Visuals 

By Hank Silverberg

(This blog has been updated twice with new information not in my original post)

The visual of the week came from Washington, DC, where FBI agents and other federal workers waited on line at a food bank to get help with meals. Many of those employees were working without pay as the government shutdown entered its second month. The shutdown is a perfect example of how politicians have failed us. They focus on who is winning the political battle instead of a compromise solution that both sides could live with. 

 The President,who has said more than once that he “owned” the shutdown, gets most of the blame for his inability to see past his border wall to a broader solution to illegal immigration.

 Congressional Democrats, emboldened by the victory this past November, are flexing their muscles but must come to grips with Republican control of the U.S. Senate. The real villain in all this may be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who refuses to bring any bill to the Senate floor that President Trump won’t sign. That is frustrating the majority in the full Congress, including a number of Republicans, and making it easier for Mr. Trump to hide from the crisis he created. A solution is elusive, making life very tough for federal workers and those who work for federal contractors who have no paycheck and dwindling savings. The question on many other American’s minds: How long will it be before our skies become unsafe, our food gets contaminated and our air and water get more polluted because the federal regulators are on furlough?

The second visual of the week took place on the National Mall. Thousands of people gathered for two big marches. One was year three of the Women’s March, which has now become tainted by anti-Semitic comments by some of its leadership. It has been exacerbated by the group's flirtation with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakan, a virulent anti-Semite. A large number of previous sponsors of the march dropped out, and many local Women’s March groups disassociated themselves from the D.C. march. The purpose of the original march three years ago, to bring “women’s issues” to the forefront of an administration that doesn’t seem to care, is now a faded memory destroyed by polarized politics.

The third visual of the week came from the annual March for Life, run for decades by the anti-abortion movement. The message has gained some traction with the current people in the White House, even though the majority of the public supports a women’s right to choose. But it is another scene that will stick in the minds of those who watched this year's “March for Life”.

 There was a group of students near the Lincoln Memorial from the all-boys Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky.  Many of them wore “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) hats in support of President Trump and some chanted.   

https://abcnews.go.com/US/viral-video-catholic-school-teens-taunting-native-americans/story?id=60498772

They faced off with Native American elder and veteran, Nathan Phillips,  who was beating a drum and singing as part of the “Indigenous People’s March.” The students surrounded him as he stepped up to them. One student stood inches from his face. Phillips stood there calmly, banging his drum. It was a memorable scene.

(click here to see both videos)

https://youtu.be/DZTEr1O6_Io  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REG-qIRVItA&t=19s  

Phillips told ABC after the incident that he was trying to defuse the situation which had started to turn ugly.

“I heard them say, 'Build that wall, build that wall.' This is indigenous lands, you know. We’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did. Before anybody else came here we never had walls. We never had a prison”.

Reaction was predictable, with the school and Archdiocese promising to discipline the students, and politicians from Kentucky condemning their actions. But all is not what it appears to be. It seems the students had taken some verbal heat for their MAGA hats from another much smaller religious protest group called the "Black Israelites". The same group had been hurling insults at Phillip's group as well. Mr Phillips, concerned it would escalate, apparently stepped between the two groups to try and defuse the situation tightening up the close encounter.  

  But they all may have missed the point. The student’s behavior showed a general lack of understanding of the illegal immigration debate. They kept chanting even as some of them stared down the tribal elder. A few of them did the infamous "Tomahawk Chop" which is offensive to Native Americans. (This is clearly visible on one of the the videos).

There has been a lot of push back after the initial reports claiming the boys were just innocent students. But they were not. They, like everyone else involved, had an agenda. Many of them wore MAGA hats and they were in town for the "March for Life". They like Mr Phillips, were activists whether they knew it or not.      

All of this makes you wonder what kind of high school has a history program so bad that the plight of indigenous peoples worldwide is not discussed? I suspect those same students also learn very little about the Holocaust or the African slave trade. If I asked them about the Spanish Inquisition, the Dred Scott decision or the Wounded Knee Massacre, would they have any reference? I also suspect that is not out of the ordinary in high schools across the country. But you have to asking how can a Catholic school not teach "love thy neighbor"?  There were also some comments from the mother of the student pictured prominently in the video. Her Islamophobe comments, which I prefer not to repeat, indicates the young man with the smirk may have problems at home and maybe not in school.    

(Native Americans buried in a mass grave at Wounded Knee as
the 7th Calvary looks on. December 29, 1890)  

The fourth visual of the week is cerebral. It is the red shade of embarrassment on the faces of hundreds of editors and reporters who jumped on the BuzzFeed bandwagon. They repeated a story this week alleging that President Trump had told his then attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress concerning the talks with the Russians about building a Trump Tower in Moscow. Many news organizations quoted BuzzFeed, making little effort to verify the story, which if true, would lead to obstruction of justice charges against the President.  But guess what?  Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who does not issue many public statements about his investigation of Mr Trump and the Russians, issued one on this angle. The statement from his spokesman Peter Carr:

 "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate."

To say the news business is losing its integrity is an understatement. President Trump’s cry of “fake news,” mostly made up in his own mind begins to get more credence when the press screws up like this. BuzzFeed stands by its story with two sources to back it up. But they have no on-the-record comments or documents to back it up, a journalistic necessity on stories of this nature. And even worse, all the other news organizations picked up the story, most I suspect without even a phone call to try and verify it.

The mistake was then compounded even more after Mr. Mueller issued his statement. The cable networks brought on the talking heads to continue pontificating about a story that had already been debunked.

Some folks out there will scream “bias.” They will say it’s all about the left- wing media effort to bring down the President. That is bunk. What it is about is sloppy reporting by those under increased competitive pressure to “break” a big story and a follow-the-leader mentality when someone beats them to it. The same sloppy reporting appeared again with the incident on the National Mall.  

It’s a reporter’s job to ask questions. Journalists are obligated to disclose corruption in government or corporations.They are supposed to witness and report on the events of the day. In today’s environment it is also a reporter’s job to point out lies from a president who can’t seem to tell the truth.

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     Journalism 101

 “If someone says it’s raining & another person says it’s sunny, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the darn window and find out which is true.” 

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  But all of this requires facts. That means good information backed up by on-the-record sources with support documents, if they are available like more than one video of that Mall incident.  That type of reporting takes time, and time is something that seems to move too fast in today’s 24- hour news rooms.  No one seems to take the TIME TO THINK. 

The world is spinning fast. We are bombarded by all kinds of information from our friends, on TV, and probably more often from the Internet. We all need to slow down a bit, calm down, and start thinking.

                       (Your comments and suggestions are welcome below) 




(Discounted signed Copies of my book may be ordered directly from me by emailing me at HankSilverberg@gmail.com. The book is also available at market price at  Amazon.com, BN.com and hanksilverbergbooks.com)