The New York Times still boasts that it holds "all the news that's fit to print."  That implies that it holds "all the truth," too.  But in today's journalism world, you're as likely to find the truth as you are to get an honestly shuffled deck of cards from a magician or a cheater.

I have never been a professional journalist.  I studied journalism at the University of Maryland, and I taught journalism for many years as a high school English teacher.  I am also a political junkie leaning to the right side of the political spectrum in the USA.  I grew up in the sixties and still retain many of the ideals I picked up in those days.

The holy word of journalism is objectivity.  Objectivity calls for reporters to report facts and the news as it is without slanting the news in one direction or another.  Sadly, objectivity in journalism is as rare as virginity on college campuses.  Objectivity is still revered in journalism textbooks but rarely practiced in the real world of journalism.

Journalism as it is practiced today is really card-stacking.  Papers and other media outlets show the cards they want to show the public and hide the cards they do not want the public to see.  If something happens and they don't report it, it didn't really happen.  It's like that tree falling in the woods when no one is around to hear it.

Some papers lean to the right, and many papers lean to the left.  All are guilty of card-stacking.  All practice the power of exclusion, which gives the papers the ability to control the daily narrative of what is happening in America.

The major casualty of all this card-stacking and exclusion is that we rarely learn the truth about anything.  A virtual news blackout has been imposed on any scrutiny of the fairness of the 2020 election.

Wouldn't it be nice if the reporters practiced real objectivity and let the chips fall wherever they will fall?  I live 30 miles from Washington, and the place stinks to high heaven.  A steady and unexpected objective wind of unbiased reporting would do much to rid us of the odor of entrenched corruption in our nation's capital.  

Image: Hand holding playing cards by Nacasa.  Photo via Good Free Photos.