When I was in high school I had a good friend named Bill Dickey. Bill wanted to become a journalist. I lost track of Bill after high school because his family moved and I went to Colorado to college. But, Bill was one of the most curious people I ever met. He wanted to know everything about everything and loved to write about everything. Back then, that is what it took to be a journalist. Now, those are not the qualities that would make someone be a “journalist”. Today, all you have to do is read the Democrat talking points and write about that.

During this entire episode with the miss-named Stimulus Bill there has been a curious lack of interest from journalists about the bill or what it would do to or for the country. Back when a journalist was really supposed to find the truth out about things and be a watchdog, there would have been a flood of articles about the Trojan Horse Bill also known as the Pork Spending Bill or the Porkulus Bill. Today, there have been few articles from people that call themselves journalists about what is in the bill. Ten or twenty years ago, that would never have happened to any bill before Congress whether it is a Democrat bill or a Republican bill. Republican bills always got more investigation, but Democrat bills also got their share. Today, there is nothing.

Had this bill been authored by Republicans, the bill would have had its share of articles, all of them negative. This bill does not get any articles about it other than repeating what some Democrat says about the bill or maybe some Republican criticism. There is no original research by any journalist to determine for themselves what is in the bill.

That is not to say that there have not been articles about the bill and what is in it. There have been a lot of articles about the bill and what is in it. The problem is that all of them are from people who are not journalists and do not have access to newspapers, radio news programs or TV news programs. There have been a lot of articles about the bill on the blogosphere. The only people that read the blogosphere are the hard core news junkies. The average person just reads the newspaper or listens to the radio or watches TV news to get their information. They will not get any of their information about the bill reading blogs.

In my opinion, the problem with the main stream journalists is that they all lean hard left. Since they all lean in one direction, in talking among themselves they only get one viewpoint. In this last election this problem really came to a head when the news media dropped all pretenses and actively supported one candidate. That had never happened before in the entire history of the country. There were always two sides to the main stream media and they always tried to portray the two main contenders for the Presidency in the same tone. In this election, they ignored that ideology and just all went for one man. Even if they had supported my candidate for Presidency, I do not think that I would want the news media to actively support one candidate. I want the news media to be as impartial as possible.

As a teacher, I take great pride when a student tries to guess my political positions and gets them wrong. That means that I am teaching as impartial as is humanly possible. It is never possible to be completely impartial. You will always favor one over the other. That is not the question. The question is did you treat both candidates as equally as possible? Did you ask the same or similar questions to both candidates? If you asked follow-up questions to one candidate, did you do the same with the other? If you can answer yes to all those questions, then you have done your job well. In this last election, there were very few journalists who could have answered all those questions with the answer of yes.

Right now, the news media and journalists in general are held in a very bad light. People realize that they are not impartial news reporters, they are partial news makers. The news now has to be filtered by the question, what does this journalist believe about this issue, event? That is sad. The only other countries that do that are countries where the news media is tightly controlled like Communist China or Cuba. Our news media voluntarily decided to become like Communist China or Cuba. That is really sad. Our news media was always the pride of the world for its independence. Now it has become the arm of the Democrat party. What a shame that they have sunk to that low. I would say the same if they were the arm of the Republican Party. They should never be the propaganda arm of any party. They should be fiercely independent and never take no for an answer. That is the type of journalist I know Bill Dickey would have become. I hope that he had that chance.