Horse: 'Whoa, Dammit."

The article won an Associated Press award for feature writing.  My career in journalism was galloping along.  After I graduated college, I landed a job with United Press International, a wire service news organization with far flung offices.  I was offered Little Rock, a global hotspot.

Newly wed, I drove into Arkansas in the summer of 1968.  Within weeks, race riots erupted in the city.  I was dispatched to the epicenter of the action.  I was phoning in my report from a pay booth when an angry mob of folks surrounded the cubicle.  My life of 21 years flashed before me.

I bolted from the pay phone booth and sprinted like Jesse Owens.  I never looked back as I darted for the National Guard contingent manning barricades nearby.  I practically collapsed into the arms of a guardsman.  When I glanced back, all I saw was darkness.  Journalism was a risky business.

A few years later, the Dallas Times Herald offered me a job on the city desk.  The Times Herald was locked in a circulation battle with The Dallas Morning News.  Competition was fierce and the Herald wanted some more firepower.  That would be me.  Mr. Firepower.

One day I decided to sneak into the newsroom early to write a story for the paper's afternoon edition.  The newsroom was empty, eerily silent except for the clattering of news wire machines.  I was absentmindedly checking a few headlines when suddenly my heart went thud, thud, thud.

The Associated Press carried a story about the shooting of four sheriff's deputies in Dallas County.  The incident had happened at 2 a.m. after The Morning News had already printed its final edition.  I glanced at my watch.  It was 4 a.m.  I raced for a telephone and called the news editor at home.

The editor began summoning a crew of reporters and photographers while I sped to the Sheriff's Office.  By noon, we had wrapped up the biggest story in Dallas in years.  The Times Herald published an expanded edition that arrived at homes that afternoon.  It was a stunning scoop.

For my Herculean efforts, I was awarded a $10 a week raise.  That was the beginning of the end of my journalism career.  We wanted to start a family and the key to journalism would never unlock financial security. I decided to switch careers, despite my love of writing and reporting.

I admit goosebumps rise on my arms every time I hear breaking news.  I want to be smack in the middle of the action.  But the news business turned out to be cheap, cruel and often ethically challenging. I discovered journalism was a business, not pure as the driven snow.

I am glad I divorced journalism when I did.  It depresses me now to watch a once proud profession wallow in mediocrity and disgrace.  But I survived journalism's alluring embrace with some great memories.  I will cling to those in my golden years like a warm blanket.   

Pessimism Influences Our Viewpoint

Studies dating back several decades reveal a phenomenon unique to prosperous nations.  People tend to be pessimistic about their country and their world but optimistic about their own lives.  This dichotomy may appear at first glance to be a conundrum but experts have an explanation.

Many point to a 2013 groundbreaking study conducted by a Swedish statistician and public health expert Hans Rosling.  He surveyed 1,005 Americans on the issue of world poverty.  He was astonished to find only five percent of Americans correctly estimated the level of poverty.

In his research, Americans were asked if world poverty had almost doubled, almost halved or stayed about the same in the last 20 years.  The correct answer is extreme poverty has been reduced by one-half.  Most Americans estimated it was much higher, influenced by what they had read or heard.

The statistician's conclusion, supported by many other studies, is that people's pessimistic views often are unsupported by facts.  This is especially true in developed countries, where people generally have higher levels of income, increased security and  benefit from healthier living conditions.

Consider recent data from the University of Michigan, Haver Analytics and Deutsche Bank Global Research. For the first time millennials are less optimistic than those aged 55+ about the future.  Just 37 percent of people believe today's children will be better off financially than their parents.

Researchers concede there are depressing issues confronting the world: terrorism, conflicts, failing economies, drugs, student debt and many others.  However, these problems are often the subject of news reporting that inflates the risks and danger to attract viewers, readers and listeners.

Psychologists point to the media's infatuation with bad news.  Murders, accidents, bombings, natural disasters and scandals dominate the news.  The emphasis is on tragedy, despair and disturbing behavior. Is it any wonder Americans believe the world is crumbling beneath their feet?

Meanwhile, good news is usually ignored because the media is convinced people aren't interested.  Unfortunately, there is evidence to suggest the news cabal is correct.  Studies show Americans prefer gore and scandal to news about a good Samaritan, unless the individual is famous.

In 2014, McGill University conducted studies using eye-tracking equipment to discover what news stories their subjects preferred to read.  The results were eye-opening, pardon the pun.  The subjects preferred to scan bad news, although they professed to be more interested in good news.

To illustrate how news coverage impacts our view, think about airline crashes.  When a plane goes down, it generates a torrent of news coverage.  The result is that a sizable percentage of Americans believe air travel is risky (include me in that number.)  But the facts argue otherwise.

The National Transportation Safety Board estimates the odds of dying in a plane crash at one in 29.4 million.  By comparison, you have a one in 144 chance of being involved in a fatal car wreck. Air disaster news reports focus on fatalities without adding perspective on the relative safety of flight.

There are other influences beyond the media.  Many public advocacy groups have a vested interest in convincing Americans there are looming catastrophic consequences from pollution, climate change, social inequality, etc. etc. etc.  Frankly, their job is to scare daylights out of you to trigger a reaction.

Even well-meaning, non-profit organizations are guilty of overstating problems.  If you want to raise money, the issue to be solved must rise to a critical level to motivate people to part with their money. A tug on the emotional strings, alarming statistics and unsettling images are the grist of non-profits.

People might be reluctant to donate money to help poverty-stricken children.  But tell them millions of kids go without food every day and show videos of babies with swollen bellies and people are more sympathetic.  Often perspective is missing in the message.  People are being manipulated.

A better example may be economists and stock market analysts.  They are unrivaled pessimists.  Even with the economy improving, they now worry about wage hikes.  Shouldn't that be good news for workers?  Not in their view.  More pay means higher prices and inflation, they grouse.

No wonder Americans and people around the globe are pessimistic about their world.  They are being bombarded with distressing news, gloomy predictions, worst case scenarios and an endless list of problems.  We all need to gain more perspective and obtain factual evidence to better assess reality.

One solution is to stop watching, reading and listening to the news around-the-clock.  Being informed is healthy, but being saturated with woe and torment is a prescription for depression.  We should all strive to be rational optimists, adopting a view that no problem cannot be solved over time.

The alternative is to wallow in our agony as we are reminded daily that our planet is in a mess.  This world and nation of ours are far from perfect.  But our planet has survived devastating wars, famines, natural disasters, genocides and epic diseases.  That should give us hope for a bright future.

News Media Has Lost Americans' Trust

Media elites, chafing under withering criticism from President Trump and his spokespersons, are infuriated over attacks impugning the integrity of news reporting.  News execs are pitching a temper tantrum, calling the vilificaton an assault on the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

There's nothing unusual about an adversarial relationship between the media and White House, but the current environment is toxic.  Hostilities recently escalated into a fiery war of words over testy White House press briefings and the heckling of a CNN reporter at a Trump campaign rally.

Newspaper editors and television officials are framing the issue as an altruistic battle over a free and open press versus  government censorship. But their real motive is less magnanimous.  News organizations are trying to salvage their already tattered public standing, which has sunk to new lows.

A 2016 Pew Research study found that only 18 percent of Americans have a "a lot of trust" in national newspaper, television and radio news media.  In a poll last year, Gallup reported that only 32 percent of adults have a "great deal" or "fair" amount of trust in the news media.

These are historic troughs for the news media.  However, it is hardly breaking news.  There has been a steady erosion in public opinion of the integrity of the news media over the last 20 years, stretching back to 1997.  The downdraft did not begin with the election of Donald Trump.

In fact, an exhaustive study commissioned by the American Society of Newspapers Editors in 1998 uncovered that 78 percent of respondents agreed there is "bias" in reporting.  A CBS News/New York Times poll in 2006 affirmed that only four in 10 adults believed news reports are truthful.

Those are alarming numbers for the news industry, which is suffering from dwindling newspaper readership, plummeting television viewership and tumbling radio ratings.  The news business' high-stakes struggle for survival is being undermined by its flagging public image.

News officials may be outraged by the labeling of their reporting as "fake news," but they have given their detractors plenty of ammunition.  There has been an epidemic of reporting that has proven to be false, misleading or deliberately biased.  Examples abound across all media.

After Mr. Trump's victory, reports circulated on social media and the news that multiple transgender teenagers had committed suicide in response to his election.  Even Snopes, an alleged fact-checking website, called the rumors "unconfirmed" rather than false.  Turns out the news was indeed a fraud.

Later in November, the New York Magazine claimed a group of computer scientists and election lawyers were demanding a recount in three states won by Mr. Trump.  The story was picked up by most media outlets.  No proof was ever produced by the so-called experts and the story was pulled.

Another bombshell that exploded in the media's faces was a report that a Muslim business owner flew to Iraq to bring his sick mother to America for medical treatment.  The woman supposedly died because her flight was delayed by the immigration ban.  The account was a total fabrication.

Associated Press reported that the House had voted to roll back Obama rules on background checks for gun ownership a year ago.  The news created hysteria on social media.  Some might call the story misleading but it was downright deceitful.  The House did no such thing.

For the record, the House repealed a narrow slice of the Obama era rule dealing with background checks for those with Social Security disability and adults receiving Supplemental Security Income.  Even the American Association for People with Disabilities and the ACLU supported the change.

CNN has earned the title of least trusted network for egregious bogus reporting. CNN falsely reported the president removed a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King from his office.  Three CNN employees resigned after the network retracted a story about a meeting between a Trump official and a Russian.

And on and on it goes.  The New York Times falsely claimed on its front page that the Trump Administration had hidden a climate report.  ABC demoted Brian Ross for a bungled report on Trump-Russia.  The Washington Post posted a phony photo of an empty stadium for a Trump rally.

In each case, social media users amplified the lies thousands and thousands of times on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  One false story turns into a tsunami of fake news. That makes it even more incumbent on the legacy media to get its facts straight before the stories are reported as news.

There is no defense for the current spate of reckless reporting by the national media. The First Amendment is not a license for outright lying and deception.  The media has an obligation to hold government accountable, but it must be credible to do its job the way the founders intended.

Journalists are the ones who can fix the credibility problem.  Editors and media owners need to hold reporters accountable for truth and fairness or nothing will change.  The choice is theirs.  Either deal with the integrity issue or watch the news industry incinerate itself.     

How Media Coverage Ruined Sports

Growing up my hero was New York Yankees baseball icon Mickey Mantle.  The legendary power hitter wore the number 7 on his pinstriped uniform, roamed Yankee Stadium's cavernous center field, swatted towering home runs from both sides of the plate and was as fleet as a cheetah.

Many boys of my generation worshiped The Mick as he was dubbed by an adoring sports media.  I followed every game of his black-and-white career broadcast on television and the radio.  My prized baseball card collection once included every Mantle card issued during his 18-year career.

Mantle chased Babe Ruth's single season home run record of 60, slugging 54 in 1961.  I cut out every single newspaper headline in the local paper about each blast that year and pasted the clippings in a binder.  I wept the day Mantle died of cancer in 1995 at age 63.  America lost an epic sports figure.

Soon after his passing, the ugly stories began oozing into the media.  Mantle was a chronic alcoholic.  He chased women and cheated on his wife. He was a lousy father. His teammates recollections of his carousing spurred titillating news from reporters who once praised his play on the field.

This forlorn tale stands as a metaphor for how media coverage of sports has changed.  When newspapers ruled journalism, the sports writers reported on what happened on the baseball diamond. What took place off the field wasn't news.  Invading a players privacy was considered bad manners.

In the years since Mantle died, sports reporters spy into every private area of a player's life.  The media pry into players' feuds with management, their sexual preference, their free spending habits, their use of performance enhancing drugs and their hyper-inflated salaries.

The scrutiny from television sports outlets, radio talk shows, newspapers, social media and bloggers is pervasive.  Sports figures no longer have private lives.  Every whisper and deed is dissected, analyzed, critiqued and judged.  No athlete can emerge unscathed under the media microscope.

In my opinion, sports is not better off for the invasive investigation.  Sports figures are now treated as celebrities, meaning their lives are fair game for public evisceration.  One misstep and their lives and careers can be ruined by a cell phone video or a confrontation with an unruly fan in a bar.

Do sports fans really care how much money every single player earns?  Does that add to their enjoyment of the game?  Do fans relish the juicy details of who's dating a movie starlet?  Does that create more interest in the game?  Do we care about players' DUI arrests?  Does that entertain?

Constant media surveillance has made cynics of everyone.  Fans complain about a highly paid players performance.  They boo a player because the athlete partied last night.  They yell obscenities at the player who was exposed as an adulterer.  Fans have morphed into contemptuous critics.

The game has lost its innocence.  The action now takes place on a plethora of sports talk shows, each competing  to become the loudest, most provocative, angriest muckraker. Post-game talk shows are the worst, where blame is parceled out in the cruelest terms and praise is often nonexistent.

Think about the biggest sports stories in the last 15 years.  Many involve off the field antics, cheating or bad behavior.  A few come to mind: Deflate Gate; Lance Armstrong's Drug Tests; Tiger Wood's Womanizing; Barry Bonds' Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs; Kobe Bryant's Assault Case.

As a youngster idolizing Mantle, I prefer my heroes to be judged on their performance on the field.  I enjoy combing over box scores of games, rehashing great plays, perusing statistics that illuminate the performance of athletes.  I desire sports coverage that celebrates the greatness of players and teams.

The Sports Section of newspapers once served as escapism from the humdrum of local, national and world news that depressed us.  Now the sports pages are a cesspool of defamatory, malicious and hearsay coverage of athletic figures.  There is no escaping the reality of human imperfection.

I yearn for those days of bigger-than-life heroes and games played for the fun of competition.  I hunger for the thrill of watching super human feats of skill and daring.  I long to be surrounded by fans who root for players and teams not against them.  I relish big games and even bigger plays.

That's what I wish sports could be again. But those days are forever in the past.  The media has made sure we can never go back to a time of virtue and purity of sport.  It is a sad commentary on what society consumes and clamors for in sports coverage.  And it has ruined the joy of sports for me.

Obama's Unprecedented Media Censorship

President Obama swept into office in 2008 on a tide of promises, including a commitment to usher in a new era of unprecedented transparency.  Even before his first year in office had drawn to a close, he discarded his vow of openness and adopted a hostile policy of government censorship.

In a blink of an eye, Obama and his team clamped down on the media's access to government records.  In its first year, the secretive administration denied 466,872 media requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), double the rejections in the last year under President George W. Bush.

Since that time, the administration has made few meaningful improvements, according to a recent analysis of federal data by the Associated Press (AP).  The news gathering organization has documented that the rejection of FIOA requests has skyrocketed in the last few years.

In March of this year, the AP's analysis of FIOA requests lodged with 100 federal agencies found the Obama Administration responded to even fewer than in past years.  The government either censored or denied access to 250,581 requests, which represented 39 percent of all applications for information.

Furthermore, the AP reported that the government's own data verified that the backlog of unanswered requests for information had swollen 55 percent.  There are more than 200,000 requisitions gathering dust in agencies' files. There are another 215,584 appeals that have been lost in the bureaucracy.

By way of explanation, the Freedom of Information Act, signed into law in 1966, provides for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased documents and information under the control of the government.  Although the law contains exemptions, it mandates greater access to federal records.

In its coverage of the administration's secrecy, the AP noted that Obama's government had "set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them" in 2014.  Obama's reaction to the report was to dispatch his mouthpieces to deny the interpretation of his government's data.

But secrecy isn't the only weapon the president has used to shield his administration from legitimate news coverage.  His minions have launched attacks on news media critical of its policies, vigorously prosecuted journalists who attempted to expose wrongdoing and criminalized federal whistle blowers.

Instead of transparency, President Obama's record for accessibility, openness and honest communications has been the worst since President Richard Nixon.  That analysis is not a Republican talking-point.  It is the conclusion of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The prestigious committee, an independent, non-profit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, has taken the Obama Administration to task for its heavy-handed treatment of the media's efforts to uncover government information and its lack of transparency.

In a scathing report issued in 2013 that was covered up by the mainstream media, the committee had this to say about the administration's dealings with the media: 'the war on leaks and other efforts to control the information are the most aggressive since the Nixon administration.'

James Goodlae, the former general counsel of The New York Times, chastised the president for attempting to "criminalize the reporting of national security information."  Under Obama, the Department of Justice has pursued journalists who have relied on government leaks for stories.

Last year, thirty eight leading media organizations scolded the administration for its increased reticence. These influential media groups, including the Society of Professional Journalists, called on the administration to end "politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies."

As one example of the administration's overzealous persecution, the Justice Department has relentlessly  dogged James Risen, The New York Times reporter who is accused of using information from a Central Intelligence Agency source to write an article about an attempt to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

This is the same administration that clandestinely subpoenaed and seized the telephone records of more than 100 Associated Press reporters in its Washington Bureau and elsewhere to determine the source of leaks to the wire service.  That Nixonian action had a chilling impact on Washington news sources.

Like many promises Obama made before his election, he has thumbed his nose at his pledge of running the "most transparent administration in history." His record is shameful.  Journalists who cover the administration should have the last word on the subject.

The New York Times David Sanger recently assessed the Obama government as the "most closed, control-freak administration" he has ever covered.  Listen and you will be able to hear a loud chorus of "Amens" echoing in newsrooms across America.

Censorship: Obama's Attack On Free Speech

No American should have been shocked by recent revelations that the Federal Communications Commission was sponsoring a thinly veiled effort to intimidate news coverage by the broadcast industry.  It was just the latest attempt by the Obama Administration to stifle free speech.

The administration's henchmen have undertaken an insidious effort to stamp out any criticism of the president, his policies or his authority to rule by executive fiat.  Censorship and media bullying are supposed to be the tools of totalitarian governments, not free and open democratic societies.

The latest infringement on the First Amendment came to light when FCC commissioner Ajit Pai used the  op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal to expose a shady initiative to "thrust the government into the newsrooms across the country."

The commission's vehicle was a phony "study" to grill reporters, editors and station owners about their news decisions and news gathering.  As part of its research, the commission wanted to delve into perceived bias, the news selection process and coverage of so-called critical information needs.

FCC flunkies snooping around newsrooms would have a chilling impact on broadcasters.  The FCC awards broadcast licenses to television and radio stations.  Licenses are up for renewal every eight years.  By refusing to grant a renewal, the powerful FCC can put a station out of business.

Obama's spin masters tried to dismiss the firestorm over the survey as much ado about a harmless research project.  But broadcasters had every right to fear for their existence based on the Obama Administrations' full court press to censor the media.

It wasn't that long ago that Eric Holder's Justice Department was caught red-handed snooping into the phone records of 21 reporters at the Associated Press.  The news organization's crime was reporting on a foiled terrorist attack one day before President Obama had planned a press briefing on the drama.

As he always does, the president claimed no knowledge of the spying charges.  He has become the master a plausible deniability about the unscrupulous actions of the coterie of cronies running amok throughout his government.

Just as the AP story vanished from the headlines, the Justice Department was outed for targeting Fox News reporter James Rosen on charges of aiding and abetting a co-conspirator.  His crime was broadcasting a report on North Korea's expected response to United Nations nuclear sanctions.

Holder's thugs combed the personal emails of Rosen to try to discover how he learned about the North Korean president's likely reaction. As with other free press violations, Obama contended he first learned of his Justice Department's skulduggery from the news media.

In recent weeks, news leaked about the Federal Bureau of Investigation's indictment of conservative commentator and author Dinesh D'Souza on campaign finance charges.  D'Souza posted $500,000 bail and vowed the FBI bullies would not intimidate his reporting.

D'Souza had the audacity to direct a 2012 film chastising President Obama.  The movie, entitled "2016: Obama's America," was the top grossing documentary of that year, pulling in $33 million.  No one can remember liberal Michael Moore being harassed for his scathing movie on President George W. Bush.

Harvard Law School professor  Alan Dershowitz, a self-proclaimed liberal, wrote a column on the D'Souza case excoriating the FBI for its complaint.  "I can't help but think that (D'Souza's) politics have something to do with it.  It smacks of selective prosecution."

Most Americans have forgotten the administration's most egregious affront to free speech.  In 2012, a little known film maker produced a crude movie lampooning the prophet Muhammad.  His film was erroneously blamed for the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi.

The film-maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was arrested and held without bail on a trumped up charge.  His real crime was violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws that do not exist in the U.S.  He is languishing today in a federal prison and has never been brought to trial.  

Taken in isolation each one of these incidents might be dismissed as the misguided actions of knuckle-headed administration officials.  But when viewed in context, these examples paint a clear picture of an orchestrated government  plot to censor political discourse and expunge dissent.  

Every American regardless of political affiliation should be outraged by Obama's pattern of attacks on free speech.  The guarantee of freedom of the press was the First Amendment written into the U.S. Constitution for a reason.  Free speech is all that stands between tyranny and liberty.

An Indictment of American Journalism

Political news coverage sunk to new lows in the 2012 presidential campaign as big media winnowed personnel, shifted emphasis to sports, weather and traffic, while serving up little analysis to help voters interpret candidate views.

Those are the findings of The State of the News Media 2013 annual report by the non-partisan Pew Research Center.  While a handful of news outlets have covered the few positive nuggets in the research, nearly all have chosen to ignore the damning evidence which indicts American journalism.

Pew found that the news industry is "more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories" than ever before.  Apparently, the public has noticed.  Nearly one-third of those polled have abandoned a news outlet because it no longer provides the information they require.

Pew reserves its most caustic criticism for the media's coverage of the 2012 presidential election.

Its analysis "revealed that campaign reporters were acting primarily as megaphones, rather than as investigators, of the assertions put forward by candidates and other political partisans." It meant that there was less investigative reporting by journalists and more reliance on campaign sources, Pew said.

Journalism was sacrificed at the expense of deep cuts in newsrooms that have dwindled reporting resources, according to Pew.  The reductions have been driven by slumping advertising and steep losses in circulation and viewership.

The Pew report offered stark details of the decline.

For example, newspapers have slashed 30 percent of their workforce since 2000.  Reductions were required because print advertising has plummeted 46 percent since 2006. Although 460 newspapers now produce digital editions, the industry loses $16 in print revenue for every $1 in recoups in digital advertising. 

Meanwhile, one in six local television stations carved chunks out of their news budgets last year. While local broadcast revenue increased in 2012, it remains down 13.5 percent since 2006.  Local news viewership sagged 6.5 percent last year even after stations focused more on weather, traffic and sports.

Advertising losses in television and newspapers have come at the expense of the boom in digital media.   Digital platforms posted a 17 percent increase in advertising, rising to $37.3 billion in 2012.  The mobile ad market ballooned 80 percent in 2012 to $2.6 billion.

The growth can be partly attributed to the rising popularity of digital media's news. An average of more than 625 million people monthly visit news websites, such as Yahoo.  Nearly 35 percent of young people, aged 18-24, turn to social media for their news, surfing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

It's a sad state of affairs when social media's fluff masquerading as news trumps traditional reporting.  But big media has abdicated its position as a trusted news source by abandoning its journalistic role and instead dishing out less news with more bias.

News Media Exposes Its Unseemly Underbelly

Media ethics are an oxymoron in an era when news outlets thrive on assassinating the reputations of public figures with unproven allegations while sacrificing what few principles they profess on the altar of shameless exploitation.

Two recent high-profile cases underscore this sleazy brand of journalism.  The pillorying of presidential candidate Herman Cain and the savaging of college football coach Joe Paterno are recent examples of how the media has abandoned all pretense of fairness and objectivity in reporting.

Once standards dictated that journalists wait for law enforcement officials to file charges before reporting on allegations, heresy or gossip.  But in the race for ratings, media organizations now turn to sensationalism, shock and sex to pander to their audience's worst prurient interests.

Before taking up the Cain and Paterno cases,  a caveat is in order. What follows is NOT a defense of either man, but an indictment of the reporters and editors who have allowed their own bias and views to trample journalistic professionalism.

Weeks ago unfounded allegations surfaced regarding Cain's alleged sexual harassment of women.  The media smelled blood when Cain stumbled in his initial denials.  That was all the license they needed to air innuendo and salacious statements from alleged and often anonymous victims.

After some crawfishing Cain did admit that a sexual harassment settlement was made without his knowledge by his former employer. That became a lightning rod for the media, which treated the legal deal as an admission of guilt.

News coverage of the Cain allegations stands in sharp contrast to similar sexual harassment charges against President Clinton.  In 1999, Clinton quietly reached an out-of-court settlement in the sexual harassment case filed by Paula Jones after his repeated claims of innocence.


The legal maneuver came on the heels of a federal district judge's criticism of Clinton for "willful failure" to obey her repeated orders to testify truthfully in the lawsuit lodged by Ms. Jones.  The judged fined Clinton for his conduct.  News of the settlement was either buried or not mentioned.    

Judging from the news treatment of the allegations against Cain, there can be no question of the media's double standard.   It also begs the question: If Clinton was fit to remain as president despite a sexual harassment settlement, why should a similar legal agreement disqualify Cain from that office?  

While Cain continues to soldier on in the presidential race, Penn State's Joe Paterno has been forced out by the board of trustees after 46 years as head football coach.  The action follows a grand jury investigation of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who has been charged with 40 counts of sexual abuse of children.

Once the scandal broke, several top Penn State officials, including the athletic director, stepped down.  Immediately the news media, including influential sports media giant ESPN, demanded Paterno's resignation, even though prosecutors had indicated the coach would not be charged with a crime.

Among the few facts released by the prosecutors was a report that once Paterno was made aware of the allegation, the head coach advised the athletic director as required.  In a later statement, Paterno publicly admitted remorse for not doing more to investigate the allegation.

That admission didn't satisfy the media's unquenchable thirst to humiliate Paterno.  The media's suffocating coverage bullied the university's trustees into a hastily called meeting that ended with Paterno's firing, depriving the coach of an opportunity to gracefully step down days before it was revealed he had lung cancer.

One only has to remember the Duke lacrosse case as a cautionary tale of media justice.  To refresh your memory, three members of the Duke lacrosse team were charged in 2006 with raping a woman at a party. Because of the university's pristine reputation, the media enthusiastically reported the allegations and battered Duke's reputation as if it was a piñata.

After more than a year of unrelenting coverage, the charges were proven false and the unscrupulous prosecutor in the case was disbarred.  Unfortunately, the facts surfaced after the Lacrosse coach had been fired, player reputations were ruined and the team's season cancelled by the university president.

Paterno and Cain may indeed be guilty of crimes.  If so, they deserve our scorn.  But until they are charged in a court of law and a jury finds them guilty, they remain innocent. The heinous nature of the allegations do not justify the media's rush to judgment.

Fairness and objectivity may seem like quaint values to today's journalists, but they are standards worth upholding.   Media consumers should demand nothing less.

Wake Up and Smell the Tea

Barack Obama, who campaigned on the promise of uniting America, can now claim the mantle as the most divisive president in U.S. history.  He has become the Demonizer-In-Chief, assaulting big business, health insurers, corporate jet owners, the wealthy, credit rating agencies and everyone else who dares to stand against his bankrupt agenda.

In recent days, the president has reserved some of his harshest verbal venom for the Tea Party, blaming the nascent movement for the Washington wrangling that ended with a debt deal no one liked.  Of course, the Obama Amen Chorus in the media and within the Democrat Party bared their fangs in support the president.

Massachusetts's Sen. John Kerry sunk his dental implants in the Tea Party, laying the blame for the Standard & Poor's credit downgrade at the feet of the 87 freshmen GOP Congressmen who adhered toTea Party principles in the debt debate.

Obama's political hatchet man David Axelrod seconded Kerry's assessment, calling the credit agency's action a "Tea Party downgrade."  Democrats were just getting warmed up when the mainstream media stepped into the fray with incendiary language.

David Gregory on television's "Meet the Press" program accused the Tea Party of "holding the process hostage" in  referring to the debt negotiations.  New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman characterized the Tea Party as the "Hezbollah faction" of the GOP.

Figuring his colleagues hadn't gone far enough in exposing their bias, fellow columnist Joe Nocera wrote in The Times that the Tea Party had "waged Jihad on America."  Howard Dean, the Democrat Party's left wing loon, infamously branded the movement "racist."

Democrats and their allies in the media have made the Tea Party Public Enemy No. 1 for one reason:  they are scared to death that what started as a loosely knit revolution against Obama's perilous penchant for spending will mushroom into an landslide rejection of the president next November.

Democratic pollster Rasmussen's research underscores the issue for Obama and his party.  It released results this month that showed "42% of all likely U.S. voters believe the average Tea Party member has a better understanding of problems America faces, while 34% think the average member of Congress is more clued in." 

In fact, the Tea Party isn't a a traditional political party, but a fractious federation of like-minded individuals.  A poll conducted by CNN/Opinion Research painted a more favorable picture of Tea Party members than the one framed by the media and Democrats.

The research found that three-fourths of those who identified themselves as Tea Party members had attended college, compared to 54 percent of the public at large.  Six in ten were male.  More than half live in rural America.  Most don't actively support the party, but often endorse the Tea Party views.

That hardly is the profile of a "terrorist."

In recent days, Democrats have ratcheted up the anti-Tea Party rhetoric in hopes of shielding the president from the blame he deserves for the debt debacle that ended with the U.S. losing its AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years, despite Obama's repeated lie that raising the debt ceiling was the only way to avoid a downgrade.

No wonder the president's credibility is deteriorating faster than a crippled Japanese nuclear plant.

Obama got his wish, a debt deal that lifted the moratorium on borrowing.  He cannot legitimately finger the Tea Party or its Congressional supporters for the stock market crash and credit downgrade that happened AFTER the bipartisan agreement was signed into law by the president.   

For months, the media and Obama clamored for a debt compromise.  They misread the American public, thinking that voters preferred compromise over substance.  What the electorate wanted was a solution to reclaiming the nation's fiscal footing, not some squishy deal that leaves the debt issue unsettled for 10 more years.

Voters send people to Washington to represent their views.  Many inside the Beltway believe that the notion of a representative government is a quaint idea not worth preserving.  They salivate after compromise, but only as long as negotiations end up with a lopsided agreement they favor. 

Which brings us back to the Tea Party.  The reason the movement fired the imagination of the voters was its principled stand against taxes, big government and wanton spending.  The electorate was tired of voting for the same old political crowd that promised reform and then promptly changed their stripes the minute they set foot in the Capitol. 

Yet when Tea Party backed Congressmen and women balked at talk of raising taxes to reduce the deficit, the media and the Democrat Party acted outraged.  In their skewed view, principles should be sacrificed in the name of compromise.  That kind of thinking is what led to the current fiscal dysfunction in Washington. 

Despite its grassroots origin, the Tea Party movement has proven effective at raising the level of dissatisfaction with Obama's policies.  That's what bothers the president and the Democrats most.  They want to control the political message by silencing voices of dissent through intimidation, dehumanization and disinformation.   

The Big Bad Tea Party has a huge target on its back because it won't bend to Obama's political will.  Instead of reaching out to his critics, the president prefers to divide the nation with labels.  Name calling is no hallmark of leadership.  It is the stock-and-trade of political cowards. 

 




 

Media's Most Under Reported Issues in 2010

Recently that paragon of journalistic empty-headiness, television anchor Katie Couric, opined that Islamaphobia was the most under reported news of 2010. Apropos of her third-place CBS evening news ratings, Ms. Couric wasn't even close to rising to the top of the list of MIA (Missing-In-Action) news coverage. For Ms. Couric's benefit, and those in the dumbed-down media, here is a modest list of news stories that flew so far under the journalistic radar, most never made a blip.

1. The country experienced its worst year of bank failures since the Great Depression as nearly 160 institutions were shuttered. Yet other than an occasional story last year about the quarterly rise in bank closing, the media ignored the story. The news just didn't fit with the media's agenda of showing that economic recovery was upon us. There was no coverage attempting to explain why banks were continuing to fail, despite billions in bailouts.

2. More than 30,000 doctors in Texas alone, joined by thousands in other states, have stopped taking patients covered by Medicare. With the enactment of Obama Care, the government reduced payments to doctors and more cuts are scheduled in the coming years. As a result, doctors are dropping Medicare patients as frequently as Lady GaGa drops the "F' bomb. Intense news coverage of this issue would have raised fears about the already unpopular Obama Care, which most in the media supported.

3. On the subject of Obama Care, more than 200 businesses have been granted waivers by the government to opt out of the health initiative. More firms are lining up each day to apply for a waiver, signaling that serious flaws exist in the health reform legislation. Of course, except in rare cases, the news has escaped the front pages of newspapers or the evening news casts. It doesn't fit with the media's view.

4. Under pressure from Republicans, the Federal Reserve was finally compelled to release documents showing the full extent of its gargantuan bailout of banks. The reports show trillions in dollars went to four big banks: Citigroup ($2.2 trillion); Merrill Lynch ($2.1 trillion); Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion) and Bank of America ($1.1 trillion.) It was scandalous that the media chose to report the details on its back pages and after a day dropped its coverage. More media digging should have followed, especially in light of the promises of transparency from the Obama Administration.

5. Freddie Mac and its sister Fannie Mae, the two taxpayer-funded mortgage behemoths, are both teetering on the precipice of bankruptcy, despite receiving $148 billion in bailout money. The property lenders' regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has estimated taxpayers could actually be on the hook for $259 billion by 2013. Both entities owned more than 240,000 foreclosed homes in December of last year. While the government pours more tax dollars into the mortgage giants, the news media has virtually ignored their impending collapse.

As you can see, Ms. Couric, there have been more important news stories than the one you suggested that have gone unreported or under reported on your lousy network and on the pages of most newspapers, which are suffering a slow death, just like your nightly newscast. Perhaps, if you and other so-called journalists paid more attention to actually covering the 'news' instead of pursuing your own agenda, you might see things differently.

By the way, Ms. Couric, have a nice evening.

Unmasking Media Bias

Media bias is a subject that is tossed around these days more often than a Frisbee on a California beach. Many people, especially politicians, have a hard time defining the term, but they certainly will vouch they know it when they see it. They argue that it must be bias if doesn't fit their political or world view.

However, real bias usually is harder to detect. The prejudice that pervades today's mainstream media flows mainly from the decision about what qualifies as news. Those editorial judgements, made behind the scenes, are reflected in the selection of what stories are assigned for coverage.

Once editors decide what merits coverage, reporters are given instructions on pursuing a predetermined news angle. After stories are written or videoed, they are reviewed and edited for display in print or broadcast. Then another set of editors decides placement, directing where the story runs in a newscast or print publication.

Reporters often are blamed for news bias because their faces or names appear next to the coverage. But the editors pull the strings. Reporters are mere puppets dangled about by editors who are making judgements every day about what to cover, how to report it, and where to display it.

With that as a primer, here's a personal story that better illustrates how bias reflects an editor's judgement. Once while working at The Dallas Times-Herald, yours truly was given an assignment to produce a story about car-pooling. At that time, circa 1970, car-pooling was catching on in a handful of big cities in the country.

Like a good reporter should, I conducted interviews with a myriad of sources, including corporate spokesmen, city transportation agencies, state highway department officials and the chamber of commerce. What I found was that no company, save for Texas Instruments, had shown any interest in car-pooling. It was virtually non-existent in Dallas except for two vans operated by TI.

When I turned in my article, the news editor blew a gasket. "This isn't the story I wanted," he bellowed. "I want a story showing how car-pooling is growing in Dallas. It's good for the city."

I went back to my desk, sufficiently chastened. I dug out my notes and rewrote the story, emphasising that only one company was backing car-pooling, but it was surely a trend. I used the same set of facts and just ignored those that did not support the notion that car-pooling was going to save Dallas' traffic clogged freeways. The editor loved it so much it ran on the front page.

Although this episode happened decades ago, editors and journalists are employing the same tactic today. Closely examine most articles and reports and you will be able to spot how "selective facts" are chosen to make a point or advance an agenda. From the media's viewpoint, that isn't bias as along as the report is factual. However,leaving out facts and choosing only quotes and sources in support of a viewpoint, fails the test of being fair and balanced.

The best way to illustrate today's media bias is by listing some recent examples. In some cases, editors ignored the same news they once covered with gusto. In other instances, editors elected to use select facts to change the tenor of the reporting. Their choices have neutered the media's once proud journalism standards.

Here are just a few examples to illustrate the point:

1. BANK FAILURES: When a few California banks went under during President Bush's final year in office, the major broadcast networks showed long times of depositors waiting to withdraw their money from the institutions. The scene was described as reminiscent of The Great Depression. For perspective, there have been only two years since 1934 when no U.S. banks failed. Both years (2005 & 2006) occurred during the Bush Administration. Bank failures this year are on pace to break all previous records. Already, 103 banks have shuttered their doors. Have you seen any pictures of long lines of anxious bank customers on the television news? Of course not. The media has decided the country wants to see the economy recover and therefore doesn't need to be reminded of impending disaster. The news "narrative" has changed to showing and reporting facts and sources that support that agenda. No one could argue that a new record in bank closures does not merit news coverage.

2. AFGHAN WAR: During President Bush's two terms, the number of Americans killed or wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan ran on the front pages of most newspapers. The broadcast news followed suit, often with graphic footage of the unloading of flag draped caskets as a grim reminder of the war's toll. Each milestone reached in war dead became a new headline. During Bush's eight years there were 630 Americans killed in Afghanistan. In less than two years of his presidency, Barack Obama has presided over a war toll that now stands at 577. Have you seen front page charts showing the rising number of soldiers killed? Where are those flag-draped casket photos? The media has obviously decided that Americans no longer care about the killing of young men and women in uniform. Their narrative calls for stories that show the war is winding down to a successful conclusion.

3. HOME FORECLOSURES: During the last fading light of the Bush Administration, the media covered home foreclosures as if every American would soon be homeless. Interviews dominated the news with sobbing single mothers and minority families thrown out of their homes because they couldn't make the payments. Many claimed they were duped by greedy mortgage companies. In yet another irony, home foreclosures continue to spike with hardly any coverage. There is the odd mention of the percentage of mortgages under water, but there have been no snapshots of vans parked outside the domiciles of homeowners who are moving out of homes that they can no longer afford. No homeowner tears are being shown on the nightly news. Judging from the coverage, one would assume foreclosures are no longer a problem for the country. Yet the country has experienced 26 consecutive months of year-over-year increases in home foreclosures. Home foreclosures among the most credit-worthy borrowers have risen an alarming 425 percent (yes, 425%) since January 2008, according to Lender Processing Services, a mortgage data firm. Wouldn't you think that merited a few teary eyed homeowners pouring out their heart about their bad luck?

4. PROTEST: During the Bush Administration, Democrats and the media championed dissent as a sign of the First Amendment right of every American to speak out on the country's ills. Overnight, protesters gained celebrity status, such as Cindy Sheehan, a mother of a slain U.S. solider, who camped out near Bush's Crawford ranch. Pictures of protest placards with unflattering images of President Bush were served up in print photos and on television. There was even the famous footage of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoe at President Bush during a news conference. No less an authority that Hillary Clinton claimed disagreement with a president was a holy exercise of American patriotism. Protest seemed like a great American ideal until the Tea Party came along. Then the media decided protest was a bad thing after all. Noisy citizens with signs were called Nazis, racists and kooks. The tenor of the coverage went from fawning to frightful. The media began snooping for dirt on protesters, particularly after Democrats and the President were critical of the dissent. Today Tea Party protests go largely unreported, although often the numbers of people involved far exceed the "mass" demonstrations aimed at Bush's administration.

Is it any wonder that surveys show the public distrusts the media almost as much as politicians? For decades, the media has sold its soul to promote ideas, causes and viewpoints instead of using its resources to inform and educate the public.

As a result, the media industry has suffered crippling declines in viewership and readership. Captains of media conglomerates complain that people just don't read newspapers and consume news broadcasts like they once did. They point the finger of blame at the Internet and an uneducated, dumbed-down public who does not care about what's happening in their country.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The news media needs to quit looking elsewhere for scapegoats. Today's media have become the enemy of truth, accuracy, balance and fairness. They have dug themselves a deep credibility hole that threatens to bury the industry in a grave they will never escape.