Bangor Daily News publishes the following genteel headline:
Take this job and shove it: Fed-up Bangor TV anchors quit on air
“Citing a longstanding battle with upper management over journalistic practices at their Bangor TV stations, news co-anchors Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced their resignations at the end of Tuesday’s 6 p.m. newscast. … “I just wanted to know that I was doing the best job I could and was being honest and ethical as a journalist, and I thought there were times when I wasn’t able to do that,” said Consiglio, a northeastern Connecticut native who broke in with WVII as a sports reporter in April 2006. … [S]he explained, “It’s a little complicated, but we were expected to do somewhat unbalanced news, politically, in general.” Neither Michaels nor Consiglio would say what specific political leaning they were expected to adopt. Consiglio, who also was executive producer, said the balanced journalistic approach they use for all their stories was sometimes frowned upon.”
So two veteran and apparently ethical journalists resigned because being ethical and balanced and unbiased was allegedly not the preferred approach to news. The following is my editorial opinion regarding the state of the media and the coming quest for truth in the antichrist regime.
I grew up with Huntley and Brinkley and the Huntley-Brinkley Report. Theirs was the NBC television network’s flagship evening news program from October 29, 1956, until July 31, 1970. Each newscast ended with “Good night, Chet. Good night, David. And good night, for NBC News.” I was born in 1960 so the first ten years of my life involved absorbing their sonorous voices. As a matter of fact, critics considered Huntley to possess one of the best broadcast voices ever heard. The duo was filled with gravitas, and I was caught up in watching my parents’ absorbed attention to them. So I paid attention too. They looked like newscasters, they sounded like newscasters. They were newscasters.
In their final broadcast, Chet Huntley said, “I might also remind you that American journalism, all of it, is the best anywhere in the world.” And at that time, it was still true. After them came Walter Cronkite, dubbed ‘the most trusted man in America.’As Howard Kurtz said of early Cronkite, “I watched his image flickering on a small black-and-white set, the voice of authority in an age when we still revered, without a trace of cynicism, those who spoon-fed us the news.”
Huntley could say in all truth that American journalism was the best, and we could listen to him say that without laughing. Cronkite’s liberal bias and questionable ethics didn’t come to the fore until many years later. The 1950s and 60s and even the 70s era Watergate of Woodward & Bernstein and aggressive investigative journalism of 60 minutes were golden years for many in America of eagerly waiting to hear truthful news without bias.
In Huntley’s final broadcast, Huntley went on to say, “But you have bolstered my conviction that this land contains incredible quality and quantity of good, common sense, and it’s in no danger of being led down a primrose path by a journalist” but that statement unfortunately has not held up. Look where we are today.
The nature of sin and the nature of greed in politics has wound us down to the recent election and status we now endure- a grasping American public reliant on handouts and voting for the one who will subsidize them the most, a craven political system spawning politicians only to happy to comply as long as it lines their own pockets too, and a colluding Fourth Estate eager to get in on the action.
I think there would be little disagreement if I said there is a severe lack of common sense in society today and that we have gone far down the primrose path.
The Fourth Estate, or journalism, is important because a truthfully informed electorate can make the best decisions, and the best decisions benefit us all. Journalism also reflects us back to ourselves and if we do not like what we see we can take steps to change it. Journalism is both the mirror and the means to a healthy civilization within the confines of a vigorous democracy.
America’s national face has become a horror to many.
There was an old Twilight Zone episode called The Masks. A millionaire in New Orleans is about to die, and he summons his buffoonish, narcissistic, cowardly and miserly family members to be with him as he does. He tells them they get all his money if they do one final thing: put on the Mardi Gras masks ‘made special by an old Cajun’, and wear them until midnight. He sarcastically tells them that the personalities depicted on the mask are the opposite of their true personality. They are reluctant, but they are eager to get the money so in the end they don the masks.
As the hours tick by, the kindly patriarch bristles at having to be with his worm-like family members and he insults them. The family members are in pain as the masks, they tell him, are unbearable. At midnight the old feller makes one final tirade and expires. The family, caring less for their grandfather and more for themselves, take off the masks, but to their horror they discover that their faces have transformed to the personality depicted on their on unique mask: narcissist, coward, sadistic buffoon, and miser. Their outward personality is now seen plainly on their faces. They are no longer hidden by the mask they once wore of outward moral righteousness. The inward cravenness and the outward face presented to the world now match. Finally, they wore no mask.
This could be an allegory for America. It’s sort of like the chicken and the egg question- did the media’s constant portrayal of us as craven greedy gimme culture spark the culture, or is the media’s portrayal of us as such simply the drawing out of what had long been there, whereupon we finally wear no mask?
I’m not speaking literally of course, because not every single person in America is a wastrel. Jesus’s bride is spotless and shining, a moral example of HIS righteousness. However, with the recent election, it is clear that the media’s reflection of ourselves back to us has stripped off any semblance of moral righteousness or even political courage, and shown us that what the majority prefers is homosexual perversion, child murder, adultery, moral relativism, greed, and no accountability for any of it. Pardon me, but our inward horror is showing.
In leaving off the Fourth Estate for a moment and turning to the general media, I am daily getting more sick at watching television. Just the sheer number of commercials is outrageous, but the subject of them is atrocious. In attempting to watch even the most innocuous of shows, a quiet cooking show called Chopped, the ads in between the show segments made me sick. In successive turn, I saw an ad for vaginal mesh, male enhancement for more fun in the bedroom, and a housewife pole dancing around an upright vacuum. I turned the TV off.
It is nice to read that there are heroes, still. The two newscasters who resigned on the basis of desiring to present the news pure and unadulterated without management bias or political leanings are to be commended. Neither of them have a job lined up. Their stand is acknowledged and appreciated.
Just as God is stripping Israel of her stability to the point at the outset of the Gog Magog war Israel finds when she cannot even rely on her own vaunted military- and they appeal to Him, He is stripping away reliance on man’s truth for decision-making. The media is not to be trusted, anywhere, even in a small northern city like Bangor. No place is unadulterated.
Our God is so great, that the antichrist and most of the people on earth will not even realize that it is GOD who is allowing this lying agenda to advance. It is His will and design to show us that as John said of Jesus in the beginning,
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).
The truth cannot be found on earth. Jesus is the only truth and it can be found in His word. It contains all that we need to reflect ourselves back to ourselves: we are sinners in need of a Savior, and being perfectly holy, He has the answers.
“and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).
