What happens when professional ethics are replaced by politics

December 19, 2023

Over the last few years, we have heard from federal government agency employees, former and current, telling about their experiences doing and/or witnessing improper things in dealing with serious and sensitive matters.

These whistleblower’s allegations, if true, paint a troubling picture of how federal government agencies often work to the benefit of one group at the expense of another group.

These alleged activities are the epitome of what our government is not supposed to be. The government must be a fair, balanced and just organization that serves the interests all of the people.

Like the government, the news media is expected to perform its duties in a fair and balanced manner, and make certain that opinion and news reporting are clearly separate.

The Founders of this nation thought that a free press was so critical that they granted protection to do its job properly in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, along with the guarantee of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

But as with so many of our noble and cherished traditions, the honesty and integrity of the nation’s news media has been abandoned by far too many of its practitioners.

Recently, a news story broke regarding the New York Times. The Times once was regarded as the greatest newspaper in the world. It had become known as the Gray Lady. It has since become regarded as politically biased, and a weapon of the left.

The internal workings of the Times was the topic of a cover story published in The Economist by senior editor James Bennet titled, "When The New York Times Lost Its Way."

Bennet worked at the Times for many years, most recently as its editorial page editor. He was forced to resign in 2020 after he published an article written by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. The article stirred a great deal of emotion among the Times’ staff, due to its non-left content, prompting the paper’s publisher asking him to resign. 

Cotton, who had served in the U.S. Army, had suggested using military troops to protect businesses under assault by Black Lives Matter rioters following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

In the story in The Economist, Bennet described how as the Times moved leftward, he was encouraged to attach “trigger warnings” to conservative opinion pieces to alert the paper’s leftist readers about material that may offend them.

"It was a frenzied time in America," Bennet wrote. "It was the kind of crisis in which journalism could fulfill its highest ambitions of helping readers understand the world, in order to fix it, and in the Times’s Opinion section, which I oversaw, we were pursuing our role of presenting debate from all sides."

Comparing the current attitude of Times’ reporters to that of his time as a reporter, Bennet commented that today’s reporters "may know a lot about television, or real estate, or how to edit audio files ... many Times staff have little idea how closed their world has become, or how far they are from fulfilling their compact with readers to show the world ‘without fear or favor.’”

And in citing his former paper’s increasing bias he called attention to the Wall Street Journal, saying that the Times could “learn something” from its rival.

The Journal, he wrote, “has maintained a stricter separation between its news and opinion journalism, including its cultural criticism, and that has protected the integrity of its work," concluding his cover story.

Although the Times’ leftist orientation has been well recognized and discussed for many years, the actual experience of a long-time and ranking former employee adds much credibility to that belief.

It is a further sad commentary on the condition of many of our news media that an editor of a major newspaper lost his job for actually doing his job: presenting all sides of an issue so that readers would be equipped to make sensible, informed judgements about that issue.

Deliberately burying opinions that differ from the chosen narrative, fearing that those opinions will be accepted by your readers, is cowardly. And, it is un-American.

Back in 1997 the Carnegie-Knight Task Force began a national conversation to identify and clarify the principles of proper journalism. After four years of research, a Statement of Shared Purpose that identified nine principles was released. The sixth principle is: It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

It reads: “The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs.”

How wonderful it would be if the instructors, students, and practitioners of journalism would adopt this concept.

Is social justice really a serious problem in the country?

November 28, 2023

Social justice is an old concept that has become a hot topic lately.

The Britannica website offers this description: “Social justice, in contemporary politics, social science, and political philosophy, the fair treatment and equitable status of all individuals and social groups within a state or society. The term also is used to refer to social, political, and economic institutions, laws, or policies that collectively afford such fairness and equity and is commonly applied to movements that seek fairness, equity, inclusion, self-determination, or other goals for currently or historically oppressed, exploited, or marginalized populations.”

Human Rights Careers online offers the following: “The connection between social justice and human rights has strengthened over the years to the point where many use ‘social justice’ and ‘human rights’ interchangeably.”

And, from Wikipedia: “Social justice is justice in relation to a fair balance in the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected.”

While the idea of social justice in America has involved everyone having an equal opportunity to make their own choices about their future, there is a faction that believes that certain groups have been discriminated against, and therefore deserve what the Wikipedia description says: equal distribution of things, not equal opportunity to pursue things.

Yes, discrimination does exist. But is it really a major problem?

A new book analyzes the “social injustice” that many people claim to be rampant in America. Titled “Social Justice Fallacies,” the author is Dr. Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a brilliant thinker. 

Comments on the cover of the book say that “The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an appeal to many different people, for many different reasons.”

“’Social Justice Fallacies’ reveals how many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.”

“History shows that the social justice agenda has often led in the opposite direction, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.”

Those errors were the result of human fallibility, due to the fervor of the crusader mindset, which often is so strong in its followers that they make serious mistakes in their efforts to correct a problem, including ignoring contrary evidence.

In the book Sowell details the problems with this error-ridden theory.

Addressing the idea that everyone should get the same opportunities, or the same amounts of all things, he notes that people with different backgrounds do not necessarily even have a desire for the same things, and certainly do not want to do whatever may be necessary to achieve them. This may perhaps be the case even if those things are given to them.

An example he cites is that some social justice warriors blame sexual discrimination for the fact that women are statistically under-represented among Silicon Valley employees. But a step further into the data shows that the work done in these companies requires engineering skills, and women receive less than 30 percent of the needed engineering degrees. Why? Because they do not choose to study engineering. 

People are not all the same. There are natural and lifestyle differences that play a part in a person’s capabilities and desires. Geographic areas encourage different lifestyles and behavior. Living in Florida is not like living in Alaska, or Iowa, or West Virginia. Growing up in farm country is different than growing up in a big city.

A person’s family and the family’s experiences most often play a major part in how children develop, and how they pursue life.

Sowell wrote that “children raised where there is only one parent present have been found in a number of studies to have a higher incidence of many social problems.” Boys without fathers have a higher incidence of things like truancy and murder. Girls raised by one parent have a higher incidence of teenage pregnancy. 

So, the question of why Billy made the football team and Joe didn’t; why Mary was the valedictorian and Freda wasn’t; or why Jane got the promotion to sales manager over Frank, probably was not the result of discrimination. There are many factors that may be involved in most outcomes other than race, ethnicity or gender.

In seeking persons to fill advanced medical research positions, Sowell posits, do we want equal numbers from all population groups, and hope for the best? Or will we make sure that we get those from whatever backgrounds who have demonstrated a mastery of medical science?

He wrote, “But neither society nor government comprehends or controls all the many and highly varied circumstances — including a large element of luck — that can influence the fate of individual classes or nations.”

And, “Circumstances beyond our control are major factors in economic and other inequalities. Trying to understand causalities is not necessarily the same as looking for someone to blame.”

Is the alleged “white supremacy” real and the result of racial discrimination? Is it because white people make up 59 percent of the population? Or, is it a false flag promoted for some political purpose?

Sowell shows us that social justice is another politically correct concept that causes more problems than it solves.

Due process and proving guilt are important principles of fairness

Defending Democrats is not something I feel the need to do very often, but recent developments compel defending those condemned for something without due process.

In America, we live by an important principle: everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

When the hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court began last year, many people automatically believed Kavanaugh was guilty of the accusations against him without having seen or heard anything besides the accusation of wrongdoing that allegedly occurred decades ago.

Today, the Lt. Governor of Virginia, Democrat Justin Fairfax, stands accused of sexual improprieties from years ago. Immediately upon those accusations being made public, there was again the jumping to the conclusion that he was guilty, based upon nothing more than accusations.

Yes, there is more evidence of Fairfax having a connection to each of his two accusers than what was shown against Kavanaugh. But so far it is just an accusation, albeit a somewhat convincing story. Even so, that falls well short of what ought to be required to remove someone from office.

There is a process for removing an official like a lieutenant governor from office. It’s called impeachment and trial. 

If we are so shortsighted as to be willing to demand someone be removed from a position simply because of an accusation, we will have abandoned a critical protection from vicious and unfounded charges that every one of us benefits from.

Never forget: Anyone can accuse anyone of anything at any time. If that is the standard required for trashing someone’s reputation and removing them from a position they hold, we are indeed in trouble as a nation.

The resignations of two other Democrats in high Virginia government offices also are being demanded for activity decades ago. Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring both have admitted to appearing in public in “blackface,” being made up to look like African Americans.

Northam first apologized for being in a photo showing a blackface man and another person in a KKK costume, and later denied being one of those two people. He also said later he had participated in a dance contest in blackface as Michael Jackson.

Northam and Herring are also hearing demands for them to resign. If these resignations happen, the new governor for the Commonwealth would be the Speaker of the House of Delegates, who is a Republican.

As much as I personally would like to see a Republican as Governor of Virginia, this is not the way that should be accomplished. Northam and Herring might be racists. This episode of decades ago, however, does not prove that.

Today, such activity as Northam and Herring participated in is identified as wrong. However, a few decades ago, it was not unusual for white folks to appear in blackface for minstrel shows and other performances. Blacks actually were sometimes in those shows. Many times these performances involved a white person playing the part of a black person, but they were not ridiculing or insulting blacks, they were often honoring them.

Perhaps this outrage is due, at least in part, to not knowing much about our history. White people appearing in blackface goes back a long, long way, to the 19^thcentury. More recent Americans to have appeared in blackface include old timers Judy Garland, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

But some current popular folks appearing in blackface include Ted Danson, as his girlfriend, Whoopi Goldberg, looked on laughing. Dan Aykroyd appeared in a movie with Eddie Murphy. And left-media darlings Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Joy Behar and Sarah Silverman also have painted their faces. So have Billy Crystal, Cyndy Lauper, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jason Aldean.

The key element here is that when Northam and Herring performed these acts, they were not considered wrong. Context is important.

When someone is offended by what someone else does, says or writes, that is not all there is to the story. Being offended has replaced baseball as the National Pastime. It’s almost as if people go to college and major in “how to be offended.”

But just because being offended is popular today does not mean that the offended party is always correct in their reaction to things. And just because someone or some group takes offense at something doesn’t mean we must hasten to pass laws against it. The intent of the person being accused of some social infraction is far more important – it is the most important thing.

Just because one or more people think what someone wrote, spoke or did is bad doesn’t mean that the person intended it that way. The error might well be on the part of the offended party, who doesn’t understand the context, but feels empowered to complain about it.

Furthermore, it is unfair for people to be criticized today for doing things that were common and not unacceptable when they did them years or decades before.

We’ve got to get past this idea of perpetual victimhood, get control of the tendency to believe that our individual feelings are paramount, and return to dealing with things we don’t like in a mature, American fashion.

Do we still have freedom of speech? Well, yes; sometimes we do.

 

Thank goodness for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects what our Founders viewed as our God-given rights to free exercise of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

However, while efforts to infringe upon those and other rights are not unheard of, the attacks on them currently form a far more serious threat than perhaps at any other time, and certainly the most serious in many decades.

There has been ample news coverage of instances where Christian bakers and florists were forced to bake cakes or produce flower arrangements for gay weddings, contrary to their religious beliefs.

A decorated Army chaplain is facing what his attorneys are calling a “career-ending punishment” after he explained to a soldier that he could not conduct a marriage retreat that included same sex couples, but was willing to find someone else to do it.

Somehow, no matter how many people are available and willing to provide these services, those wanting a particular service view it as a horrible crime if a person refuses to perform it on religious grounds.

These days, certain “preferences” held by relatively small groups are thought to be of even greater importance than those rights set in stone by our Founders.

Some small efforts at balancing these breaches have occurred, but one’s ability to practice his or her religion in the customary fashion is only sometimes protected, these days.

These breaches of the First Amendment’s protections are serious enough, but what is happening on social media, on college campuses and elsewhere regarding free speech and free access to information is much worse, if for no other reason because of its broad swath of free speech encroachments that are being slashed through our culture.

Burgess Owens, a conservative African-American entrepreneur and 10-year veteran of the NFL, appeared at Hobart and William Smith Colleges recently. He told the audience, “I grew up in the Deep South during Jim Crow segregation laws. I can tell you how racism looks, how it feels, and what it means. You guys today can go anyplace you want to — any restaurant, any college.”

Well, that was too much for the audience. A female attendee asked him to repeat his first name, and after he did so, she said, “Oh, I thought it was ‘Tom,’” as in Uncle Tom. Cute.

Student activists at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, made good on their threat to disrupt an address by conservative Christina Hoff Sommers. What makes this one worse is that it was at the Law School. Yes, that’s right: students studying the law denied Sommers her free speech right.

The Leftist operators of Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube social media platforms think the way to persuade people to their ideas is to cheat them out of contrary opinions. 

The Media Research Center has produced a report titled “Censored” on how and to what extent popular social media are trying to “persuade” people to their way of thinking, not through the common sense of their ideas or the power of their argument, but by keeping people from seeing other points of view.

Authors Ashley Rae Goldenberg and Dan Gainor tell us that social media influences our worldview and can even influence elections. “Americans are seeing the results everywhere online. Conservative spokespeople, political candidates, even members of Congress, are falling victim to censors and the top tech firms are to blame.”

The article addresses claims of liberal bias and censorship against Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube individually, listing the claims and evaluating them, showing that the claims are supported by evidence.

These include such things as that Twitter censors conservative tweets pro-life ads, and censors content that governments find objectionable.

Liberal attitudes are at the core of Facebook and it censors pro-life advertising. Facebook’s algorithms filter what things its members can see, and it also blocked the “Diamond and Silk” girls’ posts, calling their content “dangerous.” Have you ever seen Diamond and Silk? Dangerous?

Google’s fact-checking system and algorithm contain an anti-conservative bias, and its News Lab partners with the radical Southern Poverty Law Center to identify “hate.”

Charges against YouTube mirror those previously mentioned for the other three media.

Is it that these folks have so little faith in their way of thinking that they don’t trust it to stand up against contrary ideas? Or do they not want to go to the trouble of actual debate and take a chance on losing in the marketplace of free ideas?

Whatever the motivation, using their ability to control what their customers or users see is truly otherworldly.

Liars, cheaters and cowards, oh my!

Faced with unpopular ideas, so many in our country are convinced that the appropriate reaction is to hold their breath, sob uncontrollably, stomp their feet, run to their safe space and demand that the speaker of these ideas shut up.

Private businesses or organizations can control what their Websites show. No argument there. The question, however, is not whether they can, but whether they should? Politics and business is a bad combination, and in these instances is quite dangerous.

The Journalists Creed: Another tradition fallen by the wayside

Several years ago on a trip to Washington, DC, my wife and I visited the National Press Club for lunch and a tour of the Club. Among the many things that impressed me there was a bronze plaque on a wall, The Journalists Creed, which the Press Club has had on display since 1958.

The Creed is the product of Walter Williams, not the excellent columnist of today, but an older gentleman who is credited with starting the world’s first school of journalism in 1908 at the University of Missouri. In 1914 Williams created the Creed, as “a declaration and personal affirmation of the principles, values and standards of journalists throughout the world,” according to the Fourth Estate organization. It regards journalism as an ethical public trust that requires accuracy and fairness.

Since Williams created the Creed, and even since the Press Club’s acknowledgement of it in ’58, huge changes in the way news is distributed have taken place. Now in addition to newspapers, periodicals, radio and television we have the Internet and social media.

These days absolutely anyone can appear to be a legitimate news source on the Internet. Many or most of these sources may have good intentions, but lack the background or discipline to do it correctly. They are unaware of, or ignore the Creed.

These days even some who know the importance of the ethics with which news journalism should be practiced don’t always stick to the straight and narrow. Being first is often more important than being correct. “Click bait,” sensational headlines designed to increase the number of visitors to Web sites, are common.

In addition to new media technologies are also new media genres, such as the speculative media: Trying to be first, a hint of something often spurs frantic action to get out there before anyone else through online or on-air media. For example, when President Donald Trump reached back for Malania’s hand while exiting a plane on their recent trip abroad, and she sort of flipped her hand away, the media reported that there might be trouble in their marriage.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who is catholic, was not among those who met the Pope on the trip, so the media reported that his being excluded might signal that Spicer was on his way out as spokesman.

Neither of these were true.

The assumption media: When Trump mentioned being “wiretapped,” it was “assumed” that he meant wiretapping and only wiretapping, not the newer, more modern methods of surveillance, apparently widely used in the Obama administration.

The agenda media: We saw very little reporting on the positive aspects of Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican and NATO, but there was plenty on the “troubles” in Trump’s administration.

And then there’s Kathy Griffin, the self-described “D-list comedian,” who worked very hard to create a disgusting, low-class image of her holding a bloody likeness of the decapitated head of the President of the United States ISIS-like, by its hair.

Criticized for this repulsive display of what today passes for humor by nearly everyone, she finally issued an apology, except not apologizing to her target, Trump and his family. Shortly thereafter, the firestorm of anger and disgust she stirred up created for her a moment of brilliant insight: The negative reaction to her gross attempt at humor, and her resulting misery is actually Trump’s fault.

And guess which one gets too much coverage? Poor deranged Kathy’s campaign about her hurt feelings at the hands of her imaginarily beheaded enemy.

Wesley Pruden, Editor Emeritus of The Washington Times, is a man trained in and who worked in journalism when standards were more broadly expected of practitioners. He characterized a Bloomberg News reporter’s G7 coverage like this: “Just what a ‘bromance’ is [between France’s Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s Justin Trudeau], beyond the not-so-clever wordplay, sounds like too much information, something you ought not to want to know about. It’s no doubt overheated reporting by a reporter who never had an editor to teach him the rewards of restraint.

“But romance was clearly in the air, not between the leaders of France and Canada, but by reporters nurtured not on the rough edges of politics and discipline of newspapers, but by too much time spent watching soap operas.”

Another old pro, Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal, said this about today’s practice of the profession: “When journalists drop objectivity to become part of the shout-fest, and when grass-roots activists move beyond making voices heard to voicing threats against those with whom they disagree, they are adding to the problem.”

These examples of journalistic malpractice and comments about news coverage from two old timers show how far news reporting has strayed early in the 21^st century.

Combined with a general public largely unconcerned with studying current events America has a true problem. So many consumers of news get their “news” from their friends on social media, and accept as true those communications that fit their preconceptions. They just don’t look beneath the surface for fact.

With all these factors, the public is largely under-informed, or misinformed, a circumstance both dangerous and foolish.

Is the gender pay gap fact or fiction? Depends on how you look at it

“Women all over America deserve a raise,” Hillary Clinton has said, again and again. “There’s no discount for being a woman — groceries don’t cost us less, rent doesn’t cost us less, so why should we be paid less?”

Depending upon which numbers you choose, women in America make 77 cents or 79 cents for every dollar men make. These numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau, 77 cents to the dollar from the 2010 Current Population Survey, and an increase to 79.5 as of 2014.

What Clinton is saying in essence is that if a male family practice doctor makes $160,000, a female family practice doctor only makes $126,400. If a male schoolteacher makes $56,610, a female teacher only makes $44,722.

An analysis by Colin Combs at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) tells us; “The claim that women only make 77 [or 79] cents for every dollar a man makes is usually followed by a call for a whole new wave of regulations and pay mandates to stop this discrimination. The gender pay gap is undeniably real; men earn more than women, on average. The question is ‘Why?’”

Partly, it is in how the numbers are determined, which is illustrated by the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that women make 83 cents for every dollar men earned in 2014, not 77 or 79 cents per dollar men earned. But there are other factors that must be considered in this assertion.

One of those factors is using the average pay for all men and the average pay for all women as the standard for analysis, about which Combs wrote: “What these statistics reveal is not what people are being paid for the same work, but what the average full-time working woman makes against the average full-time working man. It ignores differences in occupation. The average surgeon makes more than the average librarian, so if more men choose to be surgeons and more women choose to be librarians (which they do), this will be reflected in their average wage.” In reality, it is “unequal pay for unequal work,” Combs wrote.

The fact is that women voluntarily choose lower paying occupations, such as teaching, psychology and nursing, while men head toward computer science and engineering. Married women often reduce their participation in the job market for family reasons, and many other women are self-employed and run their own businesses. When adjusted for these factors, the results show that women do earn less than men, but only 5 to 7 cents less per dollar, not the much-heralded 21 or 23 cents.

The reasons for this smaller difference are not clear, Combs writes. Such things as salary negotiating skills or women being more risk-averse than men are suspected factors.  Since the true factors have not been determined, efforts to correct the difference will likely misfire; to solve a problem you first need to identify the problem.

The NCPA analysis quotes data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

■ Women’s inflation-adjusted wages have been increasing at a rate significantly higher than men’s, or rising even while men’s wages fall.

■ While the real wages of both men and women without a high school diploma have fallen, this decrease is three times worse for men than for women.

■ Women’s wages have been rising, even as the wages of men with a high school diploma or associate’s degree have been falling. Women are much more likely than men to interrupt their work for familial reasons, such as maternity leave.

Combs cites a Labor Department study conducted by CONSAD Research Corporation saying the 77 cent figure is misused and overshadows many real gains made by women since the 1970s. This is being done “to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap,” the study said.

Never being one to let mere facts interfere with a good opportunity for demagoguery and pandering, Clinton charges ahead with her pledge to use government to get women a raise that they have largely already gained without her help.

“Our false preoccupation with pay equity is not costless,” said the Hoover Institution’s Richard A. Epstein, “for it leads to bad labor market regulations that hurt all workers.” Regulations imposed to achieve equality ultimately negatively affect the job market for both women and men.

Government tinkering with business elements it really knows nothing about, all to fix a small problem that it doesn’t understand is bad government. But bad government is a product that the Left produces in abundance.

This issue demonstrates how the Left is either unaware of, or simply chooses to ignore economic principles in order to pander to a special interest group to garner votes. Jobs have value based upon the dynamics of each business, and each business has its own dynamics. A government one-size-fits-all solution to this is, to be kind, highly unlikely to succeed.

An electorate that does not investigate issues and votes instead on emotion will help usher in more harmful policies like those that have prevented the U.S. from recovering from the recession that ended seven years ago.

Americans depend on accurate, balanced information from the media

After seven months since her last press conference in December, Hillary Clinton appeared before journalists last Friday. As Slate.com reported, “Clinton spoke at a joint convention being held by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).” This lengthy hiatus has brought heavy criticism from Donald Trump’s campaign, and even from the mainstream media.

Clinton held what many called a press conference in Washington, DC, last Friday that was open only to members of the NABJ and NAHJ – two ethnic groups that are generally friendly to her – according to a press release for the event. “It is notable that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has recognized the 2016 NABJ-NAHJ Convention as a vital gathering to discuss her platform and the issues impacting black and Latino communities,” said NABJ President Sarah Glover in the news release.

While the Slate piece was generally not complimentary of the responses Clinton gave to questions from the journalists, it did not mention the positive reaction she received to campaign positions prior to the question/answer period. Slate suggested the questions were submitted in advance for approval. A campaign appearance at a minority journalist organizations’ convention, with attendance limited only to members of those organizations, does not a press conference make.

It isn’t difficult to understand why Clinton, or any candidate, would want to speak at such an event, but it is fair to ask why objective journalists of any description would allow that, let alone invite it.

The Media Research Center outlined the fondness of CNN’s “New Day” for Donald Trump issues over the issues surrounding Iran and the payment of $400 million in possible ransom money for four hostages held by the Islamic nation. MRC’s Newsbusters.org detailed the allotment of time on the two topics: “CNN set aside nearly half of its air time on Wednesday's “New Day” to various recent controversies involving the Trump campaign — 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 18 seconds over three hours. By contrast, the program clearly didn't think much of the Wall Street Journal's Tuesday revelation that the Obama administration secretly airlifted $400 million in cash to Iran. John Berman gave a 27-second news brief to the report, but didn't mention that the payment was sent on ‘an unmarked cargo plane.’ ‘New Day,’ therefore, devoted over 187 times more coverage to Trump than to the millions to Iran.”

No matter what you believe about the Iran hostage release and potential ransom payment, no matter what actually transpired, the utter clumsiness of making a payment for any purpose that way on that date warrants more than a half-minute in a three-hour program that spent 84 minutes on the Trump issues.

All major media organizations spent hours of broadcast time and dozens of printed pages on the Republican and Democrat nominating conventions. At each of these events one speaker addressed the delegates about the loss of a child.

At the Republican convention the mother of Sean Smith, one of the four American heroes killed in the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, spoke movingly about losing her son, and laid responsibility for it at the feet of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Pat Smith also noted that when her son’s body was brought home, Clinton “looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.”

The following week at the Democrat convention Khizr Kahn and his wife Ghazala appeared and Mr. Kahn talked about the death of his son, Marine Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq heroically protecting his men. Kahn described himself and his wife as “patriotic American Muslims, with undivided loyalty to our country.” He then criticized Donald Trump for his comments about Muslims, and said, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” Predictably, Kahn’s comments about Trump triggered a response.

“While all the grieving parents deserve sympathy, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening and morning shows seemed to only care about the parents that showed up at the Democratic Convention,” Newsbusters.org reported. “Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazala’s DNC appearance earned 55 minutes, 13 seconds of Big Three network coverage, nearly 50 times more than Pat Smith, whose RNC speech honoring her son earned just 70 seconds of airtime.”

The First Amendment protects free speech, and that includes newspapers, television and radio news operations; they are free to say what they like, bound generally by the same restrictions as individuals. The difference is that the public depends upon media sources for information upon which people base important decisions, such as deciding whom to elect to important positions.

Therefore, news organizations have a solemn duty to provide balance to the news they cover and how they cover it, and news journalists – as distinguished from opinion journalists – should be proscribed from injecting bias and opinion into their work.

These recent examples show decision-making by journalistic organizations in selecting a convention speaker that raises questions about objectivity, and a clear, undeniable lack of balance in reporting on important events that Americans will use in deciding their choice for the presidency and other offices.

Surely the U.S. media can do better than this.

Honor and integrity take a back seat to politics in Austin, Texas

In April 2013 in Travis County, Texas, where the capital city of Austin is located, District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested for drunk driving. Her blood alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit (.08 is the threshold, and her level was .23), and there was an open bottle of vodka in her car, in violation of the state’s open container law.

Dash cam and police station videos, which are available for viewing on YouTube, show Ms. Lehmberg failing sobriety testing and taunting arresting officers and even threatening them at the police station. One of the officers described action that took place off camera in which she kicked doors and acted violently. Her bad behavior also included rudeness, being uncooperative, and pointing her finger like a gun. And eventually she had to be placed in a restraining device. Reports say her behavior could have earned her a felony charge for assaulting a police officer.

Ms. Lehmberg pleaded guilty to drunk driving and served about half of a 45-day sentence, but said she would not resign from her position of trust as DA.

Ms. Lehmberg has been battling alcoholism for some time, according to reports. Alcoholism does not automatically preclude a person from being a public servant, even a prosecutor. However, someone whose alcoholism leads to an arrest for driving drunk, a crime that too often ends in the death of innocent citizens, followed by the poor behavior demonstrated by Ms. Lehmberg, has proved himself or herself to be unsuitable for the role of prosecutor. Put in the best possible light, it both looks bad and smells bad: You simply cannot have a confessed drunk driver as a prosecutor.

Among those who think Ms. Lehmberg should have stepped down is Texas Governor Rick Perry, although he has no official authority over county DAs.

Following her refusal to step down, Gov. Perry said he would cut $7.5 million in state money from Ms. Lehmberg’s Public Integrity Unit unless she resigned, which he later did through a line item veto. By law, the governor has veto authority.

For acting in the best interest of the people of Travis County, a jury decided it was an abuse of his power, and indicted Gov. Perry on two felony counts.

An Austin attorney filed a lawsuit to remove Ms. Lehmberg from office, but last December a judge ruled that she could keep her job. That attorney has now filed an ethics complaint against her, citing alleged unreported campaign contributions Ms. Lehmberg used to defend herself in the removal lawsuit totaling $227,000.

As it turns out, the Public Integrity Unit has a history of politically motivated prosecutions that failed for lack of substance. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson was indicted, but never tried, and Republican Congressman Tom Delay was indicted, tried, convicted and then had his conviction overturned on appeal for lack of him having actually committed a crime. It appears the Unit is more concerned with generating political results favoring the Democrat Party than it is with integrity. Sen. Hutchinson may run for governor, and Mr. Delay had earned the hatred of Democrats through his activities. It is not a stretch to use the term “corrupt” in describing at least some of the Unit’s actions.

It’s interesting that the source of the action against Republican Gov. Perry arises from the very office that he defunded because its head, the convicted and jailed drunk driver Rosemary Lehmberg, refused to do the right thing and resign. You see, Travis County, Texas, is heavily Democrat, and Ms. Lehmberg is a Democrat.

Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley had this to say about the indictment: “In this case, the special prosecutor [who answers to Ms. Lehmberg] seemed to pound hard to get these square facts into these round holes. A bit too hard for such a case.” And Democrat political advisor David Axelrod termed the indictment “sketchy.”

Mary Anne Wiley, General Counsel for Gov. Perry, said in a statement following the indictment: “The veto in question was made in accordance with the veto authority afforded to every governor under the Texas Constitution. We will continue to aggressively defend the governor’s lawful and constitutional action, and believe we will ultimately prevail.”

The grand jury process is secret and entirely controlled by the prosecution, and the accused has no opportunity to argue charges made by the prosecution, and in fact is not even present during the process. Which is the reason for the now-famous observation that through the grand jury process you “can indict a ham sandwich.” It is instructive that the staunchest defenders of the grand jury system are prosecutors. Gov. Perry would no doubt prefer to replace the sour grapes on his ham sandwich with Swiss cheese.

During the arrest procedure, Ms. Lehmberg repeatedly accused police of ruining her career by arresting her for being three-times-the-legal-limit drunk behind the wheel. Then, her Public Integrity Unit goes after a sitting governor in a way that results in the Governor having an indictment and a mug shot on his record. Whose career was really damaged by a third party? And who benefits from this episode of gutter politics by Democrats?

Bundy is a lawbreaker, and the government is much too aggressive

We have learned more about the standoff in Nevada between a rancher and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and most of the new information comes from the government side. We knew right off the bat that Cliven Bundy has refused to pay fees for about 20 years to graze his cattle on land first grazed on by his grandfather more than 130 years ago, now restricted by the federal government. We knew that the BLM sent approximately 200 heavily armed agents to take Mr. Bundy’s cattle because of his fee debt to the government.

Sen. Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is Senate Majority Leader, apparently asserts that the Bundy family are lawbreakers because they have refused to pay grazing fees, and that justifies whatever action the BLM decides to take against the family. But not everyone agrees with the government’s actions, and hundreds of Americans came to the ranch to stand with the Bundy family against what they believe is unacceptable and intolerable action from the BLM. These people Sen. Reid has ridiculously characterized as “domestic terrorists.”

When you apply a little conscious thought to this situation, which Sen. Reid probably didn’t, what the Bundy family and their supporters are doing is participating in the age-old and venerated activity called “civil disobedience.” It’s not different from what occurred during the Civil Rights Movement, or what our ancestors did at the Boston Tea Party in 1773. I wonder if Sen. Reid thinks those folks were domestic terrorists?

Rational folks think the Tsarnaev brothers who killed and injured several people at the Boston Marathon last year are domestic terrorists, and the Army doctor who killed 13 at Fort Hood is a domestic terrorist. Does Sen. Reid?

Declaring that the action against the Bundy family is not over, he told a Reno TV station “We can’t have an American people that violate the law and just walk away from it.”

Apparently, his idea of what constitutes law breaking is as foggy and duplicitous as his idea of domestic terrorism. He wants lowly citizens to obey the laws, but looks the other way when government agencies and officials don’t. President Barack Obama routinely breaks laws, like ignoring and modifying some of the decrees of the Affordable Care Act, which we are endlessly reminded is “the law of the land.” He selectively chooses which immigration laws to enforce, and circumvents the Congress with Executive Orders. But we hear nothing about that from Majority Leader Reid.

Nor does he think it important to follow the real law of the land, the US Constitution, and bring an annual budget up for the Senate to vote on, as the Congress is required to do by Article I. He also sits on his hands when bureaucrats in the Obama administration refuse to respond to requests for documents from Congressional committees charged by the Constitution with oversight of administrative agencies.

And, he has not voiced opposition to the over-the-top behavior of the heavily armed agents of the Bureau of Land Management against citizens of his own state. The Bundy family has been subjected to heavy-handed roundup practices that have injured calves, slaughtered cows and bulls and buried them in mass graves, damaged water system equipment, and torn down fences. That was not a part of the government plan, we are told. And, of course, the foolish and dangerous idea that 200 militarily equipped troops needed to respond to a case of overdue fees, the collection of which is usually assured through a lien on property.

You might also think that Nevada’s Senator would at some point consider standing up for the interests of the people he represents, who inexplicably keep returning him to office, and oppose federal control of a huge majority of the state’s land. According to the Nevada Policy Research Institute, the federal government owns or controls 86 percent of the land in Nevada and 89 percent in Clark County, where the Bundy ranch is located.

“The tight federal grip on this land is causing economic harm — and, in many cases, genuine hardship — to local developers, workers, renters and would-be homeowners,” author Charles F. Barr wrote in the Executive Summary of a 2007 study titled “The Federal Land Stranglehold.” The situation has changed little since then.

Watching the outrageous response of the BLM to the Bundy situation, one wonders if whomever thought up this plan imagined it would be sensible and appropriate to point “assault weapons” at citizens and threaten them for doing no more than protesting a government action; attempt to restrict their free speech to “First Amendment Areas”; seize and kill privately owned cattle, and destroy fencing and watering systems?

That person should first be disciplined, perhaps fired, and even prosecuted, along with the BLM agents who imposed this heavy-handed outrage on citizens of the United States.

We can no longer allow government wrongdoers to indulge in improper and/or criminal behavior with impunity. Unless we begin very soon to hold to account those who abuse their positions and abuse the people they are paid to serve, what once was “the land of the free” will no longer be.

Unemployment, droning citizens, and sequester scare-mongering

February's unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent, and the Labor Department’s survey of households found that 170,000 more people were working. But there's a downside: the survey also found that, despite the number of working-age civilians increasing by 165,000, the labor force actually shrank in size instead of growing, and 130,000 fewer people were working or looking for work in February.

The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) was unchanged at 58.6 percent, exactly the same as the rate in February of 2012, and an anemic four-tenths percent above the low mark in the summer of 2011. This compares with an EPOP of 63.0 percent in 2007 before the crisis struck.

The Labor Force Participation Rate at 63.5 percent was well below the 66-to-67 percent rate that was normal over the last 20 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data show workers remain discouraged and many are unable to find full time employment, or have given up trying.

The U-6 number under the BLS’ “Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization” includes persons who have given up looking for work, as well as the 7.7 percent who are unemployed. That number is 14.3 percent.

Compared with December 2007, when the recession officially began, there are 5.8 million fewer Americans working full time, and there are 2.8 million more working part time. Part-time workers, who usually work fewer than 35 hours a week, are still a minority of the work force, but their share is growing. When the recession began, 16.9 percent of those working usually worked part time. That share rose in 2008 and 2009 and has remained high since, and today stands at 19.2 percent.

This would not be so troubling if people were working fewer hours by choice. But that is not the case.

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Isn't it interesting that the same administration that believes foreign terrorists should be brought into the U.S., given the same status in court as actual citizens, provided a defense attorney if they can't afford one, and put on trial as if they had merely shoplifted items at the local grocery store, would equivocate instead of forthrightly condemning the idea of potentially using a drone on U.S. soil to kill a U.S. citizen who was not posing an immediate threat, and do so with no more due process than that someone in the administration thought that person was a threat to the country.

Citizens are guaranteed protection from such third world practices by the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; non-citizen terrorists -- actual and suspected -- have no such guarantees, and deserve none. This small point apparently escapes the notice of the Obama administration.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had the good sense to force this issue to the fore by filibustering the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA Director in order to get the administration to furnish more information about its intentions. Some Democrats joined Sen. Paul in holding the administration accountable to the Constitutional protections afforded U.S. citizens.

Ultimately, Mr. Brennan was confirmed, but he took the oath of office by swearing not on a Bible, as is customary, but on a version of the U.S. Constitution that did not include the Bill of Rights.

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Two of the most prominent aspects of the sequester are the scare-mongering and duplicity of the Obama administration.

First, an example of the false predictions of catastrophe: “Starting tomorrow everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol. Now that Congress has left, somebody’s going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage. They’re going to have less pay. The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they’ve got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real," President Obama said at a news conference on March 1.

Didn't happen, and was never going to happen.

And now, the duplicity: The Washington Times reported that "Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of."

Mr. Brown was told in an email: "We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that 'APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.' So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be."

The Armageddon President Obama has forecast could easily be averted by a simple bill in Congress to allow the president to decide what spending to cut and what not to cut, or to allow managers to manage their own budgets. But if the APHIS directive described above reflects the president's attitude, Mr. Obama wants the maximum pain from his boondoggle, and also wants to stay as far away as possible from responsibility for the misery his idea produces.