While you are busy getting over having your pants yanked down around your ankles and your underwear pulled up to your ears by the new administration, can we have a moment to discuss a few things that the American public would like you to know?
1) No one trusts you anymore. This may come as a shock to you, but the days when the American public accepted the word of a reporter as gospel went out the door a long time ago. I'd venture a guess that ship sailed when Edward R. Morrow retired; or, maybe, when Walter Cronkite signed off the air for the last time with "...and that's the way it is." If you want someone to blame, go look up Dan Rather and ask him why HE felt the need throw away his journalistic integrity in favor of bias and partisan politics. The 2016 election demonstrated vividly just how biased and "in the tank" for progressive liberalism you have become, and we are sick of it. Here's a novel idea: how about you stick to reporting FACTS without spin or bias and let us feeble minded folks in the audience form our own opinions.
2) Words have meanings, you have access to dictionaries, put two and two together and start acting like you know the English language. A RIOT is not a PROTEST. Martin Luther King staged peaceful protests. So did Ghandi. (Insert tantrum throwing group of the day here) destroying public and private property, beating people who disagree with them and basically engaging in an anarchistic orgy of destruction is a RIOT and a CRIME. Someone who enters this country on an approved visa and applies for legal resident or citizenship status is an IMMIGRANT. Someone who crosses the border ILLEGALLY and makes no effort to apply for legal resident status or citizenship is an ILLEGAL ALIEN or an INVADER. One is a CRIMINAL and the other is a threat to NATIONAL SECURITY. Get it straight if you ever have any hope of regaining any measure of trust from the people you serve.
3) We understand that there is a lot of news to cover and that not everything is "newsworthy", but be aware that what you choose to cover and not cover is as much a part of journalistic integrity as is the language you choose to report the news. The "Fast and Furious" gun running scandal should have been extensively covered, and Eric Holder should be in jail over that. Ditto for Hillary's email server scandal. Donald Trump's locker room comment from 10+ years ago...still relevant but not nearly as critical as mishandling of firearms or sensitive government information by senior administration officials. While we are on the subject, repeating the same news every hour on the hour on a 24 hour cable news network is ridiculous. Use some of that time to air a few more note worthy stories.
4) The media should treat all politicians equally: suspiciously at best and preferably like lying, thieving, conniving dirt bags. It is disingenuous to suddenly give a flying flip about abuse of executive orders when you've been conspicuously quiet about it for the last eight years. Journalistic integrity demands that no one gets soft ball questions, evasive answers need to be challenged, and no one should be immune from close scrutiny. You can complain about Donald Trump's decade old locker room comments when you publish Barack Obama's college transcripts.
5) We the people really do not care what a Hollywood or sports celebrity thinks about politics, national security, little green men or global warming unless they just happen to be running for office, quitting the NFL to join the Army, was abducted on live TV or has a Ph.D in climatology. We want facts and not airheaded opinions from someone to whom we pay good money to "Shut up and Dance Monkey." Using celebrities to forward an agenda is playing to vanity, and it is part of the reason the public's trust of your services are in the toilet.
In closing, the media has an awesome responsibility to be guardians of the public trust. Use it wisely or lose it forever. We are watching.
Sincerely,
Daddy Hawk
That boat has sailed. Your title could have read as the eulogy. Media has been dead a long while. Now all we have is a rotting corpse.
ReplyDeleteJPD, there is no question that media is on life support at the very least (maybe even hospice care), but I don't think it's dead yet. Trump may yet pull the plug on them with his Twitter account.
DeleteI'm with JPD. I don't trust the media. Dems with bylines, as the Instapundit calls them.
DeleteSam, maybe reporters should be required to disclose their political affiliations as part of their byline. At least then there would be some transparency.
DeleteWell stated.
ReplyDeleteIrish, thanks.
DeletePersonally, I'd like to staple your post to the foreheads of many in the media. Of course many would still refuse to read it, but for those, I could staple it upside down on their butts.
ReplyDeleteJess, I wholeheartedly endorse this idea. Get video.
DeleteHear, hear! You could not have more succinctly put it! You think they will get it? Not a hair ball's chance in a beauty parlor...
ReplyDeleteCederq, sadly, I concur with your assessment of the odds this will make any difference.
DeleteThanks. I enjoyed reading that. Sadly, it is the truth.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey, thanks. I enjoyed writing it. It seems to have struck a nerve too.
DeleteYHou crushed it. Nuff said.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Thought of a few other things after the fact, but this is enough for now.
DeleteCederq and Daddy Hawk!!
ReplyDeleteI concur with you both!! Yet they and their "Followers," The special snoflakes, radical left, muzzies, etc. their numbers are great and will continue to fight!! They continue to oppose, riot, burn, throw temper tantrums,pee their diapers, cry "Wah wah wah!!" "Un-friend" us on "FB" and "Rage on!!" ........We truly have a "Lost Generation" among us!! Although the "LIE" has been "Found out and over turned by the TRUTH!!" The snoflakes and the Left are "Blind and Oblivious!!" They are our "Reich Kinder!!" They are "Rabid" and like Rabies the odds of a cure is "slim to none!!!"
got gunz..........OUTAW!!!,
skybill-out
PS 'Have to add that we have come a long way... One thing that I'm sorry didn't happen is that my friend "The now late Mike Vanderboegh" of his blog "Sipsey Street Irregulars" didn't live to see this day!!! I know at least his Spirit is definitely smiling!!
Skybill, thank you. I seem to have struck a nerve with this one. We probably have closer to three lost generations since the are a part of the problem too.
DeleteI think that Mike Vanderboegh's legacy is intact. He informed enough of the patriots in the country that never again will things be able to be swept under the rug by any government without someone seeing them. As for the media, like Mark Twain, the rumors of their death might be greatly exaggerated. Sick, and in need of care, yes. But I think that there is still hope for them, because there such a huge opening for the one network, hell, the one person, who merely has to step up, and just report the news, instead of giving us their opinion on it, and then telling us how to feel about it and even what to think about it. When that network or individual figures it out, the public will flock to them like ants to a picnic. And the rest of the media won't be far behind, because nothing breeds imitators like success.
ReplyDeletePigpen, thank you for the kind words. Sadly, I am unfamiliar with Mr. Vanderboegh's work (an oversight it seems I must now correct), but I have at least heard the name. Any positive association with his legacy is high praise.
DeleteYou are correct that the rumors of the media's death are greatly exaggerated; but, like a wounded animal, they can be quite vicious when cornered. All of them have been feeling the heat from the competition brought on by the digital age, especially traditional print media.
Perhaps I am more of a pessimist than you as I do not share your sentiment that there is hope for their survival.
As for one network or even one person stepping in to fill the void, here again I am less than optimistic. Media has dropped any pretense of impartiality they once had in favor of thinly veiled or even outright, bold propoganda for their chosen side or agenda. For someone to come in and overcome that trend and the resultant distrust, is a steep hill to climb.
Mike was the pro 2A blogger who first exposed Fast and Furious to the public. He is also responsible for the concept of the three percenters, those brave few who actually take action in defense of a cause. His blog site, Sipsey Street Irregulars is no longer active, not updated since September of 2016, but still accessible and a wealth of information on Mike's valiant struggle for gun rights and libertarianism.
Deletehttp://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/
Uncle, thanks for the backstory. I have heard of Sipsey Street Irregulars. I've just never spent anytime on that site. As mentioned earlier, an oversight I will have to correct.
DeleteSpot on. I hope that you don't mind if I share this (with full attribution) with everyone I know.
ReplyDeleteCzech6
Czech6, love the handle. I don't mind you sharing at all.
DeleteI'ma poor guest. It's my first time here, and I'm gonna be a grouch.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that media neutrality is POSSIBLE is one of the biggest impositions the Political Left ever managed to put over on the American Public. Go back and read Mecken or the other reporters of the early part of the 20th Century. They had a Point of View and everybody knew it.
I don't know the details, but my impression is that the idea of Unbiased Reporting came in as the Hearst Papers were taking their rattling last breaths. The Hearst Papers got really, REALLY right-wing-weird in their latter years (yes, I know some of them still exist. Technically. They aren't really Hearstpapers anymore), as in 'The John Birch Society is a bunch of Communist Front Pinkos weird. It gave the Leftwing media room to pretend that their brand of Liberal Left politics was 'balanced'.
For all of my adult life, stretching back to my mid teens in the 1970's, I have read and listened to the Political Right whine about Media Bias.
Please, please, PLEASE stop buying into the myth. There is no such thing as unbiased media. There is media that agrees with ones bias, and everybody else. Fox News shouldn't be "We Report, You Decide" but "You Know Their Side, Here's Ours".
Schofield, welcome guest! You are anything but poor when you can put together a cogent dissenting argument; and, if this is you being a grouch, I want to see your happy side.
DeleteAs for your comments, first let me say that I am a big H.L. Mencken fan. There was a man who could WRITE! His pen was SHARP indeed. The quality of reporter inhabiting today's newsrooms are hapless monkeys banging on typewriters attempting to get lucky and randomly fling Shakespeare instead of reprocessed banana.
To be clear, I have no objection to a point of view as long as it is clearly labeled as such. I don't listen to a talk show host looking for news. I listen for a hopefully differing opinion that challenges my way of thinking. However, I don't need my local newspaper or evening news show giving me doublespeak as truth.
I don't care if it's CNN or FOX, calling a riot a protest is wrong. Calling an illegal alien an immigrant or an undocumented worker is wrong. You can have your opinion all you like, just don't try to change the facts.
Thanks again for the comment. Come back anytime.
In Madison Wisconsin, riots are called "neighborhood disturbances"; so the rot is not just in national media.
ReplyDeleteParklake, now there is a twisted doublespeak euphemism if I've ever heard one.
DeleteMadison is home to the University of Wisconsin and a hotbed of liberal group think. Madison is the main reason I was gobsmacked when Trump managed to win the state. Point of fact, it is worth your life to hold the door for a female in Madison. They will excoriate you until your ears bleed for your action.
DeleteUncle, I dated a girl from Madison back in college. Maybe she was one of the conservative ones as she never gave me an ear lashing over the door holding thing. Never been there myself. So, I expect your assessment is more accurate than my sample size of one former girlfriend from almost 30 years ago.
DeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI'm England-based and I have just discovered this blog. I've read this article and couldn't agree more. We in the UK have the BBC around our respective necks. We have to have an expensive TV licence, the money for which is handed to the BBC. It is a criminal offence have a TV without the BBC licence, even though you never, ever go near that hotbed of Leftist propaganda. They are the world's worst Leftist-operated propaganda machine.
Thanks for the blog, I'm now a regular visitor.
Steve
Steve, I apologize for the delay in responding. I've been away from the blog for a bit. Welcome. Finding a good source for news is getting incredibly hard.
Delete