Clear and Present Danger                                                                                                   

     

By Hank Silverberg                                                                 

     I am troubled. Some of our basic rights are being threatened, and no one seems to notice or care.  

      Our founding fathers took more than 25 years to create a system in this country which, with a few amendments, has held up very well over the last 200 years.

      It took more than ten years to dump the loosely written concepts of the Articles of Confederation and formulate a system of checks and balances for our government that became the U-S Constitution in 1789. That document set up how we choose our leaders and how much power they have. But that was not enough for men like John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.  They also knew that a centralized government needed to be checked and that the rights of individual citizens needed to be protected.

    By 1791, that had taken shape as well. The Bill of Rights, consisting of ten amendments, was added. Over time the expanded document was tested, and sometimes modified again, but still holds up well in 2018.

   These past few weeks we have heard a great deal of rhetoric about the Second Amendment. That included disgusting threats against teenage crime victims, a massive rally in Washington, and dozens of so-called pundits giving us their interpretation of just what the Second Amendment does or doesn’t say.

    I have written in this forum before about guns, and this is NOT another opine on that.

     What we haven’t heard much on cable TV, in print or on social media is an even bigger threat to our Republic—the attacks and threats that have been made against the FIRST AMENDMENT. I type that in capital letter because those 45 words are the most important words ever written by man.

      Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.      

     We have from time to time heard people discuss the threat to the “establishment clause” dealing with religion. That may be the subject of a future blog.

    This writing is about the second clause.  

    Our founding fathers believed a free press, a public watchdog on government and society as a whole, was vital to the survival of our Republic. Journalism, therefore, became the ONLY profession protected by the U.S. Constitution. 

     With that in mind we need to look at 2018, when the President of the United States attacks the media in daily tweets. Most presidents have complained from time to time about press coverage. John F. Kennedy notably canceled his subscription to the New York Times to make a point.  But no one in that office has ever tried as hard as Mr. Trump does, to undermine the very fabric of the profession. He labels everything he doesn’t like as “fake news,” and lambasts repeatedly specific news agencies or reporters. Some local politicians have picked up the modus-operandi and are now doing the same thing. There have been increasing numbers of incidents where reporters are excluded from public forums, chased away by security from interviewing news-makers on the streets or in public hallways, or simply left out of press events because they work for a news agency the sponsor of the event doesn’t like.

   The public is caught in the middle. They want to know what is going on, but right now they don’t know who to trust. Is that office holder lying? Are we getting our money’s worth on taxes? Did that corporation really exploit us and sell us an overpriced, defective product? Reporters used to get answers to questions like that. Not so much anymore, because the quality of journalism continues to decline as more and more partisan, so called “news organizations,”  litter the landscape and tarnish the profession.                        The latest such insult to the free press comes from Sinclair Broadcasting. When no one was paying attention, the company managed to use the current deregulation trend to buy more than 190 local TV stations across the country. These stations have been covering local news in most cases with efficiency and fairness for decades. Up until now, they had not been caught in the right vs left disease that has infested cable TV news and treated broadcast networks as cannon fodder.  

    Now Sinclair has been slowly forcing these local stations to run editorials that have more to do with national politics than local issues, and are often disguised as news rather than commentary. Those stations are also being told they “must carry” certain news stories that have been slanted to meet a political agenda of the company’s owners. In Sinclair’s case it is a right-wing agenda, but the issue would be the same if the agenda was left-wing.  Local anchors and reporters with years of experience and integrity are now faced with losing their jobs and careers or complying with something that goes against everything they have been trained to do: to be fair and balanced in their reporting. Instead of getting 190 separate newscasts focusing on local issues that can vary widely across the country, everyone is getting the same canned message with a political slant in an effort to sway public opinion. The fact that it comes from outside their community is hidden.  And to make matters worse, Sinclair is now trying to acquire 40 more stations, including several in top markets like Chicago and New York.                     

    Who loses? The American public, of course. They lose their window to how their local government spends their money and protects their neighborhood. They lose that watchdog that our founding fathers wrote into the Bill of Rights all those years ago.  A free press is vital to the future of our republic. If you hear the President scream “fake news,” read the story he calls fake, and then read three more from somewhere else to decide what the truth is.

     If you live in a community with a Sinclair station, write them a letter, send them an email and tell them to focus on the local communities they are licensed to serve instead of pushing an agenda.  If they don’t respond, file a formal complaint with the FCC and then express your opinion with the remote control. Turn on a competing station in your community to get unbiased truth. 
     And here is the most ominous development of all. The Department of Homeland Security is soliciting bids to hire a company to gather data on journalists and news organizations. They want that company to track all news stories that are written, who wrote them, and what political slant they might have on their stories. The stated reason for this contract is to track fake news and efforts by foreign governments like Russia, who want to influence our elections or our viewpoints. But, the mined information will also include names and addresses and will track just about everyone who publishes, broadcasts, posts on social media, blogs, or stands on a street corner with a leaflet. This could have a chilling effect on the free flow of ideas. It was this type of government intervention that our founding fathers hoped the First Amendment would prevent.     

                       (Comments and suggestions are welcome below)  

(If you are interested in ordering my latest book you can email me here to order a signed copy, or go to hanksilverbergbooks.com, BN.com or Amazon.com) 

                                                                              

 The Vice-President of the United States is conflicted. She has risen to her current job by jumping on the bandwagon with President Andrew Freeman who is now, waging war against America’s biggest enemy—Iran.  Amy Roosevelt must make a decision whether to stay with Freeman or challenge him for the nomination. Though back channels she learns that the President’s health is declining. As Roosevelt ponders her decision, a conservative back bench Congressman from Missouri breaks out of the wanna-bees in the other party and also decides to run.  All this plays out as the man known only as Ishmael, continues his campaign of violence.