The paperboy hums quietly as he rides his bike through the empty suburban streets. Occasionally a car slowly drives by, but at 3:00a.m., action is limited. Working to save money to buy the newest baseball rookie card, the American boy goes about his business, delivering the Washington Post to each house on the street. He may think he is delivering news, but in reality, he is throwing papers containing biased opinions of journalists; opinions trying to secretly instill the writer’s beliefs into the mind of the reader.
Whether it is newspaper journalists or 5:00 news reporters, they have the responsibility to the viewers to do exactly what their name infers: report news. News is not opinion. News consists of facts. Journalists today pick and choose which topics they want to write about and, if it does not coincide with their belief patterns, they choose to ignore the subject altogether. The act of picking and choosing news is completely unethical.
It has been said that there are three topics that one does not want to bring up in a conversation if she wants to avoid controversy: sports, religion, and politics. For journalists, politics reigns supreme. They want to increase the value of their political party while demeaning the values and principles of the opposing party.
In the case of newspapers, liberal ideology reigns supreme. Several examples occurred recently that can be analyzed and proven that some newspapers do not report news at all; they create it, or completely ignore it. One example occurred in 2004. Dan Rather, a news anchor on CBS, created documents portraying former president George W. Bush as “shirking his duties in the Air National Guard.” Evidence started piling up after only a couple hours that the documents were phony. Rather ended up losing his job, and for credible reasons.
Another example happened recently, after the November 2010 elections. Dana Milbank, a columnist for the Washington Post, flat-out lied in his column on November 3. Trying to make some blows at Fox News, he wrote saying that Fox News brought in one democrat on election night, in the midst of all the republicans, to be “fair and balanced.” Again, there is no truth to that statement. There were eight democrats just on the O’reilly Factor, a one hour program that just happens to be the number one watched cable news show. Unacceptable. Columnist have the responsibility to tell the truth and report what is happening in the world around us. When one reads the newspaper, they expect truth, and should get exactly that.
6:30a.m. on the Suburban street, a man opens his front door and takes a breath of fresh morning air. His favorite part of the morning has come: time to catch up on the news. He bends down, picks up his newspaper, and starts to read. He thinks the facts are straight, but what he does not see is a journalist, somewhere in Washington D.C., laughing at his unethical deed, laughing at the phony newspaper that was just sent out for millions to read and believe as fact.
Goodness gracious I am always so impressed with your papers! Like, every time! You made it so interesting especially by narrating the whole newspaper thing. It was AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteI also really liked and was impressed that you could make such a powerful argument but at the same time tell a few short stories to illustrate. Sheesh, I guess I never erally thought about that, but you're right, informatino is powerful and the way it is presented is used to manipulate us so often! Scary, we need to get an education quick!
ReplyDeleteI liked your examples and how they conveyed your ideas. Good job.
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