"The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery." Law professor Louis Brandeis and businessman Samuel Warren wrote that indictment in the Harvard Law Review in December 1890. Brandeis went on to become one of the heavyweights of the Supreme Court before a university assumed his name.

The second column I wrote for WorldNetDaily was read January 12, 1998. The headline was "Selective reporting and the state of the nation."

I started with an Aubrey T. DeVera quote, "prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain." I asked then, as I do now, despite the obvious liberal bias of the mainstream media (becoming more and more obvious even to the casual observer), when and how will either embarrassment or territorial imperative compel the dominant media to return to the journalistic foundation of actually reporting Who, What, Where, When rather than obfuscating the Why and the How, and/or committing mortal sins of omission?

The Columbia Journalism Review recently noted, "The vocabulary of criticism has ascended from the polite cough to outright condemnation. The press is widely charged with being malicious, negative, self-serving, mean, vulgar, shameless, biased, vindictive, belligerent, aggressive, disingenuous, and vicious. The complaints are as diverse as the critics: intrusion, inaccuracy, refusal to admit or correct error; under-representation of minorities; neglect of the community by faceless conglomerates; incitement to hate, mostly on radio; the 'tabloidization' of news, notably on television since TV news became a profit center; the dramatization of the trivial half-truth at the expense of enlightenment." Excuse me! The "vocabulary of criticism" is growing in proportion to the egregiousness of the malfeasance, manipulation, and propaganda, which is peddled as journalism.

Today's examples are different (albeit cumulative) to the litany I included over two years ago, but the nexus of the sin is constant.

• The Million-Mom March will have concluded by the time you read this. Donna Dees Thomases (hereinafter referred to as DDT) has been profiled, showcased, and shake and baked into celebrity. She has been craftily positioned as just "A New Jersey Mom." Just a Jane Doe soccer mom trying to do something to stem the tide of gun violence. Paul Harvey could have a field day telling you "The Rest of the Story." None of the mainstream co-conspirators, not ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN have either discovered, or chosen to report the close, symbiotic ties DDT has with the Clinton regime. I can't recall any mention of Mother DDT having worked for either CBS or NBC ... she did. A listener to my radio talk show asked in a recent email, "... was this a purposeful omission meant to help disguise the fact that she is a democrat activist insider, or was it the result of journalistic laziness?" The answer is in the question.
• The Media Research Center has a great special report by Geoffrey Dickens who in addition to having the good grace and class to spell his name properly, offers a superb statistical analysis of "How the Network News Media are Spinning the Gun Control Debate." You will note a startling consistency to the percentage of pro-gun versus anti-gun stories. In fact the combined study (covering 4 years) shows 514 anti-gun stories (57 percent), 46 pro-gun stories (5 percent), and 337 neutral stories (38 percent) arguably intended to maintain the fiction of objectivity.
• Col. Dave Hughes, West Point grad and subsequently West Point instructor reports that a captain on the West Point faculty thought the Associated Press story about the alleged "No Gun Ri" massacres in Korea was wrong. So this young officer did what presumably any high paid journalist could do, and he investigated. The AP report regarding No Gun Ri vilified 70-year old men who deserved better. Reporters interviewed over 150 members of the 7th Cavalry Division. All but three reported the alleged incident never happened. The three who "confessed" to machine gunning civilians were never at No Gun Ri when the incident was alleged to have happened. Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize for this b.s. story. Tom Brokaw of NBC flew the mentally ill Ed Daily to Korea for a tearful mea culpa photo opportunity. Read more.

 

 
 
 

I once asked if the presumed keepers of the fourth estate would ever acknowledge their responsibility and report a full and complete journal of the facts, and permit we the people the luxury of making our own fully informed decisions.

The "New Media" may offer us a new beginning ... or at least the opportunity to counterbalance the behemoth disinformation/misinformation campaigns masquerading as journalism. No "New Media" is not a panacea for the cancer eating away at reportage. We have our warts and blemishes too. The ease of dissemination of information on line is both a blessing and a curse. Just because you read something in a newsgroup or in a forwarded message doesn't make it any more true and accurate than if you see or hear it from Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings or Dan Rather.

New Media offers the "opportunity" to report and disseminate information, which has become bridled, hobbled, restricted and/or manipulated by the government-media cabal. We have an extraordinary opportunity I pray we do not squander or misuse.

Ambrose Bierce said, "Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage. This current regime has elevated that axiom to an art form. Sadly, they have successfully co-opted most of the mainstream media as co-conspirators. I have continued to hope and pray (in vain) that journalism has not regressed to the point where it has been reduced to merely reporting selective facts for private advantage.