There is a moment in Stephen King’s apocalyptic novel “The Stand” where two characters suddenly realize they’ve damned their souls. I read the book in just one week but when seeing the movie version the scene really struck me for its brevity. The characters acknowledge their plight and then move on as if they’ve lost nothing more than a quarter when fumbling for change. I suppose this is how many journalists react when they cross a line and become campaign appendages for Hillary Clinton. Or any Democrats of the past. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 now has the feel of ancient history, but I remember a statement from the editors at Politico. When the mother of one of the men criticized him for being in the tank for Obama the so-called journalist fired back in an editorial with two words: “So what?” So much for objectivity. I get the point editorials and opinion columns are held to a different standard. However, the man was responding to criticism of his site’s overall coverage.
Four years later we were subjected to similar moves by Candy Crowley and Chris Matthews during heated presidential debates. Matthews sold the trope a video mocking the Muslim Prophet was responsible for Benghazi. Not sure he’s ever said sorry. Crowley apologized after the fact but the damage was done. I give her credit for a moment of conscience. Even if it was brief. During the 2012 election cycle a guy at MSDNC named Lawrence O’Donnell mocked another prophet. He called Joseph Smith a charlatan, crook and adulterer. Maybe not in all of those words, but there was never any pangs of guilt for having insulted the faith of tens of millions of his fellow countrymen and countless millions around the world. O’Donnell remains a liberal icon. Any critics of Islam are shamed by the liberal establishment, media elites and other fellow travelers. Mormons are fair game for attack.
So I’m surprised when I see someone in media actually concerned about standards and the eventual destination of his soul. Enter Frank Miele. He’s a writer at a newspaper in Kalispell, Mont. I don’t know much about the place. An old girlfriend had a job offer in Kalispell four years ago and wanted me to join her there. When she found another line of work Montana for us got deep-sixed. I imagine it’s a bastion of conservatism by its location on the map. Miele I’m not sure about. His biography tells me he’s a native of Stony Point, N.Y. His hometown is a six or seven hour drive down Route 86 from my much more conservative hometown in Upstate New York. Miele worked previously in Bismarck and maybe in his wanderings he discovered liberalism isn’t a self-evident truth. Or he’s standing up for the ethics news media once etched on walls and followed like an evangelical follows the Bible. In a column last week the writer took on the behemoth known as the Associated Press. An AP reporter assigned to cover a Donald Trump rally wrote a lengthy story replete with subjective judgments about Trump’s motivations. An incensed Miele rewrote the wire copy by removing the faraway reporter’s biases.
His column was picked up by multiple outlets across the web. Give that man a medal!
A few weeks ago I picked up a telephone call and John Butler was on the line. The first time John called me was in 1989 when he offered me a job at one of the most respected news radio operations in the United States. We were in a small city, but when I went to visit him the following Monday there was a clipping on the newsroom wall. The station had been voted among the five best of its kind in the country. I spent six years working for the man. He was an old Goldwater Republican. Our managing editor could best be described as a Sanders socialist. I was a registered independent. Elected politicians frequently told me I worked for an enterprise that was the fairest of them all. John left for St. Louis in 1995 and for the next 20 years won every conceivable award for journalism for which a radio or TV station can qualify. Now retired the past 10 months he’s bemoaning the daily bias he witnesses. Another old mentor, Kenn Venit, teaches journalism at Quinnipiac University. Kenn’s older brother used to joke with me about his younger sibling being a media liberal. Not that I could ever detect Kenn had any politics. When I started hosting a political talk show in 2003 another one of my old mentors was flummoxed. “I didn’t know you were a conservative,” he said. He wasn’t supposed to know while I was reporting the news. None of you are supposed to know.
Reading the nasty comments from fellow travelers at the bottom of the Miele column in the Montana paper, it’s clear by the response the leftists believe the public is best served by a servile news media doing the bidding of liberal politicians. You’ll see the same angry comments if you read this writer’s column online. The walking pustules who hide beneath the guise of aliases don’t realize the talk radio universe and Donald Trump are reactions to the monopoly they once enjoyed. It’s the height of hubris to wake every day and claim your worldview is the only proper outlook. Apparently this hubris permeates the newsrooms of America where many believe it’s their civic duty to derail candidates they don’t like. I ask, when did God give them larger brains than readers, viewers and listeners? Where do they differ from Robespierre and other revolutionaries who maintain they’ve cornered the only truth and now must make their neighbors conform or be forced to conform to the latest social fads and social engineering?
Today I read where 7 percent of all births in the United States last year were the children of illegal immigrants. The night before I saw a story on CBS News where illegal immigrants were portrayed as victims and opposition is simply racist. This is bias writ large. As if taxpayers who are struggling to keep a job, find a job and heat their homes are bigots because they fear the destruction of their nation. If modern media would acknowledge the poor, white yokels had legitimate concerns, then maybe the rest of us would have more respect for journalists!
Those of you working in newsrooms across the country can’t be that blind to reality. America is ailing. The public needs unvarnished information to make decisions. Instead we’re fed a diet of groping, locker room jokes and allegations of racism. You may not know the name Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. The fellow travelers in media dubbed him Joe the Plumber. When he wasn’t impressed by candidate Obama eight years ago the news media gave Joe a figurative anal probe. Tell you what, when reporters start looking into the backgrounds of Trump’s accusers you’ll find a lot of people who are the cousins of Democrat Party ward bosses. But then that would be journalism. How could they then carry their girl across the finish line? To paraphrase a “Man for all Seasons;” It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… But for Hillary Clinton?
Bill Colley is the host of Top Story at News Radio 1310 AM.