The lack of credibility of the press;or, Objectivity, the lost gift

http://journals.aol.com/jcolon710/personal-discovery-/

Reporters, as I understand it, are supposed to maintain objectivity. That is one of my greatest weaknesses. I have to fight hard daily to center myself and be an objective person. Even though I have very strong opinions on almost everything, I do attempt to put myself in the other person’s shoes. Some call that empathy, and is hard because at times, you really do not want to see the other side of the story.

Take for example, the apparent disdain that most Americans feel for President Bush. He has being trashed and his reputations dragged in the mud because most people cannot see pass their eyeglasses. Separating actions from motivations is a very complex activity because it requires impassionate analysis. When a President makes a decision, he will not be able to please everybody at the same time. But what people fail to realize is that the President of the United States should act on principles, and do what he considers right independently of what polls show.

So we now have someone who does just that, behaves according to his values, and is not swishy washy as most trashy politicians that refuse to make a straight decision for fear of alienating their target demographics, and the press crucifies him daily.

The funny part is that President Bush is not running for President this time around, and still, Senator Clinton, Madam Speaker of the House, and almost every other politician cannot resist but take potshots at him.

Think for a moment if it doesn’t hurt that much. When the statistics about the Surge in Iraq came back indicating that there was a reduction in violence in Iraq, it wasn’t reported as good news.

Every time that we reached record lows unemployment over the past two years, it wasn’t reported as good news.

When the United States Economy was entering a recession at the beginning of the President Bush Presidency, it was credited to President Bush even though he had not had the time to implement economic policy dragging the economy down. That tells me that we inherited that recession from President Clinton’s term. But of course, not too many reporters will admit that.

When Sandy Berger stole the secret documents from the vault, he was given a free pass by the press and the courts. If you or me do what he did, we go to jail and the key is melted and thrown in the middle of the ocean.

Extremist Muslims are killing people all over the world. Communists are taking people hostage in Central and South America torturing them, and holding them for ransom. Some are lucky and released, most, are killed.

Drug cartels kidnap and kill Americans almost daily; specially in the border with Mexico.

Two Border Patrol Agents remain in jail, now for more than a year, for shooting at a drug dealer who was trying to come into the United States illegally, and loaded with drugs. I thought that the people who try to stop drug dealers and criminals are heroes, not criminals; they should not be in jail. I still do not understand why our politicians, with the exception of Tancredo and a handful, do not do something about it. Are we in Russia, a banana republic, or the United States?

Now, for many years, when Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and many other conservative talk show hosts attack the Democrats, they have being labeled the whip of the Republican Party, or the suck ups of the Republican Party, or party hacks.

Over the past few months, these same talk show hosts and hostesses have being true to their convictions and criticized the Republican Party. And what does the press do? They called them irrelevant; they trash their reputations.

Consistently I’ve heard those same talk show hosts and hostesses criticize not only the Democrat Party, but also the Republican Party. That, I call OBJECTIVITY.

I don’t claim to be a journalist, or anything like that. But, like Glenn Beck likes to say: “I’m a thinker”. I think that the true American Thinkers are a concerned bunch. We are Patriots that belief in the Constitution of this Glorious Nation of ours. We also belief, like Laura Ingraham, that the power is in the hands of the people. Those same people addressed by the first three words of the Constitution:” We the people…”

We, the people of the United States, belief that is time for our politicians to stop pandering to the crowds. That is time for the politicians to recognize that we are their bosses and not the other way around. That is time that the press reports the news as objectively as possible, and if they are to project their opinion, that for goodness sake, do the appropriate disclaimer.

Think, understand, be impartial, those should be the first three qualifications of any reporter. Do not try to tell me what to think. Give me the information, allow me to digest it, and make my own mind. Then I will respect you.