Topic category:  Other/General

"I am choosing Journalism in order to save the world.." This was the explanation from a high school senior at Career Day where I happened to be presiding back in the seventies. Obviously she had had her head loaded with mush during her impressionable high school days but somewhere along the line her tutors had forgotten to add that it wasn't just to save the world but to change it.

So she wished to enter the world of the fourth estate. A once honored discipline. Its contemporary description is that of a fourth 'power' which checks and counterbalances the three state 'powers' of executive, legislative and judiciary. The fact that it has held power is undeniable but its abuse of this power ranks amongst the most tragic phenomena of our times.

There was a time when the cardinal principles of journalism in developing a story had to be the inquisitive venture into determining the what, when, where, why and how. Today the Journalism schools are churning out world savers instead of reporters Every writer is an editor. You cannot find a story or any news without the editorializing by the journalist. The noun itself infers a "direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation." Seemingly "them days is gone forever." This profession has been prostituted.

In at least the last half century we have seen a once proud discipline aligning itself with the enemies of our country either for the purpose of pushing its own agenda or supporting the platform of forces whose sole aim is our eventual destruction. This should not be surprising since its icons and models were and have been Joseph Pulitzer and Randolph Hearst.

It was Pulitzer, an American journalist and publisher, who created along with William Randolph Hearst a new and controversial type of journalism. Truth fell victim to fiction in order to sell papers. From crusading on behalf of the alleged downtrodden to manufacturing stories which eventually led us into war with Spain. As an example, when it was learned that there were Spanish concentration camps in Cuba the press went on a rampage by calling them death camps and added a plethora of wild stories with headlines depicting Spanish Cannibalism, Inhuman Torture, Amazon Warriors Fighting For the Rebels, etc. Very little if any was true. At that time it pushed President McKinley into an unnecessary war. This deceptive journalism of the late 1890s, without consideration for the truth, has been followed to this day scrupulously and religiously. Today's Pulitzer Prize for excellence in journalism is named in honor of a man who had no scruples in reporting the news with any semblance of truth and who had set the bar so low that no industry of any repute could follow it with good conscience. But it did and it has.

Having gained partnership with its sibling TV news journalists, the American Press in the last forty years has moved so far to the left as to make Marx appear as a neophyte. Today it is envisioned as either an extension of El Jazeera or the western hemisphere bureau of Pravda.

The communications media won its most glorious victory during the Vietnam war when it sided with the enemy. Our military won every battle and had the North Vietnamese hanging on the ropes and yet we lost the war. As one Vietnamese official remarked, "Your press was our chief ideological weapon." Flush from these gains it became unstoppable and learned first hand that the power of the pen is mightier than the slash of the sword.

And so the man, Kerry, who wishes to be our President joined the fourth estate in aiding and abetting the enemy while doing great harm to our men on the front lines. Just as today. Do you think for one minute that the insurgents in Iraq wouldn't have cut and run a long time ago had it not been for the encouragement of their crusaders on this side of the ocean? To them it's deja vu Vietnam. It has emboldened them to the detriment of our military and to the additional loss of American lives.

The Vietnam episode encouraged selective journalism. A form which started as an Art and today has developed into a Science. The drive to demean and depress our country and formulate negative public opinion has become commonplace and fits into the normal course of events.

The eagerness to oust the present party at the helm in order to seat an admittedly Socialist party has gone beyond the realm of propriety. Constant bad news is meant to depress a nation and being the harbingers of doom has not been by accident.

Today's headlines tell the story. For example, we are greeted on Fathers Day with "Lives Disrupted" or "Family Day empty with Dad in Iraq." Or "U. S. Jobs fall short of forecast" or "There may be Job growth but it's lower than expected." Or second guessing with "Terror plans lack agility." Hundreds of such doom and gloom journalistic outputs are saturating us daily and not without reason.

It was allegedly a dark day when the New York Times and USA today discovered that their reporters Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly had actually been writing fiction and presented it as fact for an indeterminate period of time . What you didn't read was that these men were the fall guys in a profession which is proud of its creative approach to making the news rather than reporting it. Their major blunder was in the fact that Blair and Kelly went one step too far thus giving away the secret. They had to be punished.

We find this particular discipline mesmerized with the herd syndrome. Deviation from their deceptive ways would require a courage not evident in the present nouveau caste and elite. In other words it has moved from rugged individualism to mediocre conformity with Group Think being the common denominator.

The only commodities which have saved us from these leftists have been the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. These are the laws of armor which to this date have protected us from the unholy alliance of the left.

And so as Martina Navratilova recently pointed out, "In Czechoslovakia there is no such thing as freedom of the press. In the United States there is no such thing as freedom from the press." She opened the door for this prelude to Part 2.

George M. Haddad

Biography - George M. Haddad

George M. Haddad has a Bachelors Degree in Sociology and a Masters Degree in Social Administration with extensive work experience with the mentally ill. He is a World War II veteran having served in the Infantry; Interpreter of the French language; Interrogator in Technical Intelligence and Sgt.-Major of a Separation Center. Also the former Executive Director - National Institute for Burn Medicine - affiliated with the University of Michigan. He is retired from the National Staff of the YMCA as a troubleshooter in financial management and administration and has worked as a management consultant to non-profit corporations. He has written frequently on medical, social and political issues and has many published articles to his credit. He currently writes from Franklin, Michigan and can be contacted at gmhaddad@comcast.net