When I was in high school, I had four English teachers and four literature teachers who insisted that we get our facts straight before we put anything to paper.
This was in the halcyon days of yore where sources were checked, facts were quantified and grades were dropped on the least whiff of plagerism.
Now, journalism seems to have all but faded away in the glaring, harsh light of MEDIA coverage.
The important thing is sales volume not truth.
Taking a quote out of context and twisting someone's words through inflection, comma placement and headlining has become a national sport.
The saddest part of all of this is that the media is not content to report news anymore. They have become what everyone of conscience feared. The media now decides what the news SHOULD be, crafts carefully a public image and tells us what our personal conscience should accept as relative truth.
They "doctor" photographs of gorey violence to add more blood as if horror isn't horrible enough.
They "spin" the words of truth to become statements of intolerance and bigotry to suit the 30 second headlines for the evening news.
The media has taken away the ideal of only reporting "the facts, ma'am, just the facts" and instead manufactures whatever version of truth is in political vogue.
The Roman Empire must have certainly employed newsmakers like these. The fall of private persons would never have been so spectacularly devastating otherwise.
We have 24-hour coverage of the debased, the debauched and the devilish. Show even a moral, decent and honest person a steady diet of this filth and it will have an effect, if only to dull the senses of what is right and what is wrong.
Contrary to public opinion being shoved down our throats by those who are spin doctoring the truth into a palatable lie, there are some things that ARE ABSOLUTES.
If we who know the truth refuse to stand up and say something, we will find ourselves out on a very dangerous limb that we have carefully sawed halfway through in our haste to be viewed as 'tolerant'.
Being tolerant has become a perversion of truth. It was never intended to be this way.
Allowing people to have room on the road of life to live and let live doesn't mean that they should do so at the peril of those who do not share the same views. Yet we have an entire subset of our culture that preaches exactly that.
If we refuse to espouse the opinion du jour that is being vomited forth from the rags and daily's and online sources, we are being bigoted and intolerant even if our personal beliefs and religious observances tell us for certain that what is being demanded is wrong.
Accountability in what is being published and read is essential if we are to prevent the collapse of our nation like the collapse of the Roman Civilization.
We are no different than they are. They succumbed to the Father of Lies and we are courting disaster by allowing him plenty of air time.
There is a saying that I believe to be true: "No one ever fell into a mud puddle who didn't first go too close to it." (Sterling W. Sill)
If we continue to skirt the edge of the puddle and skip around as if we are immune, we will eventually fall in and be coated with the filth that in prior days we would have abhorred.
I've started filtering which media sources I use and choose to believe. There is plenty of good out there that gets no air time.
It's a good idea to let some Light in on that Good News and remember that Christ had His detracters, but it never prevented Him from giving the truth as the message even when it made someone else mad.
