Soap Box

Some of my first vivid memories are the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the opening days of the Second World War and the first news about the attack came to us over the radio.

It was to be a long while before the first television pictures were to make their way into coastal Carolina and radio was king. Families sat around their living rooms and listened to their favorite radio shows in the same fashion as the families who would gather around television sets a decade or so later.

Radio was our prime source of keeping up with the news and legendary journalists like H.V. Kaltenborn, Gabriel Heatter and Robert Trout were among the most trusted men in the country who took the responsibility of reporting the news honestly and unabridged seriously, considering theirs an honorable profession with a commitment to inform, not influence, their public.

I sometimes wonder what they would think if they could see what a travesty their once noble profession has become in the fast and loose hands of the present day mainstream media.

Last night I witnessed the low point of American journalism as CNBC personalities conducted what was supposed to be a presidential debate.

Actually - at least to me - it looked more like a Saturday Night Live skit as the questions got sillier and sillier and the obviously ultra biased moderators made bigger and bigger dunces out of themselves even being booed by the studio audience, and the candidates took up defensive positions and turned, not on each other as the panelists were trying to incite, but on the moderators themselves.

In fact it was the most unified I have seen the Republicans, as they metaphorically circled the wagons, defended each other and called out the moderators for their folly, much to the delight of the studio audience.

I never watch CNBC, didn't know the personalities conducting the debacle, but if this is a sample of their idea of �journalism� I see no reason to change my viewing habits.

I know this was an extreme example, but unfortunately it is a microcosm of the attitude of much of the mainstream media, though many of them have enough class to be a little more subtle about their fervent desire to promote anything Democrat and bury anything Republican.

The world we live in is in flux, ever-changing with catastrophic events happening overnight and we never know what kind of world we're going to wake to and the news has become a big part of most American's lives as we struggle to keep up.

Unfortunately much of present day media consider themselves opinion makers, influential molders of how the public views political candidates and situations.

Now this would be perfectly fine if they declared their partisanship in advance and didn't try to present their biased opinions in the guise of accomplished fact and hard news.

And as important as what they do report is what they don't report, many times they pay scant attention to events that don't line up with their agenda, especially if it has racial overtones that go against their views.

One of the most violent rapes and murders to ever happen in America took place in Knoxville, Tennessee several years ago and involved the torture, rape and murder of a white couple carried out by several black men and a woman.

I live in Tennessee and did not even hear about the horrible incident until months after it happened and found out from an out of state source.

Had the roles been reversed and it had been white on black the national media would have descended on Knoxville, Tennessee en masse with Al Sharpton in tow and it would have dominated network and cable news for a week.

But since the story didn't fit the mainstream media�s agenda, it was given little attention.

Multiply that scenario by a few hundred and we have the state of modern day journalism in much of America.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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