HOW NEWSMEN MISBEHAVE

Here is a list of the ways many newsmen misbehave while reporting the news:

1. TAKING SIDES

   Journalism is supposed to be a neutral reporting of the facts. Today's "journalism" is rarely unbiased. Most reporters seem to have axes to grind:

   • Newsmen often refuse to publish stories about events that disprove their political beliefs.
   • Because it disproved their belief that President Bush wanted war, most of the mainstream press refused to report that Saddam Hussein admitted (after his capture) that he had faked the memo about weapons of mass destruction that started the Iraq war. We had to find out about it on the History Channel.
   • Too many reporters slant the news with subtle language that favors one opinion over another.
   • We can tell in the case of national health care, because the reporters say "we should get this pretty soon."
   • It is often obvious that the radio or TV reporter is happy about news about one candidate, and not very happy about news about another candidate. The reporter's tone of voice gives it away.
   • Often newspapers favor one point of view over another by the placement of the news items in the newspaper. The stories favored by the editors are placed on front pages, while the ones not favored are placed in out-of-the-way places, if they are printed at all.
   • Often the news favors one point of view over another by deciding the order the stories are presented on radio or TV.
   • Some newspapers are blatant in their bias. They publish articles that tell when political events they favor are being held, but they are silent on events they do not favor.
   • Sometimes the newsmen actually lie to get what they want.

2. BELIEVING BAD SCIENCE

   Journalists take all "scientific reports" they receive as fact. Some of those reports were scientific rubbish, but the reporters want to believe them, so they believe them. Examples:

   • Al Gore's bad science saying that global warming is caused by man (despite evidence of the contrary)
   • Reports claiming 9/11 conspiracies
   • Belief that Evolution is a scientific fact, instead of just a theory
     (If they have proof, why do they still call it a theory? It's not even a hypothesis.)
   • Reports supporting the bad science that argues for hereditary homosexuality
   • Bad science saying that daylight-saving time saves energy
   • Beliefs that hydrogen is an energy source
   • Calling for unfair sports tournaments, such as tree tournaments, because they are easier to predict
     (Fair tournaments don't yield statistics to report before the tournament ends.)
   • Supporting unfair election systems because they are easier to report on
     (Fair elections don't divide the population into percentages, or yield statistics reporters can understand.)
   • Having a fear of "all chemicals" without realizing that all substances are chemicals.
   • Believing the scaremongers who are extremely afraid of certain chemical elements, such as lead and mercury.
     (These materials are often hazardous, but usually not to the extremes reported. Each compound (not each element) must be individually rated for toxicity. Some lead and mercury compounds are quite safe, unless they are in a fire.)
   • Using National Fire Protection Association guides as the final authority on the toxicity of various substances
     (These guides are intended for a quick reference for precautions firefighters must take when decisions must be made in a hurry. They do not provide the actual hazard level, but only the worst case for anything in a group of compounds. Those worst cases are often cases involving fighting fires, where compounds are changed by heat.)

   Too often, the reporter is so frightened by the ramifications of predictions in the report of possible effects of some feared event, that the reporter doesn't notice that the report presents absolutely no proof that the event is real.

3. FAVORING WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT SPENDING

   Many newsmen go absolutely nuts in favor of projects that governments should never spend money on, including:

   • National health care
   • Facilities for professional sports
   • Funding fine arts
   • Funding performing arts
   • Funding entertainment
   • Convention centers (conventions are now discredited as wastes of money)
   • Sports facilities for public schools
   • Sports and recreation facilities for the general public to use
   • Public school sports tournaments
   • Public school programs for fine and performing arts
   • Fancy architecture for government buildings
   • Beautification projects
   • Walking and bicycle trails
   • Business "incubator" buildings owned and leased out by government

   What is it about newsmen that makes them worship these extravagances? Is it taught by journalism schools? None of these items is important enough to justify taxing people to pay for them. But journalists want them!

4. FAVORING CELEBRITY

   Too many journalists have a fascination with celebrities, almost to the point of worship. Examples of such celebrities:

   • Hollywood and TV actors and actresses
   • Famous recording artists and musicians
   • The Kennedys
   • Sports figures
   • Government officials, and former government officials
   • Royalty from other countries
   • Anyone who produces works of art
   • Perpetrators of infamous crimes

   Here are examples of how most reporters are more interested in celebrity worship than in the facts:

   • A prime example of such worship happened a few years ago, when a motor vehicle accident just outside a major city killed several people. One of the children killed happened to be a player on a sports team at a local high school. The story quickly shifted to the team's loss of the sports player, while the other victims were now mostly ignored by the reporters. This is very wrong.
   • When a former celebrity dies, stories about that celebrity usually appear for weeks, even though nobody had heard about that celebrity for ten years. Writers come out of the woodwork to oversaturate readers with useless facts and trivia about that celebrity.
   • Sometimes the celebrity is not even a person. I am still reading stories about Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky-Derby-winning horse who shattered his leg during the Preakness, and later had to be destroyed.
   • Several times in the past, members of rock bands were killed in plane crashes or auto accidents. The other victims of the crashes were not important to most reporters. The bereaved families of the band members were not even important to most reporters. The one thing that was most important to a majority of the reporters was the loss of the "future musical works" those musicians might have produced, if they had lived.
   • Whenever a celebrity is charged with a crime, the question of whether or not the career of the celebrity will be ended is more important to these reporters than whether or not justice occurs (excepting the case of O.J. Simpson). Those reporters do not want the world to be without further contributions from the celebrity being tried.
   • When John Kennedy was assassinated, most reporters immediately wanted his brother Robert to run. When Robert was assassinated, they wanted Edward to run. And even though Chappaquiddick ended the possibility that he would run for president, pressure from the press also prevented Edward from being charged with a felony and removed from office. The aggregate press has also favored the Kennedys through several more scandals. The press wrongly treats the Kennedys as royalty.
   • When there is a dispute between a celebrity and some other person, many reporters tend to favor the celebrity.
   • Newspapers waste entire sections, and TV wastes entire programs on celebrities and celebrity gossip. Most people put these newspaper sections under their birdcages and dogs, and leave those TV shows on solely because they are between the shows they really watch (these shows all come on at the same time on different channels).
   • In the middle of a sporting event, most TV and radio reporters place more importance on interviews, rather than on keeping the listeners updated with the scores and standings in the event. They would rather grace us with their blabbery, instead of giving us the facts. Often we have to find out the facts by searching the Internet (e.g. Friesan Fire, the favorite in the 2009 Kentucky Derby, faltered, and then totally disappeared from the coverage after the race).

5. FAVORING EVIL OVER GOOD

   Too many journalists prefer a freedom to do wrong over the prevention of immoral acts. In doing so, they ignore the rights of the victims of the wrongdoing they promote. Instead, they portray the wrongdoing as "victimless" acts. But there are victims of these crimes, and they are ignored by many reporters:

   • Those who are killed or injured in accidents causes by drug abusers
   • The dependants the drug abusers fail to support
   • Those who are killed or injured by crimes committed by drug abusers to get money to buy drugs
   • The human beings who are killed by abortion
   • The victims who must pay to repair the damage caused by delinquents
   • The victims of auto accidents caused by people using phones while they drive (distracted by people not in the car)
   • Victims infected with sexually-transmitted diseases spread by sex offenders
   • Countless AIDS victims who never would have been infected without immoral sex acts (AIDS never could have spread beyond one village without immoral sex acts.)
   • Those whose religions are violated by government policies and laws requiring the Political Correctness religion
   • The victims of court orders made by atheist judges that violate religious beliefs.
   • Those who are ordered to undergo medical treatments against their will.
   • Taxpayers who must pay more taxes because of the higher costs to government from these "victimless crimes"

6. ADVOCATING LARGER GOVERNMENT

   Journalists often advocate a bigger government, because they see government as the only power that can solve social problems. The trouble with this is that they believe that government has special powers, knowledge, and abilities. But because government is made up of people, government has the innate fallibility of people. The multiplicity of people in government makes it more fallible, instead of less. Government does not have super powers.

   Newsmen in particular want the government to pay for their health care. But it is wrong for them to foist their desires onto the rest of the people.

   One falsehood that many liberals (and some journalists) believe in is that, if government gets large enough, then nobody would have to work. This utopian economy is impossible, for these reasons:

   • Government can't create any wealth. Only work can do that.
   • Without work, there are no products to be bought. Nobody is making them.
   • Without work, there is no food. This stupid planet can't feed its human population without work.
   • Liberals often cite ancient Greek and Roman civilizations as models, forgetting that those civilizations ran on slavery.

7. FAVORING GOVERNMENT OVER PEOPLE

   Too many times, reporters favor government over individuals. Many reporters have worried more about the effect a news item has on government than the effect it has on ordinary people (especially workers). Examples of these:

   • Many journalists believe that election to office somehow endows politicians with special abilities and knowledge. This includes knowledge about the economy and knowledge on how to properly control traffic. But the politicians did not attend college to obtain degrees in either economics or traffic engineering. So where did this special knowledge come from? The reporters will not say.
   • Almost all journalists favor raising taxes. They see the benefits government can give them from higher revenues, but they almost never see how higher taxes hurt the working class. And most journalists never understand how workers pay ALL business taxes through the higher product prices those taxes cause. They often refuse to believe this. These reporters do not understand that people lose their houses because higher taxes make them unable to pay their mortgage payments. They also do not understand that the economy runs on the portion of the economic activity that does NOT end up in government hands.
   • Most newsmen want government to pay for health care. They see it as a right. But nothing that costs money can be a right. They want it for themselves, and don't care who gets hurt so they can have it. They don't care that people will lose their rights, or that the plan will harm jobs or the economy.
   • When a factory closes or a business goes bankrupt, the first thing many reporters think of is the impact on government revenue. They RUSH to interview government officials, worried about cuts in their favorite programs. But only much later do they interview the people who are losing their jobs. Even then, many reporters ask them whether government is helping them during their job search, but they do not bring up the specters of losing homes or not being able to feed kids.
   • When a fire burns down a building, the first thing most reporters think of is the loss of property tax base.
   • When gasoline prices climb, many reporters first think of how much more it will cost to operate the fleet of vehicles owned by government. They ask how this will affect such services as parks, sports, and (maybe) police patrols. But they don't seem to care what happens to ordinary people.
   • When government wants land for a project, the businesses and homeowners who lose their buildings don't matter to these reporters, unless the project is a road. A homestead may go back centuries, but that makes no difference to either the government or the reporter. The project must be built!
   • Reporters go ape over the idea of having a professional sports team in town, no matter what the proposal costs everyone else. They also go nuts over performing arts centers and convention centers. But none of these are justifiable as necessary government projects that use tax revenue. They are luxuries!
   • Too many reporters don't see the harm in a judge ordering someone to undergo a medical procedure against his will (or his religion). All they can see is that a life was probably saved.
   • Many newsmen don't see anything wrong with government making everyone get new TV equipment, due to the required change to digital TV. They don't care about the extra costs to people. They want digital TV for themselves.

8. HATING BUSINESS

   For some unknown reasons, many journalists seem to hate business:

   • They especially hate large businesses. They prefer inefficient locally-owned small businesses instead.
   • They become quite irate if a business somehow makes money from something government does.
   • They become upset if a business does something that competes with a government service.
   • They get mad if government tries to privatize government services or functions.

   They don't seem to realize that business can always do a better job than government can do it, because business is not hampered by the innate inefficiencies of government.

   The part that makes no sense at all is that these reporters have so much animosity for businesses, but then they demand more jobs. Just where do they expect those jobs to come from? Business is the source of most jobs, and work is the source of most wealth.

9. INVADING PRIVACY

   Too many journalists think that their "right" to get the story is more important than the privacy of the people they are hounding and stalking to get information from:

   • They hound people who are in the news because something unexpected happened.
   • They won't leave celebrities alone.
   • In some cases, newsmen have caused damage while following people they want stories from.
   • "Journalists" caused the death of Princess Diana by chasing her car.
   • They are always looking for dirt on everyone they report on. But they don't report the faults they find in their favorite politicians.
   • The rights of the people they stalk do not matter to them. They want a story to report.
   • They want government to invade people's privacy with a national health care program.
   • They want government security to keep track of everyone, so journalists don't become terrorism victims.

10. BELIEVING IN CONSPIRACIES

    Many journalists believe that secrets are being hidden from the people, and especially the press. Examples of these beliefs:

    • The election was rigged, because the candidate they favored lost the election. In this case, they are partially right:
      1. The elections ARE rigged, but not intentionally.
      2. The faulty Plurality Voting System always favors the oddball candidate in multicandidate elections. It is biased against multiple candidates with similar platforms.
      3. This means that the candidates they like lose votes to the third-party candidates they also like.
      4. Changing to the Independent Voting System will remove this bias.
    • They believe that President Bush falsified information to get us into the Iraq war. But they deliberately ignore two facts that refute this belief:
      1. Saddam Hussein had admitted on TV that he was sending financial support to Al-Qaida months before the invasion began. The page author told a friend we were going to war in Iraq after hearing this.
      2. When he was captured, Saddam Hussein admitted that he made the fake memos about weapons of mass destruction.
    • They believe in a US Government conspiracy to perpetrate the 9/11 disasters, intended to get us into a war. These beliefs are based on ignorance and bad science.
    • They believe that governments are keeping information secret about UFOs, ghosts, monsters, Bigfoot, and other popular mysteries.
    • Some of them believe that corporations or politicians are conspiring to keep them from having health care.
    • They still believe in the multiple gunman theories in both of the Kennedy Assassinations, even though they have been refuted many times though scientific investigations.

    The one conspiracy they won't report on is the conspiracy of the press to try to make people liberal.

11. IGNORING ECONOMIC REALITY

    Most journalists do not investigate the claims they report about the economy. They either do not understand how the economy works, or they actually believe the faulty Keynesian Economic Theory that is taught in high schools by union teachers favoring liberal candidates.

    • They usually believe what the politicians tell them about the economy.
    • They normally do not check to see if politicians are using "the economy" as an excuse to spend money on what they wanted to do anyway.
    • They actually expect economic stimulus spending to work.
    • They don't expect a national health care program to destroy the economy.
    • They forget history. They especially forget that the same faulty economic policies didn't work the last time.
    • They believe that government can create wealth. Government has no such power. Only work can create wealth.
    • They do not understand that the economy runs on the portion of the economic activity that does NOT end up in government hands.
    • They do not understand that different kinds of economic activity have different effects on the economy:
      1. The economic activities that expand the economy most are those that help people do more work.
      2. Some economic activities expand the economy less with useful products that don't help people do more work.
      3. Other economic activities actually contract the economy, because no useful product is produced. These include:
         • Fine arts
         • Performing arts
         • Sports
         • Recreation
         • Entertainment
         • Public works projects (other than roads)
         • Beautification projects
         • Museums, memorials, and monuments
         • Bureaucracy
         • Walking and bicycle trails
         • Anything that provides benefits to government, but not individuals
         • Anything else that is not a useful privately produced product for sale
         • Education for any of the above pursuits
         • Facilities for any of the above
    • They expect government to have the power to control the economy. Government can make it worse, but the only way government can improve the economy is by getting itself out of the way.
    • They prefer the simple easy-to-understand wrong Liberal theory over the complex hard-to-understand theories that make more accurate predictions.
    • Some journalists believe in the utopian economy mentioned above.

We want real unbiased journalism!

WHY IS THE PRESS SO LIBERAL?

Why is the press so liberal? Here are a few theories, with the reasoning behind them:

1. Money!

   Sensational stories sell papers, gather TV viewers, and attract radio audiences. Conservative issues are not sensational, except when they threaten to undo the work of liberals.

2. Health care for themselves

   Freelance reporters and "stringers" don't have employers to provide health insurance plans for them. So they want government to provide them with health insurance.

3. Change the world!

   Many studied to become journalists in the 1970s with the intent to change the world. Before that, journalists passively reported what happened in the world, only calling for action in cases of dire distress.

   There is no such thing as activist journalism. When writing becomes activist, it ceases to be journalism. It becomes editorializing instead.

4. Somebody must DO something!

   Journalists see more suffering than is seen by people working in any other profession, other than police, fire protection, or emergency medicine. They see so much wrong, that they decide that something must be done. Their error is, of course, that they see government intervention as the only solution.

5. Government worship

   Government is the god some journalists worship. The see it as the benevolent provider, and will do anything to serve it. Then they pray for free stuff, hoping to get it.

6. Government comes first

   To liberals, government is more important than anything else. The see it as their benevolent provider, and will do anything to further it.

7. Simple answer

   Most readers want a simple answer to a problem, not a complex solution that only a few can digest. Unfortunately, world problems, especially economic ones, are not simple. Liberal politicians tend to have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers to problems. Conservative answers are complex, but are more correct than the liberal answers.

8. Action, not words

   The reporter is not content to warn people of a situation. The reporter wants action. If a child's car seat is defective, warning parents is not enough. Asking the manufacturer to fix or replace the product is not enough. The government must immediately take the product off the market, or endure the wrath of the reporter's pen.

9. Immediate action!

   When a reporter sees something "wrong" happening, he calls for a solution NOW! A wait while all of the side-effects of the solution are evaluated is unwarranted to the reporter. A call to wait might also cut the sales of the reporter's paper or broadcast station.

10. Single issue

    The reporter gets so involved in the story that other issues raised by the problem are ignored. Only the reporter's assignment matters.

11. Safety before liberty!

    The reporter sees all sorts of tragedies, including freak accidents. This is a necessary condition of the job of being a journalist. Reporters become oversaturated with tragedies, so they want every product, every place, and every situation to be as safe as is possible, no matter how much it costs to do, or whose rights are violated.

12. No censorship!

    Reporters fear conservatives, because they think conservatives will impose moral codes on materials in print, preventing them from being the creative writers they want to be.

13. Help those poor people at all costs!

    Reporters see a case of neglect, starvation, or abuse. They call for immediate aid. They don't care who must pay for it, or what people lose their rights. The problem must be FIXED, before someone else gets hurt.

14. Self interest

    Journalists favor safety-net programs and government handouts, because they are subject to sudden loss of employment. Events such as a media takeover, a merger, an economic downturn, a libel suit, or a mistake in a quote, can send a reporter to the unemployment lines quickly. And freelance reporters can't depend on their income.

15. Lack of math and science skills

    The kind of mind that makes a good writer is not the kind of mind that understands technology. So most journalists do not have the necessary skills in math and science to be able to understand the arguments liberals make, let alone refute them. Note that most liberals also lack these skills.

16. Love of entertainment

    Journalists favor wasting tax dollars on entertainment and arts programs, so they don't have to pay for their own entertainment. In addition, entertainment provides jobs for some journalists.

17. Love of sports.

    Journalists favor wasting tax dollars on sports programs and facilities, so they don't have to pay for their own sports entertainment. In addition, the existence of sports provides jobs for some journalists.

18. Living wage.

    Unless they are famous, reporters don't make much money. Reporters see people earning less than they need to feed their children. They write about required minimum wages and government safety nets, because they want them. The fact escapes them that setting a minimum wage inflates the money until everyone makes the real income they made before the minimum wage was set.

    Reporters should notice that wealth is really being siphoned off in taxes. But the lack of math skills inhibits most reporters from understanding this. Also, cutting taxes means smaller safety-net aid for reporters if they lose their jobs.

19. Prestige!

    Pulitzer prizes and other awards are given to remarkable, touching pieces of writing. Human interest is one of the favorite topics for a prize. Nobody is going to get a prize for an article on the advantages of cutting government spending, unless waste and fraud are exposed in the article.

    It has recently been shown by example that most of the prize givers are also liberals, and that they do not understand science or math. The proof of this is that they gave awards to Al Gore for his bad science.

20. Journalism professors.

    For years, liberals have controlled most college campuses. The journalism courses teach reporters to look at mostly the liberal sides of issues. Why are the professors so liberal? They need liberals in office, so they can get all of the grant money their own research programs must exist on.

Look here for evidence of malfeasance.

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