by Robert M. Traxler
I have spent the last nine hours reading the WikiLeaks e-mails hacked illegally from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Most are boring and hardly worth the time to read them.
That said, a few shine the light of day on the media being an extension of the DNC.
Our Constitution gives the media special protections and wide leeway when it comes to being able to report the unbiased truth and unedited/uncensored facts. The e-mails published by WikiLeaks have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the major media outlets are a group of prostitutes selling themselves to the left wing cause; they are a group of true believers in the tenets of the left wing and the sanctity of the socialist cause.
The irony of the American Constitution being used by those in the media to destroy our Constitutional Democracy is not lost on anyone who follows the media. The profession of journalism has lost all of the façade of honesty and impartiality. The revelations found in the emails published by WikiLeaks should cause the media to self-evaluate and drastically change the way it operates; it will not. The media is a self-governing institution that should self-regulate, should, but it will do nothing as the majority of the media see nothing wrong with bias, prejudice and partiality as long as it is the correct bias.
Collusion by any industry or group of corporations is illegal, unlawful and immoral. Collusion in the media is lawful, legal and rampant. The corruption we find in the government aided by the willing partners in the media is growing daily. The media has unlocked the door, turned off the security lights and enabled the government and our institutions of higher learning to disregard the law and the values found in our Constitution in favor of politically correct group think.
Who would have ever thought that the media would pride itself on being blind and dumb when it comes to e
xercising its constitutionally protected role of watchdogs of the government and the powerful?
In the nation I love we should see a drastic culling of the media; we should see a reevaluation of those who are named in the emails as proven, I say again proven, to be biased and partisan. The main media outlets that should regulate themselves cannot, because the guiltiest, the largest offenders, are those who control the media. If the guilty were fired, if those who violate the rules were canned, it would be hard to find anyone to do the firing as the guilt goes to the very top.
The New York Times used to be the national attack dog; they still will attack the rich and powerful in the government, but comparing left versus right, the attacks are vastly more on the right than the left. The standard explanation provided by the media is that the right gives us more to attack than the left; the New York Times assigned three times the number of reporters to investigate Mr. Trump compared to Secretary Clinton. With three times the investigative reporters you will find three times the amount of stories.
WikiLeaks violated the law hacking into the DNC, no denying that, but when was the New York Times or the rest of the media deaf and dumb before when it came to a true story from an illegal source? If the hack was against the Republican National Committee they would have assigned dozens of reporters to cover it, even if it was illegally received.
In researching a different column, I came across the fact that in Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, the press voluntarily self-censored, in the same way our media is doing today, in the furtherance of the socialist doctrine; we all need to pray our media wakes up and sees the error of their current path. We all need to pray the media self regulates now before it is too late.
Perhaps we need to elect Mr. Trump just so the media will resume its constitutionally protected role and challenge the government and the powerful.
From a decade ago, Bill O’Reilly from Fox News would agree with you too!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/01/27/bush-administration-pays-another-journalist.html
And more recently, Fred Lucas from The Blaze as well.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/29/revolving-door-more-than-two-dozen-journalists-have-joined-the-obama-administration-but-is-it-really-anything-new/
The reality is that partisan politics and partisan publications have been part of the media landscape since the days of the fledgling nation’s colonial era and its Whig and Tory newspapers.
As a former journalist and educator the goal, at least in terms of print and online journalism, is to limit partiality to clearly identifiable editorials and bylined opinion columns.
I used to tell my students, the very best journalism avoids telling readers and viewers and listeners what to think about topics in the news but instead strives to tell readers what topics they ought to be thinking about.
That is a very challenging goal when, it seems to me, fewer and fewer “media personalities” are not graduates of college or university schools of journalism.
That’s a topic worthy of a serious discussion.
Mr. Salisbury,
Thank you for the comment. I agree, papers have always had a bias; however I disagree with the need to be a graduate of a Columbia School of Journalism type institution. The Ivy League colleges along with the vast majority of others are bastions of progressive group think with “safe zones” that ban more free speech than they allow. Please read Ms. Hardin’s last excellent column on the subject.
Google” media bias” and you get right wing bias and “the perceived” media bias; denial is not just a river in Egypt — the first step to recovery is recognizing you have a problem. The leadership in the media needs an intervention.
As a seasoned professor of journalism you need to read the WikiLeaks emails; it takes time, but they will open your eyes as to how bad it has gotten.
Appreciate the suggestion Robert.
Turns out i agree. How bad is the level of corporate media bias? Worse now than in decades past? May be so. Might be, depending on our Individual bias and perceptions it seems worse. Worse than the era of yellow journalism? Hearst and Pulitzer were awfully powerful media magnates. “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
I’m fortunate, despite being a late bloomer, I guess to have the education, training, background and experience to not have to spend time pouring over DNC emails. I expect it would confirm voting my principles by steering clear of both major parties’ candidates. In the meantime when I start to fret over the state of journalism I stop by the Poynter Institute web site and I am heartened. http://www.poynter.org
Mr. Salisbury,
The difference is that Pulitzer or Hurst did not have the numbers of readers (literacy was low) and they were not in every market as the major media outlets are today.
Your experience is in journalism and education so you may not need to investigate; my experience is mostly in the military, (although I did teach a few college courses), the Infantry and Military Police, mostly with the Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) so investigating and finding the truth is kinda in my DNA.
The gist of the column is the systemic corruption in the political system. Mrs. Clinton will spend up to $2,000,000,000; a good bit of it goes to the insiders in the system. The media should make this an issue but they are the recipients of the graft, so they keep quiet. Mr. Trump will not be shackled by owing the corrupt party system for the job.
The system is indeed rigged against anyone who is not an insider, 3d party or not. Proof of this is seen in the WikiLeaks emails in reference to Senator Sanders. I do not like or approve of Senator Sanders but I always felt he was a casualty of the unfair/rigged system. This election should have been between Senator Sanders and Mr. Trump.
So I must respectfully disagree; we cannot get too experienced or smart to not investigate a story.
I guess you missed this final point which was not that I feel I’m too smart already to not read the leaked emails. I said nothing of the sort. I wrote, expressing a sense of redundancy in that “I expect it would confirm voting my principles by steering clear of both major parties’ candidates.” It has been clear to me and in which we agree i believe anyway that both major political partues and the main stream media conglomerates are controlled by crony capitalist oligarchs. As the late George Carlin opined and i paraphrase Mr Traxler, there’s a big club out there and you and I are not in the big club.