Free Republic

I worked as a divisional department head for a communications company and retired from my job two years ago. In a box in my bedroom closet are the fully notated daily planners from each of the 15 years I worked for the company, along with printed copies of my monthly expense reports. If Herman Cain had the foresight to do this he could show receipts categorically denying each and all of his accusers.

Send them to boot camp!

I'm certain that Mike Stark, who describes himself as a “journalist” on the Internet, reads the SPJ’s Code of Ethics each morning and holds himself to it strictly. Especially the part that says: “Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.” And Journalists should “expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media and abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.”
Yeah, right.

Sadly, journalism virtually ceased to exist when WoodStein brought down Nixon. At one of the Midwest's finest J-Schools in the late 60s, I was taught that we owed it to our readers to present all sides of an argument in the best possible light and let truth be the final arbiter. But advocacy journalism took over in the 70s, and so-called journalists were free to embellish the arguments with which they agreed and denigrate those with which they disagreed. And now journalists opine in favor of such civil rights as same-sex marriage and amnesty for illegal immigrants. If marriage is a right, why is it denied to those already in a marriage? Why not multiples? Why not a man and his 19-year-old daughter? Why not a woman and her brother? If unfettered immigration is a civil right, why not open our northern border to free passage for any and all who wish to come via Canada? Activists pick and choose their battles to the benefit of their agendas. True journalists present the facts and let the chips fall where they may.

Because Romney’s healthcare program was approved by the voters of the Commonwealth of Mass., and left to the state, not the federal government to administer.
Isn’t that what the Tea Parties are all about?

The job description changed over the years.
When I was a wannabe reporter in Journalism school in the late 60s, I was taught that the job of a reporter was to disclose facts thoroughly and accurately and where there were conflicting opinions to state each of those opinions in the best possible light.
But in the 1970s the age of advocacy journalism dawned and reporters and editors decided that they should be moral referees instead of arbiters of the truth.
As the higher education system became more and more liberal, so did the journalists.
That’s why we have our current President. The media were so sold on the rightness and justice of having a mixed-race leader that they failed to do their job and ended up insisting that a one-term senator from Illinois was qualified to be president while the experienced governor of our largest state wasn’t qualified to be vice-president.
Maybe she was suspect because she had a journalism degree.

Major newspaper journalism was holding a double-barreled shotgun pointed at its feet in the ‘70s and pulled both triggers, scoring direct and crippling shots to both feet. The first was its embrace of advocacy journalism instead of objectivity and the second was the decision to make its content available free online. Lucky for them it wasn’t a six-shooter.