Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

[Orson Scott Card is a Democrat newspaper columnist - in this opinion piece he takes on both.]

You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. . . .

Doesn't journalism require that you . . . tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? . . .

These are facts. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party. . . .

. . . you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk . . .

. . . you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis. . . .

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do. . . .

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth --

Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned. . . .

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means? . . .

I forwarded this link along with a polite cover letter to the editor and publisher of my local paper. I only asked them to read it, and ponder what he has to say about the journalism profession. To the extent that he’s right, the press is failing in it’s Constitutionally-protected responsibility. I don’t expect my local paper to cover national news, but as another smart Democrat once said, “All politics is local”. If the national media is failing so miserably, how can our local media be any better?

I think Mr. Card said it brilliantly, and speaks for many of us.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

So true.

All pretense of 'real journalism' is dead. All we have now is advocacy journalism. It's amusing that I don't hear much from the Left anymore about the "biased" FoxNews. I guess they finally realized they have every other media outlet tossing their salad.

The good thing now is that a majority of Americans realize that the MSM is putting out a very biased product. Also, while I certainly think most journalists' political biases are tainting their coverage, what also is driving their race to the bottom is that the MSM is hitting the skids...hard. They are losing viewers (in the case of the news divisions of NBC/CBS/ABC, the viewers are literally dying off) and subscribers daily. People know how to use the internets. They don't need to trust you. They can check into it for themselves.

Wasn't it in '04 when journalists seemed to have it in for bloggers (ie conservatives)? We on the internets didn't know what we were doing. Reporting was too important to be left to the drooling masses with modems. Why, it required such special skill and only a credentialed journalist could investigate and report the truth.

Right.

It looks like we're back to the real partisan press of old. Frankly, that's fine by me. There's something rather artificial and disingenuous about reporting as if it is purely objective. Everyone has their views. Just as long as it's clear to the consumer that is so. I think we've seen over the last 60 years just how a media oligarchy with a hidden bias can damage a nation.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

The goal was to buy votes with taxpayer funds, but Obama would call it spreading the wealth.

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