Army Bob: Media too often crosses the line on truth, fairness

Columnist and television news commentator George Will once said when discussing the power of television and the influence on the American public opinion and having an image of death and destruction showed repeated times, “If the American Civil War were televised we would be two nations today.” Will’s point was that the carnage and horror of our bloodiest war would have turned the nation away from abolishing slavery and maintaining the national union.

The United States Constitution protects the media and allows it to cross the line of truth and fairness. We can debate the pros and cons of the First Amendment to our Constitution, but it is excessively protective of the information or disinformation business. If we think about it, it is a good thing that we allow a broad interpretation of the first amendment and the media is allowed to self-regulate. The problem comes when the media appoints themselves the champions of social justice and the sculptors of our society, not the reporters of fact and news.

Karl Marx, the father of modern socialism, said decades before Dr. Joseph Goebbels (the propaganda minister for the German National Socialists Party) that a lie told loud enough and often enough becomes the truth.

The American media has a social cause of the day and beats it into our heads over and over again. A number of years ago the media got the issue of female teachers statutorily raping male students as the enormous problem that must be fixed at the national level. The numbers do not support the statement that it is an enormous national problem, or even a small problem, but never mind — the media willed it and penalties were increased and burdens of proof eased in many jurisdictions.

Residing in the Chicago suburbs for years, I remember an incident of a woman walking her dog in a rain storm. She was struck by lightning and sadly passed away, and the Chicago media went wild. The issue of using a dog leash that contained metal was made a contributing factor of her death. Calls were loud and often in the local media to pass laws banning dog leashes containing metal.

The tragic murders at Sandy Hook Elementary school were followed by a call to ban AR15 type rifles; the pesky facts are that by far more people are murdered using baseball bats as a weapon than AR15 type rifles. The media, in conjunction with the Hollywood elite, campaigned against childhood inoculations for many common diseases. The outcome was a rise in the childhood disease rate. Now the media and Hollywood elite are campaigning for childhood inoculations — whatever is currently trendy.

The fraudulent rape story published in Rolling Stone magazine is a classic example of politically correct stories trumping the truth. Even after the story was exposed as false some in the media defended the author by saying it could have been true, and rape on college campuses is a problem, so what if it did not happen this time? The media, “the truth be dammed, the issue is more important” is a threat to the very existence of the First amendment. Fraternity members assaulting and raping a drunken young woman was just too good a story to check, too politically correct to verify, to stereotypical to confirm.

Recent graduates of the Columbia School of Journalism who were surveyed chose “changing the world for the good” as the reason they wanted to be a reporter; sure sounds like they want to make news, not report the news.

General William Tecumseh Sherman, a Civil War Union General and a man noted for his disdain for the press, once said of the reporters that “… they are spies and they publish camp rumors as fact; I should shoot them all, but if I did there would be news from Hell in the morning papers.” Media bias is not new but it is and has been always wrong.

It would be a very good thing if we had a national news source that was indeed fair and balanced. Fox News is far right of center; MSNBC is extremely left of center other national news sources are to a lesser extent mostly left of center. We risk the very existence of the First Amendment when the media continually fails to self-regulate.

The media’s definition of fairness and balance is to publish the liberal/progressive/socialist view slanting stories to the left in subtle and not so subtle ways. In excess of 80% of media professionals refer to themselves as liberal; most, not 80%, but most refer to themselves as Democrats.

Hard news reporters need to report the news, not strive to change our society to fit their view of our society.