Have a new op-ed piece at American Thinker

Continuing my commitment to write a new op-ed piece each week of 2025 (or aspiring to anyway), news and commentary website American Thinker - a site I can't recommend nearly enough - has just published my latest.

In 'It's Time to Cleans the White House Press Corps", arguments are laid out for why the gaggle of journalists assigned to cover the president and his affairs should be thoroughly pruned down.  Not just because too many of them have demonstrated they can't strive for impartiality either.  If for no other reason it's because "traditional" outlets like CNN and Washington Post have had their audiences wiped out over the course of recent years, while more "alternative" media has emerged as the inheritors of that mantle.

Here's a snippet:

When the Internet first came into widespread use, it was envisioned that it would bring with it the end of gatekeeping. Never more would the spread of information be controlled by a few “professional” outlets. Every individual could be his own publisher, and even become a live news broadcaster as the technology further evolved.

It has taken more than thirty years, but that time has come. Indeed, it has been with us for a while already. Now at last it is being fully engaged with. When online broadcasters like Joe Rogan command regular audiences in the tens of millions while longstanding network broadcasters struggle to maintain a hundred thousand viewers, there has been a dire sea change that cannot go unacknowledged.

Trump Administration 2.0 has a glorious opportunity before it. And that is to end the mainstream press’s influence as it has come to be known and reviled.

Mash down here for more.

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The News & Record has banned me from leaving comments

Okay, to be fair, there has not been any formal notification of exile.  But having attempted to make comments with five different browsers and automatically being directed to a Facebook "blue screen of banishment" with each one, it's safe to say at this point that I am now persona non grata from adding to reader commentary on the News & Record website.  It was discovered two days ago and no correspondence has been returned from their staff about it so, looks like I've been dispatched to the hinterlands... or at least those where Greensboro, North Carolina's "newspaper of record" is concerned.

As for why the banning has taken place: if it was in violation of terms of service, I can't find a single example.  And I went back through the past few months, from around late spring when I began leaving comments on their published letters, editorials, and some published articles.  Not once was I rude or condescending or suggesting that any other commentator was being an idiot or imbecilic.  I strived for both respect and also intelligent conversation to move discussion forward, instead of promoting one ideology or another.  The image at the right is a screengrab of a typical exchange, involving a former News & Record editor and myself.  If anyone spots any inconformity with the rules of polite society, I would appreciate understanding how.

More likely though, it is nothing more or less than the News & Record editorial staff exercising censorship against those expressing opinion contrary to a leftist bias that grows more apparent with each passing day.  And other commenters have suggested much the same.  In the words of one:

"They also check our FB pages out. I like your thoughtful comments on N&R. I have been attacked by a few on the left but I try not to be snarky. They love to censor anyone who might be right leaning."

I have to concur. It also goes a long way in explaining why there seems to be a 10 to 1 ratio of anti-Trump letters published compared to any conveying anything positive about the man. Given that the vast majority of the News & Record's eleven-county coverage area went solid red for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, the remarkable proportion of letters condemning the man (often on the most ridiculous of grounds) is suspect.

As for what I plan to do so far as the News & Record - the newspaper that I began my writing career with by way of all those letters and occasional op-ed piece and religious articles of mine that they began publishing just before my senior year of high school began - is concerned, there is no doubt at all.  I will do nothing apart from this blog post.  I'm not even in the Greensboro area anymore, but just "peeking in" every so often to see how transpires events there.

Mostly however, it's because the News & Record as a newspaper is dying.  It's been bleeding away readers in recent years like a sliced-open artery.  Advertisers are fleeing, and the Sunday classified ads are no longer the small volumes of separate section.  A few years ago the page width of the newspaper editions was slashed drastically.  Staff has been let go.  There is talk of shuttering the once-imposing News & Record headquarters in downtown Greensboro.

None of these are indicators of a healthy and vibrant newspaper enterprise.  Not even charging money after ten free articles a month on their website is going to prop up this failing business.  Maybe outside (read as: "foreign", parse that as one may) interests might subsidize the News & Record, but the days of being supported by its own community are numbered.

This is what happens when a daily news publication pitches itself as "the journal of record" for an area - an assumption that demands total dedication to impartiality - and instead becomes a propaganda broadsheet.  In the case of the News & Record it has turned into a progressive outlet to the far left of old-school Pravda.  It is, not to put too fine a point on it, NOT an unbiased and impartial news outlet.  It can no longer be trusted and if it ever could, those days are fast receding in the rear-view mirror.

(Incidentally, when I was traveling on a meandering journey across America recently, I visited the offices of many small-town newspapers and not a one of them wasn't thriving.  Why were they so strong?  Because they committed themselves to news, and with keeping themselves above any social or political agenda.  But political agenda is all that the News & Record is motivated by now, apparently.  Being snide and condescending and sophomoric and insulting the readers only goes so far before there is blowback.)

So, why should I be upset that I've been banned from making comments on the website of such a newspaper?  The News & Record is going to be dead in a few years anyway.  All that will remain are microfiche and piled-up copies in the dusty storerooms of the Greensboro Public Library and at UNC-Greensboro.  And an empty edifice in the downtown of one of the largest cities in North Carolina.  Grim, mute relics of a newspaper that was once acclaimed, respectable, and trusted.

That, and lots of unemployed reporters and editors and managers.

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A troubling trend in News & Record journalism

The News & Record in Greensboro - the region's largest newspaper - has a story on the front page of today's edition about last night's resolution by the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners to restore the Confederate Soldiers Monument in downtown Reidsville (see earlier post here).

For some reason or another Joe Gamm - the reporter who wrote the story - chose to include the following in his article...

"After a court approved replacing the monument, vandals spray-painted the words 'Monument is coming back' on an auto body shop run by an African American businessman who outspokenly opposed returning the statue to its original spot."

Could somebody please explain to me: What does the above reference by Mr. Gamm have anything... anything at all... to do with what happened to the Confederate monument from the time of the accident in 2011 up 'til today?

Because I can't find any legitimate reason whatsoever.

What I do see however see is a not-so-subtle attempt to inject an inflammatory issue into the matter at hand, when said issue is NOT germane to the discussion at all.

"Objective journalism"? Hardly. It's not the first time I've seen such writing employed by the News & Record lately either. Earlier this month Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson suffered a heart attack. The News & Record article made a teeny mention of that significant fact, choosing instead to harp on the lawsuit that Johnson is facing from the United States Department of Justice in regard to alleged racial profiling.

Nothing personal against Mr. Gamm. But I expect better out of the News & Record and every one of its writers (many of whom I have come to know and respect over the years). Unfortunately there is an appearance of considerable bias in what is otherwise a well-written story. However one such aside as this - when its sole seeming purpose is to inject overtones of racism into a matter demanding sobriety of senses - throws everything about it into question and doubt.

And that isn't meant to suggest any disparagement or diminishing the grievousness of the vandalism done to Ernie Pinnix's property. Vandalism is a severe crime regardless of the motive. It should be prosecuted because it is a crime, regardless of why the perpetrator did it. But that incident was, or at least should be, a completely separate matter from the Confederate monument.

Mr. Gamm, News & Record editors: this isn't proper journalism, and we all know it.

Again, do better.

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Bias in mainstream press? WHAT bias?! (anti-gun vs. pro-life)

The apparently big story right now is about the estimated fewer than 1,000 who marched in Washington D.C. today against the Second Amendment. I understand that this has made all of the major evening new broadcasts: CBS, NBC, CNN etc.

To the very best of my understanding, there was NO such coverage at all of yesterday's March for Life, which many have calculated drew more than 500,000 to the Mall to protest abortion -the premeditated murder of unborn children - on the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Now, applying some logic here, you would think that a story regarding half a million people would dwarf that of an event which drew, at most, several hundred.

But I suppose when it comes to stories and their coverage from big media, some of them just don't fit the expected narrative...

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See BS: Tiffany Network caught discriminating against Paul, Bachmann

If CBS or any other "major media outlet" alleges that this is a matter of time constraint, then I'm gonna have to call it that I see B.S.

Look, five years ago I was one of sixteen candidates for school board in my home county, and in the final week before the election we all took part (well, one of us declined to participate, but that's another story) in a public candidates forum. A "debate", if you will. And each of us got ample time to state our beliefs and opinions on the various issues. For the very same questions, mind ya. Many people to this day still tell me that they got a kick out of my answer about whether school boards should have the power to tax: I told the audience "Look, if I get on that board and we have that power, there are good people on that board but I'm telling you now: DON'T TRUST US!! Don't trust us with that power to tax you!" But I digress...

The point is, even with a considerable number of individual candidates for office, there is PLENTY of equal time and opportunity to be afforded them by the organization sponsoring the debate... IF that organization is determined to be fair, balanced and impartial, that is.

Didn't Howard Stern once say that the term "Tiffany Network" reminded him too much of the name of a prostitute? If so, then last night CBS was certainly caught in the act of selling out its principles. What few it had left anyway...

During yesterday evening's televised debate of the Republican candidates for President, Ron Paul was given a scant 89 seconds of airtime to answer questions and lay out his claim for the Oval Office. Fellow candidate Michelle Bachmann received similarly reduced on-air exposure. The lion's share of the questions and time for answers went to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich.

It is now a clearly documented fact that CBS was practicing deliberate discrimination against those candidates that it believes the American citizenry would do just as well to ignore.

CBS political director John Dickerson inadvertently forwarded the Bachmann campaign an e-mail stating that Bachmann would not be given much show time because...

“Okay let’s keep it loose since she’s not going to get many questions and she’s nearly off the charts in the hopes that we can get someone else."

CBS later said that they were trying to be "realistic" since Bachmann is "polling" about 4% nationally.

And this blogger says: that don't don't hunt. A study released last month by University of Minnesota notes that Ron Paul, though polling a strong third or fourth nationally, has been given the least amount of debate time during every televised forum.

Now if this ain't intentional bias and discrimination on the part of a major television news outlet, then... what is it? How can anyone defend CBS - and indeed, most of the more corporate-run press in this country - as being an objective and impartial observer of this country and this world?

Some are probably reading this and no doubt determined to tell me "Chris, CBS is a multi-billion dollar corporation and you're just a guy with a blog: what the hell do you think you can do about it?"

True, I don't have CBS's viewing numbers.

But I can document that network's abuse of journalistic ethics. Which in my opinion, this is an example of.

And there are a lot of others out there in the ether of the Intertubes who are likewise documenting it.

Meanwhile, networks like CBS keep losing viewers, 'cuz there are a lot of folks out there who are getting sick and tired of seeing B.S. too.

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