Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi
On New Year’s Eve, The Washington Post published a shockingly biased, even as measured in the current shoddy journalism era, Op-Ed piece. Titled “The Demographic Time Bomb that Could Hit America,” the commentary reflects the author’s opinion that declining population would represent many dramatic societal challenges.
Crucial details though are omitted, perhaps purposely. Specifically, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2060 the United States is projected to grow by 79 million people, from today’s 326 million to 404 million. Population is not in decline as the column infers. Far from it, population is projected to cross the 400-million threshold in 2058.
Calling all Post editors! Publishing a column about declining population’s perils when population is in fact soaring is an example of why the mainstream media’s trustworthiness remains well below poll numbers from decades back in the public’s eye.
According to the Post, in 2017, the U.S. had the fewest babies born in the last 30 years – nearly 3.9 million births, down 2 percent from 2016. The birth decline is statistical fact, but then the Post’s speculation runs wild. Fewer births would mean fewer workers, and therefore a smaller economy and a reduced tax base to collect the revenues that pay for vital social services.
The Post’s immigration advocacy likely explains the half-truth column. The author, Catherine Rampell, called for “a more liberal immigration system,” and noted that “immigrants … tend to have more babies than do native-born Americans.” But surprisingly, at least to supporters of fair and balanced journalism, Rampell ignored the key Census Bureau fact that immigrants and their children are population growth’s leading drivers. The Pew Hispanic Center took the current population growth rate trends and, assuming that they remain unchanged, projected that by 2065 – a slightly longer timeline than the Census Bureau used – immigrants and their children will account for 88 percent of the increase.
Editors have an organization that claims to pursue the highest journalistic standards. In 1922, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, renamed in 2009 as the American Society of News Editors, was formed to advance its profession, and to that end, wrote a code of ethics for members to adhere to. Currently, the ASNE posted and thereby endorsed the Columbia Journalism Review’s guidelines for immigration stories: “Look at immigrant connections and contributions to industry, economy, religion, education, culture and family life.” Okay to all that. But there’s another part of the immigration tale that must be, because it affects all Americans including immigrants, included.
The Census Bureau facts and the Pew Hispanic Center’s analysis of that data represent vitally important information that Post readers and, for that matter, all Americans should know, especially during the Trump era when immigration dominates the daily news cycle. Many Americans are conflicted about immigration, and deserve to know both sides of the argument. After all, the population increases between today and the mid-2060s represent about a 25 percent bump. If Americans were asked how they feel about 25 percent more people in their already overcrowded neighborhoods, schools and hospitals and on highways, most would be overwhelmingly opposed.
Instead of the full, unvarnished story, readers routinely get a set of cherry-picked facts that the media, abandoning its professional responsibilities, puts forward. Time for the truth, and let the nation come to its own conclusions.
The mainstream media has always been dishonest. From the “yellow journalism” of the late 1800s and early 1900s to today’s “fake news”, journalism has shown its true (communist) roots.
From the lies about the Spanish-American war to the New York Times’ walter duranty hiding the truth about and denying the artificially engineered and forced communist “famine” in the Ukraine, to the lies about the 1968 Viet Nam communist Tet offensive (a military victory for the South Vietnamese and American troops) reported by walter cronkite as a military defeat, cronkite and his ilk were successful in prolonging the Viet Nam war for years, giving “aid and comfort” to the enemy, who bragged about being supported by the U S media.
Look at NBCs doctoring of GMC truck gas tanks, rigging them to explode, and the deliberate mischaracterization of George Zimmerman’s conversation withe the 911 dispatcher, deleting a key phrase, as well as showing Trayvon Martin as a 12-year-old cherub rather than his more recent “thug” facebook picture.
The media has become a “fifth column” of the government and is not to be trusted. The CIA has had its hooks in the media since the 1950s. In fact, Hollywood script writers were paid to insert anti-drug messages in their scripts during the “drug hysteria” period of the 1980s through 2000s. Today, we have “crisis actors” embedded in our government and media, the same “crisis actors” who keep showing up, being used in every (fake) “crisis”. The mainstream media keeps parroting these impostors, thinking that we are stupid, not being able to see through their lies and deceptions.
To our advantage, we now have the internet, which gives the ordinary citizen the ability to see through the deceptions and lies, and the capability to be real “journalists”, quite often getting and reporting the story TRUTHFULLY before the mainstream media.
In fact, there are calls by “mainstream media” to “license” journalists, in an attempt to keep these “citizen journalists” out…twenty years ago, any journalist suggesting such a scheme would have been thrown out, but nowadays…who knows?
“To our advantage, we now have the internet, which gives the ordinary citizen the ability to see through the deceptions and lies, and the capability to be real “journalists”, quite often getting and reporting the story TRUTHFULLY before the mainstream media.”
Thus the censorship that Gaagle and Facefart are doing.
The Pulitzer Prize has always been awarded to the best liar –
BY the best liars. The IgNobel Peace Prize? At the Obomanation, looks like it does too. Then again, the insiders always knew that. And were ROFLTAO. What should we expect from an award from The Merchant of Death?
Stop calling them journalists and call them the paid government propagandists they are.
There’s no professional standard to return to.
“…If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed…”— Mark Twain
Already taken care of. A quote from today’s CHS:
“2019 is the year that central banks and states lose control of the narratives, the economy and the social contract, all of which are dynamic complex systems which excel in producing banquets of unintended consequences.
Control of the narrative requires harvesting “the right data” and spinning an interpretation that supports the status quo. How can anyone outside the central state / organs of propaganda know if the “raw data” has been massaged into the “right data”? The process is opaque, invisible to outsiders, and insiders are threatened with ruin should they make what is purposefully opaque visible to all.”
That total media corruption must be cleansed. First by bankruptcy. Then by extended joblessness.
GenZ already got the (conservative, civic) message from the sins of their corrupt millennial parents. Some of them will rise to the task of the new journalism. My favorite lefties Timcast and Styxhexenhammer are already there. Is this what the future looks like?
When was the last time you bought a newspaper?
When was the last time I bought a newspaper? Decades?
Have a friend who still likes and thinks reading the local newspaper makes him in the know about current events.
Like a couple of extended family females, who regulary watch & listen to nightly TV news, be it the Cabal News Network, local UPI affiliate, or MicroScamNationalBullshitCult.
They drink the swill.
Even the ones who web browse for news buy into the lies with gusto, thinking it’s free, independent, and factual info.
Even worse, they absolutely refuse to believe any information of alternatives to the narrative, dismissing any counter argument as ridiculous conspiracy theories of the tin foil hat wearing gang.
In a phrase, they don’t know.
And, they don’t know they don’t know.
Brainwashed idiots. Sheep.
Select, rare few find places like this platform. Enlightenment sites, which are aggressively being targeted for prohibition, censorship, removal, etc.
Info wars, indeed.
I don’t even try to open their eyes and mind anymore. Hopelessly frustrating.
They can’t because they never had any. To think a return to the ethics of Dan Rather and Brian Williams would be an improvement is scarey
The MSM is the enemy of “We the People”.