Weeding Out Reporters Who Lie

By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)

February 24, 2005

In 2003 Jayson Blair of the New York Times was allowed to simply resign after being caught making up some of his “best” stories and reporting “interviews” with people he had never met.

In November of last year Dan Rather, after 24 years reporting news at CBS resigned over fictitious reporting claiming about President Bush’s military service.

A Federal Appeals Court in February upheld a trial court’s finding last year that Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine are in contempt of court and should be compelled to testify as part of an investigation into whether Bush administration officials knowlingly leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame in the summer of 2003.

Now CNN’s chief news executive Eason Jordan has resigned after claiming that U.S. military forces deliberately killed journalists in Iraq.

Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid observed concerning Eason Jordan, “CNN reported that he resigned because the controversy over his remarks "threatened to tarnish the network he helped build." Jordan said that he decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy over "conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq." With this strange formulation, Jordan was trying to blame others for the controversy.

There is a common problem that is surfacing in these and other stories about the media. For many years reporters have managed to misinform the American people regularly by hiding behind the First Amendment to the Constitution which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Clearly, whatever that means for the press also applies to individuals. It applies also to religious institutions and the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the government.

That being the case, does the First Amendment really allow religious groups to ignore laws pertaining to drugs, or alcohol, or pornography? Obviously, it doesn’t. Can people assembling to petition government break heads and wreck cars and demand protection for doing so because of the First Amendment? Some have claimed violence while “protesting” IS protected by the First Amendment, but generally, courts have ruled that “peaceably to assemble” does not include the “right” to violence.

What is coming to a head in our time is whether or not the First Amendment gives news reporters the right to lie, to destroy the lives of others, and to even change American foreign policy and claim their lack of integrity and sometimes treasonous reports as “protected speech” under the Bill of Rights? Just how much of the reporting during the Vietnam War was fabricated to get the Americans to withdraw, leaving Southeast Asia in the hands of Communists who slaughtered millions?

The fact is, making up stories or editing stories to fit an agenda is rampant in the media – from all sides of most issues. Generally speaking, as I have discovered repeatedly over the past 55 years as a writer, journalists who persist in pursuing the facts, rather than reflecting the opinion of their editors, simply will not advance or sometimes even be retained by their employers whether the publication's bias is liberal or conservative.

Why, all the sudden, are we seeing resignations and court cases that reveal the obvious lack of integrity in journalism? To a large degree it is coming from competition in the media– especially from the availability of actual transcripts of talks and press conferences, debates in Congress from government websites and from bloggers who know where to find the facts on the Internet.

In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, the American people were at the mercy of a handful of syndicated news sources. Any writers that did not write according to the bias of the owners, didn’t stay employed very long. After Vietnam, professors in universities who did not go along with the bias expressed by the favored few reporters didn’t receive tenure.

What has changed in the past few years, actually since George W. Bush has been president, is the creation of OTHER sources of news that allow anyone with a computer and access to the Internet to read or hear what the President ACTUALLY said, and compare it with what the dominant news sources are SAYING he said. There are websites maintained by the White House, by all branches of the military, by various cabinet officials, and by ordinary people, like me, who can READ transcripts of bills and speeches and even link to them for our readers. See my research page.

Far from trying to HIDE my sources, for example, I try to provide active LINKS to my sources so that the readers can verify for themselves what was actually said by those in office, those running for office and those who sometimes want to deny what they DID say.

For example, Eason Jordan’s said in his statement announcing his resignation, “After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq.” Now Jordan wants to deny what a number of different sources claim he said. Even Barney Frank, a liberal Congressman, and the Washington Post, claimed that Jordan said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “he knew of 12 journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq.”

Only – now the claim has been made that there are no transcripts available of the discussions at Davos. If there are such transcripts, whoever has them does not want the public to have them.

And, there, in a nutshell is why more and more people simply don’t believe what the major news sources are reporting. Eason Jordan has proved to the public that he has no journalistic integrity. One by one, such “reporters” are being weeded out.

It’s about time!