The Bear's Den: A New Color - 'Red Journalism'

Years ago, I taught a high school class in journalism, putting out the school paper; I instructed my students to always look for the truth within their story because that never has to be manufactured. I also taught about the difference between report writing and opinion writing, too. A reporter´s job, I explained, is supposed to be relaying the news. Opinion is supposed to be the realm of editors and columnists – not reporters. I explained that a reporter´s job is to gather info and write the story, always including answers to the ´Five Ws´: who, what, when, where and why. Anything more…and the reporter ran the risk of becoming a ´Yellow Journalist´, and that… was a dirty name. The term ´Yellow Journalism´ was coined, more or less, in the late 19th century, and sadly, forms of it, have been with us ever since. Yet, it´s been getting more and more prolific over the past five decades, and now it´s birthed a new shade. Yep, into the scribbled world of reporting, a new color has been added – at least in my opinion. Yeah, and I´m calling this new reporting… "Red Journalism".

Yellow´s never been my favorite color, but I have to say that I like red a whole lot less… when it´s applied to journalism. Boy, this new tint is dangerous, and quite a bit different than its cousin. Yellow journalism is biased opinion masquerading as objective fact. It can be written or broadcast and has the power to dupe an unsuspecting public, that, over the years, has been lulled into trusting and believing what they hear, see and read from supposedly objective and forthright news providers. So, whenever yellow journalism rears its head, it´s bad. This reporting style comes from old-time newspapers and, specifically, a newspaper cartoon by the 19th century cartoonist, Robert Outcault, called "The Yellow Kid". The popular cartoon strip ran in one newspaper and then a competing publication hired an artist to produce the same strip in that newspaper. It was done to make money by selling more papers; the bonus was that it pushing the individual publisher´s preference on the national agenda.

The newer comic strip used a new, special, non-smear yellow ink in its process. And because of the significance of the comic strip and its ´golden´ hue, the term ´yellow journalism´ was coined by critics of the day. Yellow journalism involves sensationalism, distorted stories, and displaying misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales by exciting public opinion. Well, by 1910, the public had become pretty aware of this charade and circulation had dropped off rapidly for the papers employing this form of journalism. People just stopped buying them – period. Many of them folded and closed. Yep, and many of the writers of the day, tainted with this jaundice, either had to get out of journalism or write under a pseudonym for the rest of their lives. Well, I suspect that many modern-day reporters may end up looking like folks with really bad sunburns. That´s because the same thing is happening to many news agencies today – print and broadcast alike – but for even slimier reasons. Yeah, and the public is becoming attuned to the forked-tongues of many in the national media; that´s why papers are closing and TV networks are loosing viewers in high numbers.

Last summer I watched an MSNBC broadcast reporter at one of the heated town hall meetings being held all over the country. Her cameraman zoomed in on a subject in a crowd of people upset over the forced healthcare bill. The reported led the viewer to believe that the crowd was made up entirely of white folks. The man, who was only shown from the torso down, had an AR-15 semi-auto rifle hanging from his shoulder. The camera stayed on this image while the reporter expounded, worriedly, that the folks in the crowd were possibly racist and dangerous, and… even carrying weapons. Her tone and slant was obvious – she didn´t like people opposing the congressional bill and implied that they were a hazard to society. It wasn´t until later that I saw the same clip on a different network; this time the upper body of the man carrying the gun was shown. Yep, and he was black. So, who was he racist toward? And why did the first reporter show only the torso, editing his race? Um-hmm, whereas the ´yellow´ newspaper of old sought mostly to sensationalize to sell papers and perhaps push their owner´s opinion, the newer ´red´ bunch could care less about the money. They do it for free, just to help promote their scarlet agenda. For them, it is all about ideology… the kind with a deeply red socialist tint to it.

On July 20th, 2010, The Daily Caller.com broke a story about nationally recognized U.S. journalists, written prior to the election of Obama. It details the plot by these journalists on their blog, "Journolist", to lie and circumvent the truth. They plotted to write false stories to help get the Democrat elected as president – no matter what the cost. Like the e-mails which exposed the sham of ´Climate Change´, The Daily Caller states that they have the actual ´listserv´ of e-mails from these nationally known journalists – aka: reporters, college teachers of future reporters, and TV network news producers, etc. The list comprises e-mail entries of hundreds of these scarlet journalists, trusted by the public to report the news in an unbiased fashion. It depicts plots of personal smear campaigns, false accusations of racism and other outright lies – anything necessary… to help get Obama elected. Yeah, it´s alarming. Personally, I wish I could say that I was shocked, but sadly, I´m not. This kind of thing has been going on for a long, long time. The worst side of journalism in the past was the edict that "If it bleeds – it leads". But over the past decade, man oh man… it´s gotten even more sinister.

I remember long-time CBS news anchor Dan Rather. I´ll never forget him crying, on national TV, the night he gave the presidential election results. He couldn´t believe that George Bush had won the presidency of the United States. He was absolutely crestfallen. I imagined him falling to his knees, face contorted with anguish, and bawling out "Noooo!", like Marlon Brando hollered "Stella!" in the movie A Streetcar named Desire. Not long afterwards, Rather was quietly forced from his job at CBS because of very disparaging story about George W. Bush that he had personally supervised and broadcast on the nightly news, in the days leadiny up to the election. The network had to eat crow when the story was proven untrue; they had to admit that one of their big ones had, more or less, deliberately misled the public. It had happened during Bush´s race against Al Gore and revealed the journalist´s true bias. The facts were clear, and Rather didn´t deny it. He readily admitted doing the deed. He had ran with the faulty piece, even though he had nothing to back it up – a huge journalistic no-no. But he so badly wanted his man, Gore, to win and… he so disliked Bush. He was idealistically socialist… to the end.

So, you can see this all over mainstream newspapers and broadcast media. Today, they are almost all deliberately ´not reporting´ most things that are detrimental to the Obama administration and putting a smiley face on other things that can´t possibly be hidden from the public. They routinely ´jump the gun´, applying blame to any of the administration´s opponents, only to have to retract their statements a few hours or days later. The greatest bulk of the journalists out there drool over Obama and any socialistic program or governmental take-over that he and the Congress enact. That´s why I say that into this scribbled world of reporting, a new color has been added – at least to my mind, anyhow. Yeah, and I´m calling this new shade… "Red Journalism".

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David Walks-As-Bear is an Inter-Tribal Elder and Kispoko Shawnee Indian. He works as a private game warden and detective and is a novelist and syndicated newspaper columnist living in Northwest Michigan. Contact him at his home paper The White Lake Beacon: 231-894-5356 or visit his website at: www.Walks-As-Bear.com

Hear David´s brief "Traditional Elder´s Reflections" Mon-Fri, after the 10:00AM and 4:00PM (EST) news on the radio. Go to: www.hometownradio.us and click WEEH-FM.

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