Sunday, September 11, 2016

No News is Better News

There are days when no news is better than some of the "news" we see on the front pages of our newspapers.  Being older, I can remember the days when newspapers and television news broadcasters prided themselves on neutrality in their reporting.  It is sad to see that era go, replaced by a new kind of information war that plays to politics, not neutrality.  

Media can say what they want and the First Amendment to our Constitution will protect them.  Some are more careful than others, using their Opinion section appropriately.   I use the front page of Saturday's New York Times as evidence.  There are two stories right in the center that demonstrate and the headlines are as follows:

Country Spurns Trump but Can't Warm to Clinton

Giuliani Role Risks Legacy to Aid Trump

The first implies that a political candidate who poll numbers are rising is being spurned by the electorate which cannot seem to come to support the other candidate.  Graceful, but biased as can be. It should, as the text of the article alludes to, suggest focus on a system that produces two candidates that a majority of the voting public does not like or trust.  We have to ask ourselves if the narrative that says the elections are "rigged" has some truth to it.  Anywhere but a Fantasy Land these two candidates would have fallen out in the first round of the selection process.

The second article is worse in its presentation.  It is a direct slap at a New York Hero on the day before his most important triumph, September 11.  But, the implication is that his support for Donald Trump will diminish our view of Giuliani's  dedication to the city and to his country during those awful days when the World Trade Center went down.  That is blatant bias that does not belong on the front page of a paper.  That is what the Opinion page is for.

There is a difference between being Liberal, which the Times has been accused of before, and being biased.  These two stories are bias and on the front page, where even people who don't buy it would see it.

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