Journalism, a Disgrace

Journalism is corrupt. It is not getting there. It is there. It has been there more than 100 years. But it now is worse and more immoral than ever.

It swoons. It slobbers. It exaggerates. It evades. It lies. It embellishes. It omits. It enables. It amplifies biases.

It informs. It educates. It amuses. It entertains. It investigates.

But, it is not deteriorating. It already has deteriorated. And because of the many, many media outlets spewing the filth, it is, more than ever, clearly corrupt and in need of a super transplant.

This is no cheap shot: it is liberalism. It masks itself in biased news.

Liberals cannot stand to hear themselves criticized. Until liberals realize what has happened, and what they have done to this society through journalism, deterioration will continue, although already it doesn’t have far to go to reach the dungeon.

Perhaps the easy targets are the liberals in the classrooms. The problem did not start in the classrooms, but it explodes there.

Liberals in the classrooms at all levels of education (elementary school through graduate school, both teachers and students) have perpetuated the distortions first offered through various forms of journalism.

The non-liberals of this society are left with hoping liberals someday will see the light. Some think this never will happen. This is not because liberals outnumber non-liberals . . . because they don’t. But liberals are not charitable. They will not give up their reign easily.

Bringing the issue to light is one task. Working on it looms as a far greater problem.

Corrupt journalism knifes into fairness. It knifes into objectivity. It knifes into the truth. It knifes into everyday life.

It is a national disgrace. It is ripping away at our society. It is ripping away at our republic. It is tearing apart our democracy.

And this is laughed at by the controlling (or “mainstream”) media.

Reform is necessary and urgent.

Conservatives cannot lead the changes that are necessary, at least not alone. It will take journalism professors who admit the fact of the national scandal.

While journalists the world over wring their hands over the future of newspapers, for example, the underlying issue is largely ignored. Many of those newspapers have been publishing political garbage masquerading as journalism.

Dean Walter Williams, University of Missouri School of Journalism’s first Dean, a century ago wrote the Journalist’s Creed that says in part: the supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its PUBLIC SERVICE.

We must reevaluate: just what is that public service? The school’s own professors need to reevaluate.

Many books have been written on the subject of corrupt, biased journalism. Most of these have been dead-on, but often ignored by powerful people in journalism.

It is time for journalism schools to admit these tomes into the curriculum. It is important that journalism schools return to teaching objectivity and exposing biased reporting. Journalism schools must start teaching students who are NOT out to change the world, but are interested in a good story and, and this may be hard for you, the truth.

Journalism professors know about this. Most are on the liberal side.

In Philadelphia, both the Inquirer and the Daily News are liberal organs. Nearly all of their local columnists are liberal. The national columnists the two papers use are overwhelmingly liberal. This nation is NOT overwhelmingly liberal. These papers, just as all the others, need to balance their opinion columns. And they need to get opinions out of their news columns.

When Congress Sunday (March 21st, 2010) passed the health care bill, the so-called “mainstream” media explained little about the many negatives in the legislation. There was no examination of the huge cost to the taxpayers of the nation.

The Philadelphia Daily News sometimes uses its “cover” page for a biased headline, an editorial of sorts. Take, for example, the day after the passage of the health care bill. Said the Daily News on its cover: “Health-care reform: PASSED AT LAST!”

The Journalist’s Creed says in part: “I believe that clear thinking and clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.”

That Daily News headline did not suggest fairness. Nor was it accurate; it was an opinion. Nor was it a clear statement … because health-care reform, in the fashion it cleared Congress Sunday, is opposed by a majority of Americans.

If newspapers (and other liberal media) are to regain their standing as organs of GOOD JOURNALISM, they must return to good old investigative journalism.

Dig. Dig into illegal immigration, which poises to be the Obama administration’s next cause.

Dig into the TARP bill and how its money is being spent.

Dig into the czars. Do you know about them? Do you know who they are, and how they got their jobs?

Dig into cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over, although Senator John Kerry recently said it is the next cause. So, which is next, immigration or cap and trade.

Dig into the related crisis: increasing governmental controls on our lives.

Dig into what President Obama has in mind for his “redistribution of wealth”.

Dig into the corporate bailouts. It is bizarre to even think that two major auto manufacturers are now controlled both by Obama and the auto workers union.

Expain to the American public just how much the nation is in debt. Do not blame it on the Republicans under President Bush, although that was part of it. The problem has been mushrooming because Congress is totally out of control. The nation’s media are assumed to be the watchdog of the Congress, but I submit to you that most reporters are going to more cocktail parties in Washington than they are devoting themselves to investigative reporting.

On this blog at some point in the near future, I hope, I am going to talk at greater length about the INSANITY now going at full speed in Washington, DC. As an example, earlier this year, President Obama submitted to Congress a huge, huge, huge $3.8 trillion national budget. Not long after that, somebody phoned into Rush Limbaugh’s show to try to put the national budget in perspective.

He pointed out that George Clooney’s Haitian telethon raised $66 million. That’s alot of money. The caller said George Clooney would have to have a $66 million telethon EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT 158 YEARS to match Obama’s spending in the 2010 budget.

In fact, as of March, 2011, with the national debt at $14 trillion, that situation is dramatically more graphic. To raise the $14 trillion, the ever-rising total of the national debt at the rate of $66 million each day, it would take 581 years!!!

Scary beyond words is the fact that this nation has increased the national debt by one-third in just the last three years. Do you understand that? Three years ago, the national debt had been increased to a level of near $10 trillion in the first 200+ years of the nation. Then, another third of that already huge, huge amount was heaped onto the pile in the past three years! Do you understand that this is ridiculous?

Hey, you reporters: investigate the money situation in Washington. See what we are doing to this nation. See what we are doing to our grandchildren.

It is a disgrace.

A year ago, in mid-April, 2009, I attended the Centennial of Sigma Delta Chi, the professional journalism fraternity, at Depauw University in Indiana. Sigma Delta Chi was founded at Depauw in 1909.

Keynote speaker was Jane Pauley, NBC-TV anchor and TODAY SHOW host. Jane grew up in nearby Indianapolis. To a full auditorium, Jane gave a thumbnail sketch of her life and how she got into television, first in Indianapolis, then in Chicago, and soon to the Big Apple. She spoke about today’s journalism, and how some people in the industry consider “objective” political reporting “too passive”. It has been one of my complaints that today’s media, mostly newspapers and magazines, insert opinion into supposed news articles on the so-called news pages. Opinion belongs on the opinion page!

Jane Pauley said she thinks today’s news too often finds itself competing with entertainment programs. For this reason, she said, she regularly watches THE NEWS HOUR on PBS because she can count on getting news presented in as objective a fashion as possible.

Near the end of her talk, Jane said she thinks news today must eliminate its opinions in news reports. As she put it, in a rather off-handed way, “One way for the news media to get its niche back….. is to get straight.”

In a question-and-answer session after her main remarks, I went up to the microphone on the left side of the auditorium. She called on me for my question which was a bit long, it ran 90 seconds…but I said that I was attending my second journalism Centennial in less than a year, having attended the Centennial of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in September, 2007.

I told Jane that I attended quite a few Centennial seminars in Columbia, Missouri, as well as several that day at Depauw University, and at no time did any of the professors or professionals address the great problem of biased journalism “until tonight”.

I went on: when a reporter is sent to cover a speech, he or she must seek to identify the “lead” story or comment by the speaker. I said I thought I heard my lead from Jane Pauley that night: did she say that “one way for the news media to get its niche back is to get straight”, in other words, report the news fairly and objectively?

It was a bit humorous as Jane seemed a bit nervous over what I was going to say about her speech, and then relieved when I finished with this conclusion: “In all of the Centennial seminars I attended, you’re the only speaker to address this very important subject.”

The crowd broke into a loud and prolonged applause. Jane Pauley thanked me for my comments, and said to the other person on stage, the man who introduced her, “I’m not gonna say anything else.” And she walked off the stage as the applause continued.

BOTTOM LINE: that audience was crying out for good journalism, objective, fair, accurate, truthful journalism.

Several people stopped me on the way out of the auditorium to thank me for my comments.

There is no doubt that the general public is quite aware of the biases in journalism, and there also is strong evidence, therefore, that the poor journalism of today is causing problems for newspapers and magazines just as much, if not more, as the Internet.

So, my point is that the starting place for reform in journalism is in the classrooms of America, both for journalism and general education.

So, hey, you journalism professors. You are nice people. But get to work!! Get straight.

Harry Belinger

Harry R. Belinger, four-year Philadelphia City Representative and Director of Commerce, and my boss during that period, died Wednesday, September 23, 2009, of complications of heart surgery at Lankenau Hospital. He was 82.

While I met him after we both received job appointments by incoming Mayor Frank Rizzo (in 1972), Harry primarily was known for his prior posts as City Editor of both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

For the most part, my contact with Harry came when he would come once a month to the Philadelphia Civic Center where I was Executive Director. He sometimes would attend the monthly Board meetings at the Civic Center.

As Director of Commerce, he spent far more time at the Philadelphia International Airport, where he was instrumental in finishing the $300 million modernization program there.

He quit the cabinet position with Mayor Rizzo four days after a dispute with the Mayor about union picketing outside the newspapers’ building on Broad Street. An estimated 250 labor union members were protesting what they considered unfair articles about the Mayor.

Harry subsequently became Vice President of Public Affairs for ARA (now known as Aramark).

Harry received a journalism degree from Temple University, and he was a teacher of sorts as newspaper editor. He was of the “old school” of journalists who knew and stressed proper grammar and word usage. Today’s papers are sprinkled with grammatical errors and the like and could benefit from a Harry Belinger-type editor.

I was on the receiving end of one example of his teaching, and I have appreciated what he did ever since. In speaking with him on the phone one day, I said that somebody (the subject of our conversation) “inferred” that he approved whatever we had decided.

I don’t remember the subject, but Harry quickly interjected: “No, he did not infer. He implied. You inferred.” He went on to explain the difference. I think Don Imus, radio star in New York, probably encountered a Harry Belinger somewhere along in his radio career, as Imus took pains on the air on more than a few occasions to outline somebody’s implication and his inference. I wish I would have heard Don Imus before that day on the phone with Harry! However, Harry, still wearing his editor’s eyeshade, so to speak, was both friendly and helpful with his correction. I am pleased to say it was the only time he corrected me!

His wife, Jean, died in 1998. He is survived by their daughter (Lizanne R. Hayes) and two grandchildren. His obituary also listed as survivor his loving companion Rosemary Vickers.

In his obituary writeup, which he prepared for the newspapers five years before his death, he wrote: “Three lives and thoroughly enjoyed the career changes because each change was like being born again.”