The Condition of Journalism      #235

By Hank Silverberg 

When I started writing this blog almost five years ago, I had been away from day-to-day reporting for a bout 18 months. It was very hard for me to break my 40-year-old practice of reporting the news in an objective, non-partisan way. I resisted criticizing politicians or other reporters for quite a while or getting partisan. But as the months went by and the Trump administration told lie after lie without being challenged by the media, I broke my 40-year-old pledge of non-partisanship. By then conservative media like Fox News and Newsmax had routinely jumped the fence (or knocked it over) and were operating almost like propaganda machines for conservative causes and candidates. 

So yes, I had to counter that in my own mind and with my growing readership. 

But now there's a new twist that may make me go back to my roots and report human events the way I was trained to and the way I practiced for all those years. 

It's not that things have changed, and reporters have all of a sudden gone back to fair non-partisanship. In fact, it's even worse now with MSNBC and CNN often countering the right wing with partisanship of their own. And there are many more news outlets on both sides of the political spectrum spreading bias news and even fake news on a daily or even hourly basis. 

Here is a good example from this past week posted on a friend's Facebook page because it annoyed her. You can read the article here:

https://www.aol.com/fox-news-host-brian-kilmeade-080149994.html

I'm not posting the picture.  Basically, Brian Kimeade, who was guest host of Tucker Carlson's show used a photoshopped image of U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart sitting with Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman convicted of helping pedophile Jeffrey Epstein commit his crimes. 

The man in the photo was actually Epstein, but Judge Reinhart's image from an unrelated 2017 photo, was placed over it. 

Reinhart is the judge who issued the warrant to search former President Trump's home for those top-secret documents that turned up at Mar-a-Lago.

Conservatives have been quick to point out that Judge Reinhart, before he was a judge, had once represented Epstein, but the photo is totally doctored. It's fake. 

After the criticism mounted, Kilmeade said the depiction in the photo never took place and it was a "meme" that was shown in jest. 

But this kind of misrepresentation used to get people in the media FIRED. As of this writing, Kilmeade still works for Fox.

So, what's the new twist that may turn me back to non-partisanship?

Next week I start teaching a course called "Political Reporting" at George Mason University.  It's been a career-long dream to eventually teach journalism, and now that it's happening, I want to steer those student journalists in the right direction. I want them to stay away from the partisan nonsense we see and read from many news outlets these days. I hope my students will move back toward objective facts. 

They will be taught that a reporter's job is to "seek the truth and report it," as it says in the second paragraph of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. 

So, expect me to follow that rule again now. I suspect one of my students will go back and find some of my blogs and say I didn't do that. That's when we talk about the difference between a blog, which is just my opinion based on facts, and a news organization's responsibility to its constituents, the American public to be fair and accurate.

Red Texas   

There's this poll released last week by a group called Texas Nationalist Movement. They say a Survey/USA poll found that 66% of likely Texas voters want the state to withdraw from the United

States and become an independent country once again. Reminder: Texas was an independent country after a war with Mexico in 1836, but very quickly joined the United States as the 28th state in 1845. (Remember the Alamo?)

The poll found 69% of those questioned want Texas to hold a referendum (Texit) on whether to reclaim independence. 

The TNM goes on to talk about a lot of reasons why Texas should leave the United States. But they don't talk very much about how the state, which can't even effectively run its own power grid, would survive if it did.   

There are 25 U.S. military bases in Texas which would obviously close if the state was no longer part of the U.S. Those bases, directly and indirectly put $114.1 billion into the Texas economy.

The financial loss would be staggering, not to mention Texas would have to create some kind of military of its own.  

And what about the 44% of those who still want to be Americans? Many of them might leave Texas, a workforce and brain drain that would also damage the economy. 

In 2016, the latest year I could find statistics on, the federal government sent Texas $39.5 billion in grants which accounted for the second largest source of revenue for the state coffers. This money is mostly used to pay Social Security, disability, Medicare and unemployment compensation to individuals, and it would all be gone if Texas left the United States. They'd either have to pick up the tab with local taxes or face a massive exodus by those who don't want to lose what they are owed. 

Texas would also have to provide border patrol agents and equipment for the agents to use, all of which is now financed by U.S. taxpayer. Texas would have to protect 1,254 miles of border with Mexico and would also have to worry about a border with the United States. 

So, Texans, who always talk big and don't want to be messed with, might find being American is not so bad after all.   

  

Rainwater too Toxic to Drink

Have you ever been caught in a rainstorm and decided just to raise your head and get a good drink of nice, fresh rainwater? Or maybe a handful of clean snow in that big storm is your choice?  Better

think twice. A new study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765   says dangerous pollutants called PFAS (Pre and Polyfluorinated Substances) are polluting rainwater worldwide and may have gone beyond the point of no return. They have even turned up in remote areas like Antarctica.

PFAS are labeled "forever chemicals," meaning they are here to stay. The manmade chemicals are commonly used in waterproof clothes, candy wrappers, some cleaning products, some paper and cardboard, among other things. They take decades to break down. Much of the world (except China) has already cut down on using them in many common products. But PFAS have already been detected in our blood, and the CDC says they can hurt our immune systems, increase cholesterol levels and heighten the risk of getting kidney cancer.  

What makes all this really worrisome is that the PFAS dissolve in water, making them very hard to remove with conventional water filters. But there is some research being done on better filters. 

Dumbest Quote of The Week!

A break this week from politicians saying dumb things. This week's dumb and actually funny quote comes from Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Rodolfo Castro, who had some explaining to do in a game against New York. It seems as he was sliding    headfirst into third base, his cell phone dropped out of his pocket and onto the field, attracting attention from the umpires, the play-by- play announcers and thousands of fans.    

MLB has a strict rule against the use of cell phones in the dugout, much less on the field. Castro wasn't cheating or anything. Like many people, he simply forgot where his phone was, even though he had been sitting on it in the dugout for several innings.   

"Never did it cross my mind that I still had my cell phone on me." 

It seems he also had one of those oven-mitt sliding protectors in the same back pocket and he couldn't feel the phone in the earlier part of the game.  

He was safe on the slide. 

MLB is investigating. No word yet if the league is going to take any disciplinary action. 

 (Your suggestions and comments are welcome)

(My book "The Campaign" can be purchased at the links below. Or you can buy a copy by emailing me at:

HankSilverberg@gmail.com for instructions on how to get a copy at a reduced price and with my signature.)                       

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084Q7K6M5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-campaign-hank-silverberg/1126429796