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Friday, October 21, 2016

A Viewer Writes: “These Are Not the Droids You Are Looking For”

Remember the scene from Star Wars, the brief exchange between the Storm Troopers and Obi-Wan ‘Ben’ Kenobi where he influences their minds to make them think they didn’t see what they really saw? He tells them, “These are not the Droids you are looking for… Move along… He [Luke] can go about his business”

When Luke later asks how he did that, Ben replies “The Force can have a strong influence on the weak minded.”

How appropriate is that response, particularly in the context of how media bias is attempting to influence opinions of the weak minded. (I know what you’re thinking, what about Fox. In the grand scheme, Fox is only a thimble full, but the combined power of the other media outlets is like drinking the Big Gulp of bias Kool-Aid. )

Let’s use the same exchange, but insert Hillary Clinton as Luke and the biased media as Ben. Use the same words and see how the message changes. Scary, huh? We are supposed to be the weak minded Storm Troopers, and to some degree, the bias Force has worked. And it’s shameful. What ever happened to journalistic integrity? Remember how well respected the Woodward and Bernstein team was – and still are – for their investigative journalistic pursuit of political corruption? Where is that now? Heck, the Nixon tapes were just a freckle compared to the malignant melanoma of political corruption we are now witnessing in the Clinton camp. And you are just turning a blind eye! Why?

Are you afraid of losing your job? Is it political ideology? Maybe you just want to be like Obi-wan Kenobi and test your skills on the weak-minded populous.

For many years, it has been obvious to anyone in America that the press has a liberal, left leaning agenda. OK, we get it – and have accepted that for a long time. But this, my friends, is getting ridiculous.

An editorial if fine as long as it is labeled as such. But when a simple ‘who-what-where-when’ story is written with ANY bias – intended or not- it becomes an op-ed and should come with a warning. Otherwise, it is being written not to deliver facts but to influence the opinions of the masses.

And what makes matters worse is when facts – or entire stories- are omitted so as not to make a certain candidate look bad. You have made it so blatantly obvious, that the weak-minded populous that you are trying to influence has finally found a bad taste in your cooking and are starting to take notice. I don’t even need to mention the omissions of recent Hillary transgressions to make my point, because we all know what they are.

The Clinton camp erases a plethora of information, and only Fox raises an eyebrow. Come on, we’ve watched enough CSI shows to know that only guilty people bleach the crime scene. Why else waist the time? And if the Bush’s were ever accused of pay-for-play, you would have been on it like flies on hot manure! There used to be a time when good journalists would ask why and go look for it buried in the story somewhere. But, because of your political ideology or whatever agenda you are pushing, you are either bad at what you do or complicit in the cover up yourself.

The power of the press is mightier than the sword and people must trust the press in a democracy. It is the strongest counter to a government that has run-amok. The journalistic integrity is paramount, otherwise the power is greatly diminished in the perceived loss of trust.

The one word missing lately is ‘integrity’. I think many of you have lost its meaning. Go look it up online and then in the mirror to see if the adjective matches what’s looking back at you. For our sake, I hope it does.

Steve H.
Salisbury, Maryland

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The power of the press is mightier than the sword and people must trust the press in a democracy. It is the strongest counter to a government that has run-amok. The journalistic integrity is paramount, otherwise the power is greatly diminished in the perceived loss of trust."
In this day & time, this is horse hockey. Sounds good but is too far from the way it is. Maybe should be this way, but you know & I know, IT AIN'T.

Anonymous said...

The people must have REASON to trust the press. Sadly, though, we have seen that trust hugely diminished because of the press's obviously less than trustworthy reporting, One cannot give credence to a media report that over and over again says something is so or isn't so when the reader knows differently.

Anonymous said...

We can learn from something as simple as word and term definitions:


prop·a·gan·da
ˌpräpəˈɡandə/
noun
1.
derogatory information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.


propaganda machine
(ˌprɒpəˈɡændə məˈʃiːn)

noun
the group of people, publications, etc, such as of a government, country etc, responsible for the organized dissemination of information, allegations, etc, to assist or damage the cause of a government, movement, etc

Anonymous said...

Is that Steve hammond from WBOC trying to remove his name from the list of biased reporters?

Anonymous said...

You were doing really good until you wrote, "The power of the press is mightier than the sword and people must trust the press in a democracy." The United States of America is not a democracy. It is a representative Republic, democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

Sand Box John.

Anonymous said...

Great analogy

Anonymous said...

Thank you Sand Box

Anonymous said...

The US was founded as a Constitutional Republic.
It was never a democracy. Democracy leads to monopoly and eventually to tyranny.