The mainstream press gets a lot of criticism ~ outside journalistic circles ~ as more and more information emerges showing an American public losing faith in "The Fourth Estate." Yet the press doesn't seem capable of figuring our why.
This compilation of old and new press sins may provide some clues:
When the Federal Bureau of Investigation made an arrest in the notorious Unabomber case in early 1996, Political Righties were quick to blame their favorite targets to explain the perceived behavior of bomber Theodore Kaczynski. Bob Dole took a shot at Harvard University, implying that institution was responsible for the Kaczynski's antitechnology convictions because Kaczynski had received his bachelor of science degree at Harvard more than 30 years earlier. Other Righties blamed the University of Michigan, where Kaczynski earned his Ph. D., or the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught mathematics for a brief time. A few blamed his family life, although it was a relative who did the detective work that led to the arrest.
Syndicated columnist Linda Chavez, as printed in USA Today, blamed the environmental movement for the Unabomber. She targeted the most-committed environmental group, Earth First!, claiming that it's publications, teachings or leaders had planted suggestions in the mind of Kaczynski that led to 18 years of bombings that killed three people and injured 29. Chavez wrote, "The Unabomber may well have taken his inspiration from the writings of Earth First!'s radical fringe."
Chavez showed herself to be a buffoon. She rightfully put the formation of Earth First! as 1980, two years after the Unabomber's reign of terror began ~ so even by Chavez's weird calculation of time, Earth First! could hardly be the inspiration for his actions. And, it was shown that Kaczynski had a wide range of reading matter, especially publications appealing to scientific or technological readerships. Kaczynski also abandoned a promising teaching career at the University of California to move to Montana's wilderness about 15 years before the first bombing incident, indicating his antitechnology psyche was well established years before Earth First! came into existence. That was proven later by Kaczynski's writings in which he penned the statement that, "I act merely from my desire for revenge." He added, "I believe in nothing, . . . I don't care or even believe in the cult of nature worshipers or wilderness worshipers." Kaczynski's writing ~ made public just before his sentencing ~ was written in 1971, seven years before he began his bombing and nine years before Earth First! was founded.
But fools like Chavez don't let facts or reality get in the way of a good attack and editors nationwide didn't bother to note that, when they published this, it was a piece of junk.
An article in The New York Post entitled "Does Democracy Have a Prayer?" was indicative of the ignorance and foolhardiness of many modern "journalists" who feel they need not know or understand any particular issue before issuing a condemnation. It also points out a serious problem in publishing that a major American newspaper would print something so lacking in knowledge or understanding but would not print anything pointing out the article's errors or nonsensical statements. The writer, David Gelernter, based his argument on the statement that "...the Supreme Court has beat up remorselessly on religion in public life" for several decades.
In a USA Today column Gwen Daye Richardson committed a sin that should never be tolerated by a responsible journalist and the editors of USA Today did a disservice to their readers by publishing her discourse. Her sin was not knowing what she was talking about. Their disservice was printing a column that was completely unreal. Richardson's statement that, "This desire to purge religion from all spheres of the public arena started three decades ago with the removal of prayer from public schools. Since then, in just one generation, almost all references not only to God, but to anything like a moral code have been removed from public schools."
That's garbage.
The truth is that the Supreme Court had never beat up on religion; it had constantly ruled to get government involvement in religion out of our spiritual lives and leave such matters up to us, the individuals. That's called religious freedom. Prayer has never been removed from public schools, government involvement was removed from children's praying.
Mr. Gelernter and Miss Richardson would do themselves a great favor if they would read the Supreme Court decisions concerning church-state relations to see that all prohibitions have been placed on governments and Proverbs 18: 13, which basically says one should know what one is talking about before issuing a condemnation.
Editors of the newspaper also should know what reality is when they decide to publish such false and utterly ridiculous crap.
Another USA Today columnist reported meeting up with famed atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair at a convention and lambasted her as the person who had prayer removed from public schools.
On a PBS program on religion in public life hosted by a Gumble and an Ifill last year, the Ifill repeated the lie that Mrs. O'Hair got prayer banned from schools. So much for journalistic research, because Mrs. O'Hair had nothing to do with the school-prayer decision, Engle v. Vitale. That case originated in New Hyde Park, NY, and was brought by a group of religious parents who objected to the state of New York mandating their children pray as the state wanted and observe a form of religion that may not be in agreement with their own. Mrs. O'Hair lived in Baltimore at the time, so couldn't be a plaintiff in a New York case. She was involved a year later in a minor case involving Bible reading, in which the court said schools could teach about religion, they just couldn't practice religion. The court decision was a sound judicial ruling but socially problematic because of the distortions religions have placed on biblical stories such as Adam and Eve and Noah's Flood and the misunderstanding religion has of the 666 mystique. But those are concepts for future articles.
A Los Angeles Times columnist dismissed concern over the Pledge of Allegiance promoting religion by saying that kids in school who didn't want to say "under God" could just remain silent when that part came up. The Times refused to even print a letter to the letter explaining how that reasoning was total nonsense. The logical and constitutional position is that the law-required phrase should come out of the pledge, but kids who wanted it included could just insert the two words on their own when the time came, and without government instructions to do so. If schools prevented them from saying "under God," the schools would be prohibiting free exercise of religion, just what the Constitution prohibits governments to do.
When the case went to the Supreme Court, the Associated Press, Arizona Republic and Denver Post chipped in with nonsense concerning the dispute that had been ruled on by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Thomas Bonsell is a former newspaper editor (in Oregon, New York and Colorado) United States Air Force cryptanalyst and National Security Agency intelligence agent. He became one of American journalism's leading constitutional experts through years of study at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., and tries (without much success) to be patient with people who argue endlessly on subjects they have never studied. He is the author of "The Un-Americans: Trashing of the United States Constitution in the American Press", a critique of the mainstream media for ignorance of, or disdain for, our constitutional principles of self-government. He left newspaper work years ago, disgusted at the direction the Fourth Estate ~ under the mismanagement of ineffectual, out-of-touch, can't-do executives ~ was taking away from honest responsible journalism and the observation that there was no place in the mainstream media for a progressive, or liberal, constitutional "expert". Bonsell is an honors graduate of Woodbury College (Los Angeles, California) with a bachelor of business administration degree. He is profiled in Marquis Who's Who in America. (Self-portrait, above, was handled to make author/artist appear prettier than he actually is.)
Personal motto: Have brain; will use.
