PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, DECEMBER 9, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Make them prove it
America has been a tab-
loid kind of nation for a
while now. Tabloid-style
news gets attention over
in-depth news that reports
what is actually happening.
In the past, news racks
were full of periodicals with
come-on cover stories such
as “I Married an Alien.” Sure, they
were fun to read but most people took
those stories with a huge grain of salt.
These days tabloid stories embrace
our celebrity culture—those types of
magazines herald breathless headlines
that ramp up our curiosity about this
or that A-, B-, C- and D-List names.
We are never so engaged as when we
are faced with a story about our favor-
ite famous person.
Tabloid-type news invaded main-
stream media and any number of
Websites. The First Amendment allows
anyone to write and publish any thing
they wish, regardless of how incredu-
lous it is.
Last week the president-elect, with-
out evidence, said that there were 3
million illegal votes cast in last month’s
presidential election. Some may think
that if he said it, it must be true. The
problem with that is that every news
outlet reported his statement; to be
fair, most of those outlets added that it
was an unfounded and unverifi ed alle-
gation. But that won’t matter to a large
portion of the citizenry.
editorial
A reasonable person can
read an outlandish story in
a supermarket tabloid, roll
their eyes and move on. But
when outlandish stories are
spread by government lead-
ers and media outlets, many
reasonable people would
give that story some cre-
dence.
It is human nature to believe what
one reads or hears on the news. An old
saw says “You can’t believe everything
you read.” That adage seems to have
lost some of its power in our current
climate.
The antidote to fake news is edu-
cation. It is important for our schools
to prepare our high school students for
college and a career. That calls for in-
struction in skills. We must not, ever,
lose sight of the fact that education
must continue—or return—an ele-
ment of developing critical thinking.
Some of us learn that if an offer is too
good to be true, it probably is. The fl ip
side is that if something sounds too
outrageous, it, too, is probably false.
In math and science classes students
are asked to show their work to prove
how they came to the answer.
We should expect nothing less from
our leaders—political, media or oth-
erwise. If they make a statement that
seems too far out, we should ask them
to show us their work—prove it.
—LAZ
Fake news vs. junk news
By DEBRA J.
SAUNDERS
The big “fake news”
stories of 2016 were the
polls. Most showed Donald
Trump losing big in No-
vember, thus cable news
ran countless renditions
of the many ways Trump
could not possibly win the necessary
Electoral College vote. Getting the
story utterly wrong should result in
hand-wringing, hair-pulling and pain-
ful introspection in my profession; in-
stead many in the news business have
turned their hungry eyes on “fake
news” disseminated on Facebook and
Google.
That’s right. After a year of getting
the story consistently wrong, journal-
ism gurus are pointing to phony sto-
ries not produced by the mainstream
media. After the election, The New
York Times ran a piece about Election
Day titled “The Hoaxes, Fake News
and Misinformation We Saw on Elec-
tion Day.” An example from the piece:
A GOP mayor in Georgia tweeted
that Republicans vote on Tuesday,
11/8, but Democrats vote on Wednes-
day, 11/9. Hello, Gray Lady; it was a
joke. How desperate do you have to
be to include that tweet as an example
of misinformation?
“Fake stories and memes that crop
up during live news events have been
a problem on social media for years,
but a wild election season has high-
lighted the news media’s slow response
to them,” the Times’ story began. Slow
response? Au contraire, the media have
been too quick to seize upon every
little speck of dirt one can fi nd surfi ng
social media. Back in the day, TV news
looked to newspapers for good stories;
now producers troll Twitter for what
they call “content.”
Trump could spin out days’ worth
of free TV time from a single tweet—
two days on the tweet itself followed
by two days on Trump’s
failure to react appropri-
ately. (“We wouldn’t even
be discussing this,” some
droll expert would assert,
if Trump had walked back
his original offense.) Jour-
nalists always have been
overly concerned with
what people say as opposed to what
they do. Trump understood how to
exploit that preoccupation by mining
the public’s contempt for the media.
Yes, I know that there are real
“fake news’ stories—such as the one
about the armed man, who fi red off a
round or two before he was arrested,
who went to a D.C. pizzeria to in-
vestigate a bogus story about Hillary
Clinton. Kudos to the good reporting
that took apart the bogus “pizzagate”
story. Thing is, for days before that in-
cident, cable news was buzzing about
“fake news” and the election -- as if
hard-to-swallow conspiracy theories
swayed those voters who had not de-
cided between Clinton and Trump.
Methinks “fake news” would not
be a ubiquitous story if Clinton had
won the White House. It certainly
wasn’t news when Donald Trump
won the GOP primary. “Fake news”
got big when voters acted in a way
that did not confi rm the mainstream
media’s preconceptions.
There seems to be a cautionary tale
in these “fake news” stories, as in: If
only voters had heeded “real” news,
then Trump would not be president-
elect. But really, journalists have only
themselves to blame for handing the
reins of reportage to amateurs. If a
candidate’s remarks on social media
confi rmed the biases of most of the
journalism class, then it was a cable
news story. 2016 was the year of emp-
ty-calorie reportage. Fake news, bad.
Junk news, our bad.
guest
column
(Creators Syndicate)
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What Donald Trump should read
By MICHAEL GERSON
Whatever his other considerable
achievements, our president-elect
is not known for his broad reading
in American history. But Donald
Trump is about to enter that history.
And in the spirit of new beginnings,
he might view this as an opportu-
nity to accumulate some inspiration,
both for his inaugural address and
his manner of governing.
If you were to recommend three
American texts for our president-
elect to read and ponder before tak-
ing the oath of offi ce, what would
they be?
There are, of course, so many
possibilities that any proposed list is
almost entirely subjective. In a casual
survey of friends, I got strong op-
tions by Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.
But since I get to choose, here are
my selections:
First, Martin Luther King’s Let-
ter from a Birmingham Jail. Written in
1963 from solitary confi nement, it
was a response to local white clergy-
men who had condemned protests
and accused King of being an out-
side agitator.
For King, no one is an outsider
when it comes to confronting injus-
tice because “injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere.” King
based a vision of human dignity on
moral law, which takes precedence
over unjust human laws. And King
urges—actually
demands—that
white America see events from a
different perspective. “When you
have seen vicious mobs lynch your
mothers and fathers at will ... when
you have seen hate-fi lled policemen
curse, kick and even kill your black
brothers and sisters ... then you will
understand why we fi nd it diffi cult
to wait.”
The lessons
here?
The
limits of “law
and order,” set
at the bound-
aries of con-
science; the
importance
of protest in a
free society; the need for empathy as
the basis for justice.
Second, I’d propose Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech
to Congress in 1941. America had
not yet been attacked at Pearl Har-
bor. But Roosevelt knew that the
country would eventually be en-
gulfed by the disorders of the world.
So he set out to overcome isola-
tionist sentiment and build public
support for military aid to a belea-
guered Britain.
In his view, America opposes “any
attempt to lock us in behind an an-
cient Chinese wall.” Instead, “the
future and the safety of our coun-
try and of our democracy are over-
whelmingly involved in events far
beyond our borders.” The engage-
ment and sacrifi ce of Americans, he
realized, had to be rooted in an “un-
shakable belief in the manner of life
which they are defending.” And so
he set out the goals of “freedom of
speech and expression—everywhere
in the world ... freedom of every
person to worship God in his own
way—everywhere in the world ...
freedom from want ... freedom from
fear.”
That theory of America’s global
role has been embraced by Demo-
cratic and Republican presidents
since World War II, helping defend
the American people from grave
dangers and stabilizing large por-
other
views
tions of the world.
It is the great power of historical
texts that they speak to us differently,
in different times. We read certain
speeches and documents again and
again. But then, in a new light, they
speak across the years, as close as a
voice over your shoulder.
This is true of my third choice:
George Washington’s “Letter to the
Hebrew Congregation of Newport,
Rhode Island.” Washington was re-
sponding to a letter of thanks from
representatives of the largest Jewish
community in colonial America.
“It is now no more that tolera-
tion is spoken of,” replied Washing-
ton, “as if it was by the indulgence
of one class of people, that another
enjoyed the exercise of their inher-
ent natural rights. For happily the
Government of the United States,
which gives to bigotry no sanction,
to persecution no assistance requires
only that they who live under its
protection should demean them-
selves as good citizens.”
Washington continued: “May the
Children of the Stock of Abraham
who dwell in this land, continue to
merit and enjoy the good will of the
other Inhabitants; while every one
shall sit in safety under his own vine
and fi g tree, and there shall be none
to make him afraid.”
This is the proper response to an-
ger and division. We are not a nation
that grants tolerance; we are a nation
that recognizes inherent rights, held
equally by all the Children of Abra-
ham, and everyone else. And when
we come back to our deepest values,
as we always do, there shall be none
to make them afraid.
(Washington
Group)
Post
Writers
We should be taking care of us fi rst
Listening to any apostle of the
refugees fl ooding our country, one
learns that they want every Ameri-
can to invite these folks into their
homes as guests for however long
it takes for them to get settled here
and fi nd a job. The refugees, they
argue, should be fi rst in line to take
any available jobs no matter the con-
sequences to U.S. citizens or those
who arrived by lawful immigra-
tion procedures. There’s a whole
lot more, too, that we’re expected to
give so that these folks feel welcome
and warm here.
Now, these folks are refugees
for a reason; in the example of
Aleppo, came apart and their gov-
ernment turned on them because
their menfolk were shooting at an
entrenched dictator, trying to over-
throw the government. Why they
did not make an effort to stop the
madness of attacking a madman be-
fore it began is explained usually by
“enshallah” (God’s will) then waiting
for us to save them.
These days they want a safe haven
and the best place for that is Canada,
Western Europe or the U.S. Point
in fact is they really do not want to
be anywhere but home in that part
of the Middle East, Pakistan or from
wherever they have fl ed. It can be
predicted that they most likely will
not seek to integrate with we hea-
thens here, will not work at learn-
ing our language, will not adopt our
customs or live by our sectarian laws.
The war-torn among them will
most often keep their heads down
and make an effort to keep from get-
ting deported due to bad behaviors.
However, what’s become more and
more common, in the places where
they’ve relocated, is that the small
children brought with them and
those
born
here are far too
often
radical-
ized by Mus-
lim
terrorists,
mainly ISIS and
al-Qaeda leader-
ship, after which
they buy guns
and make bombs to settle imaginary
wrongs on innocent Americans.
Almost every day in the American
media there is an article by one of
the bleeding heart refugees’ apostles.
It tells of how the refugees in their
homes are so wonderful that you,
Mr. and Ms. America, just must open
your doors and embrace them. They
never say that when those who’ve
invited them in or brought them
here from afar, and tire of their dif-
ferent ways of doing things and for-
eign-minded demands, sooner or
later to rise, that these folks will be
turned loose on the rest of us to pay
gene h.
mcintyre
the price of supporting them after
their sponsors walk away.
Meanwhile, how is it that more
of us are not doing anything about
the huge and growing number of
Americans with children who are
without employment, any means of
self-support and homeless? These are
the American people inside our bor-
ders for whom help and sustenance
should fi rst be directed. In any kind
of a moral universe, our own must
be assisted before we go running
around the planet to relocate those
persons who really don’t want to be
here and are a danger to the all the
rest of us. Finally here, and perhaps
most telling, our state and national
coffers are nearly empty, the people
refuse more taxes, the U.S. Congress
only supports warring overseas, and
America’s corporations get a free
ride with no social responsibility.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)