The fourth arm of the Government.

    Throughout my career as a journalist, I would occasionally stumble across a story that I did not want to do.  The worst moments for me were the ones where I would have to do a story about an elected official that I held some degree of respect for, which I knew was going to cast them in a negative light.  In those moments, I would turn to my father for guidance.  He would always tell me the same thing: “Son, the media is the fourth arm of the government.  Like it or not, it is your job to keep them honest”.   I made some of the toughest decisions of my career based on that advice and some of those days, the ride home was pretty solemn.

     Over the last 5 years or so, I started to see a trend in the news industry that really frightened me.  I need to quantify the statements to follow by giving you guys some back story about the television news industry.  Contrary to popular belief, TV news reporters do not make a lot of money.  Quite the opposite,  News Reporters are usually paid on par with fast food workers.  The lion’s share of the monies go to the main News Anchor, the Weatherman and the News Director.  This is a trend that really developed mostly over the last 20 years or so.  The end result of this is that most of the employees at news stations are typically in their 20’s, green behind the ears, and not very familiar with their own industry or what it represents.  They meek out a living on a paupers wage and focus all their energy in the struggle to get to the next job in another market, hoping it will pay a few more thousand dollars a year.  They are not concerned with the market where they work, only getting out of there as fast as possible.  The easiest way to do that is usually by finding the most sensational stories they can to pad their reel. (resume)

Newspapers and Television have been struggling for years now to stay relevant in the digital age.  With the advent of the internet, information started to become available on demand.  For the news industry that relied on deadlines and news programs at a pre set time of the day, the internet was a blow to their way of life.  News organizations that once focused on quality pieces done with care and precision were now dropping standards to a quantity over quality strategy.  Previous efforts on fact checking and accuracy fell victim to the need to turn 3 stories a day to feed the machine to generate revenue.

Let’s come back around to the green reporters that are now covering our local stories.  Let’s combine that with the fact that the government agencies, which are a great source of news stories, have also jumped on the digital age train.  These agencies have learned how to use computers to restrict the access to information previously available to journalists.  They have also wised up on how to use the use these new tools to clamp down on tips passed on to journalists by employees of respective agencies by tracking employee phone calls and busting down on people who speak with the media. Here is a good example   The end result of this is a parade of young reporters that are happy to take whatever a government agency feeds them without question and pass it on as breaking news.

I want to cite two frightening examples of this behavior that have been headline news in the Unites States recently.   Let’s start with George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.  Everyone knows the case.  But let me point out a few things that you may not have realized.    The media started reporting immediately that a defenseless Martin had been shot and killed in cold blood by a zealous Zimmerman for no reason.  They fed the flames of racism by running this picture of Martin.

Cherub Martin at 13

Over the course of two years, they never once attempted to show you the picture of the 17 year old martin that had attacked Zimmerman.  By the way, yes they did have access to this picture, they chose not to show it.

Now, let’s take this a step further.  The media reported that Martin had bought an iced tea and some skittles at a local quickie mart before being “ruthlessly and recklessly gunned down by a racist neighborhood watch captain”.  Well, the problem with all that is that he did NOT buy an iced tea.  He bought Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail.  This item combined with the Skittles and  Robitussin created a cocktail called “lean”.  It was a cheap high that Martin had bragged about on his facebook page.  The media chose to ignore this fact in the light of political correctness and instead told folks that he carried an iced tea. 

Now, we have already uncovered two very blatant lies perpetuated by the media that were very easy to see.  I am going to throw the third one at you.  Throughout the entire Zimmerman trial. (Almost 2 years)  The media kept zeroing in on “Stand Your Ground” laws.  More specifically how the whole ordeal would have been different were it not for that law.   Here is what the new age journalists did not tell you:  Zimmerman relinquished his right to argue stand your ground during pre-trial.  During his entire trial, he argued self defense, not stand your ground.  Yet, after the trial was over, every major news network had specials about how we needed to revoke the stand your ground laws.  By this time I was screaming at the television to no avail.   My opinion about Zimmerman remains my own, but the coverage of this event is diabetic at best.

Let’s move forward to the bombing of the Boston Marathon.  The coverage of this event chilled me to the bone.  The bombing itself was horrible and catastrophic.   But the events that followed sent me to the store to stock up on ammunition.   You see, the 48 hours or so following the Boston Bombings, I watched as TV stations showed us video of SWAT teams going door to door in the Boston area “rescuing” people from their homes at gunpoint.  Subsequently the officers would search the homes of the “rescued” without a warrant.  I watched this unfold with horror as the news reporter rang out about how the police were rescuing people from their homes. 

I want to be perfectly clear on this point.  If you, or anyone comes to “rescue” me from my home with a Bushmaster AR 15 in hand with a black mask around your head, wearing all black…. Not only will I not be opening the door, but blood will most probably be shed on that day.  Produce a warrant or get the hell off of my land.   This notion is protected by the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  It is most certainly the responsibility of the media covering these events to question these events.  Yet, none did.

Being evacuated "voluntarily" 

Yep, It's voluntary. 

More SWAT Voluntary action.

Once the suspect was caught,  I watched as the news station showed video of drunk college students partying in the streets, chanting “USA, USA, USA!"  I watched as CNN dropped back to an anchor who proclaimed:  “I saw someone this morning telling a Police Officer thank you.  We should all thank a Police Officer today."  Now, I am married to a Police Officer.  Yet, I do NOT appreciate my news anchors telling me what I should be thinking or doing, it’s not their job.  News Reporters should be questioning why the military state militia was going door to door and pillaging people’s homes in the name of terrorism.   Their job is to question why it happened in the first place.  But we all know that isn't going to happen.  They are no longer the fourth arm of the government, they are a puppet of the government.  

     It is for these reasons, along with too many other examples to cite, that I have parted ways with the career that I chose nearly two decades ago.  I started to find it hard to sleep at night knowing that the business I was working for was intentionally spreading lies into the homes of people who deserved and expected to have the truth.