BALTIMORE, Maryland Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - I was a journalism major at the University of Maryland in College Park. I wanted to be a writer and newspaper reporter. And I knew, from early on, that a reporter had a duty to tell the unvarnished truth, to be fair to all sides, even if you personally disagreed with what someone was saying. We were taught that one of the greatest writers in human history, John Milton, was completely and inarguably correct when he wrote that in a free marketplace of ideas the truth will emerge.
Reporters today don't follow that truism. That is one reason, and a primary one, at that, why people today don't read newspapers that much anymore, and why even those who do don't trust them. If you think for one minute that you are getting an honest picture of Hillary Clinton by reading the New York Times or the Washington Post, you are sadly mistaken. If you are reading either one of those newspapers for political news, you are already a Leftist and are doing so to get a dose of pablum about the GOP and their candidate, Donald Trump. For instance, both papers in recent days have run breathless frontpage stories about the immigration status of Trump's wife. This, while news breaks about the execution of a top Iranian Nuclear Scientist, allegedly for spying on Iran for These United States. There is the very distinct possibility that the Iranians "learned" of the spying - if there was any - from emails hacked from Hillary's non-approved and only slightly protected illegal server.
Which story has more relevance to the campaign now taking place? If I have to tell you, you've been getting way too much of your information from the Huffington Post.
What do today's reporters tell themselves about their roll in and relevance to American life? I wonder. Most of them cannot say that they are purveyors of truth. Most of them cannot say that they are reporting the news. The reporters and editors of the Post, the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Des Moines Register or almost any other daily paper in the country are interested in the craft of political propaganda. They want you to vote for and support all of the current far left issues of the modern age. So, readers of these papers will see articles on a regular basis that support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates. You will continue to read positive articles about President Obama. If you get most of your information from these papers or from the old-guard broadcast networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - you might even think Obama has had a successful presidency. (If so, I'll let you in on a little secret: he hasn't. His seven-plus years have been an example of how to really screw up a great nation. I cannot think of anyone who even comes close to being worse than he has been. But I digress.) These media outlets also regularly report on how capitalism injures the environment, how the USA is a bad actor on the international stage and gobbles up too much of the Earth's resources, how abortion is nothing but positive in modern society, how the GOP is still racist, etc.
What kinds of things will you rarely, if ever, read. Well, anything that makes Donald Trump seem like a decent and successful businessman, anything that makes it appear that Trump is picking up momentum in the fall campaign, anything that makes Hillary look like she really is, anything that makes American values or American Exceptionalism seem real or positive, and so on. Many of you know that a media outlet does most of its propaganda by not printing or broadcasting topics of the day. So, as I pointed out above, readers or viewers of the above listed media outlets will hear little, if anything, about how Hillary's incompetence and general wretchedness led to the arrest and execution of Shahram Amiri in Iran. If those readers and viewers hear about the execution, it will not include any news about Iran getting information leading to him being charged with treason from hacks of Hillary's email server.
So the truth is that today's newspaper writers spent four years at a college or university learning how to write propaganda. Does it bother these folk that they are working for a candidate of noted ill-repute? Does it bother them that they are working for a candidate who has purloined money from the USA or cajoled money from foreign nations on the only slightly disguised promise of influence in a Clinton Presidency? Guess not.
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