by Ed Sumcad
NWS Columnist

Sound the alarm … politicized websites are no longer free to publish the truth!

      To paraphrase the concerns of legitimate pen-pushers and to sound of the warning of the ever vigilant sentinels of free expression that protect our democratic way of life -- what is dangerous is not because of what’s reported, but because of what is not reported. 

     Website reporting is part of the entire U.S. Media networks surveyed by Gallup and The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The results of the two polls were hardly at variance.  Public trust on the Media is plummeting down to zero.  As of the time the polls were conducted, the all time low was already down to only 18% because reporting is bias, and down to only 28% because the Media that turned lascivious is no longer reporting facts accurately! 

     Like what they say, the truth hurts. In most instances, the truth that hurts is avoided or ignored. To survive, online publishers generally kowtow to the agenda of their ideological patrons or politicized sponsors.  They are no longer free to publish the truth. 

      It explains why nowadays in cyberspace, Internet publishers are known to be hardly people-friendly. Those who distrust them are quite disturbed by their attitudinal arrogance and damaging publishing behavior. 

     I am not just disquieted … I am shocked by this nascent discovery. 

     Many independent-minded writers or journalists were the first to know of this Media’s San Andreas Fault that shakes the credulity of the public like an earthquake every time mean-spirited publishers or fiendish media networks kicked them overboard or instead of defending them in a heated debate over issues of critical importance to the nation, are jettisoned into orbit as flying debris in outer space or here on earth are thrown in front of the bus, so to speak.  Anyone can just surf the Web to find the graveyards of those who were fired dead … or to be civil and polite about it, a.k.a. retired or resigned casualties. 

     Since Obama ran for president two years ago, Web publishers sprouted like mushrooms overnight. They became the weapons of “liberal demagogues” [according to Gallup] in their fight for Obama. Like energized combatants that just joined the information war, Web publishers competed alongside the warring major media networks in turning the Media into a virtual nightwalker serving the highest bidder while claiming to be sentinels or watchdogs of public interest.  As a result, public confidence on the Media plummeted down rapidly. The simple reason for this loss of confidence is that nobody trusts a whore. 

     This prostitution of the Media is said to have left its indelible mark in American history.  The first black presidential candidate whose qualification to become president has a big question mark because his birthplace was undetermined but nevertheless pursued by a flirtatious suitor – the manipulative Media -- was elected president of the United States. 

      The truth is, when the self evidently debased Media is supposedly serving the 'truth' to the American people, the self-interest of deeply politicized website owners is much stronger than the interest of the public they pretend to serve to earn their keeps. 

       Revenue-driven publishers had truncated their publicly declared editorial policy away from public responsibility of which they are licensed to operate.  Serving their own self-interest, they turned away from their primary responsibility to uphold first the interest of the public before their own. 

       We are looking at the advent of a wayward media world in 2010 onward. In it is this power which publication owners could not resist using anyway they want. It intoxicates those who are morally weak, especially those whose blood cannot absorb and digest the alcohol of uncontrollable exercise of authority in the name of the freedom of the press over journalists that cannot be bought by gold or coerced by guns and goons. Drunk with this elixir of new-found power of the Media, many publishers lately attracted public attention when they declare as part of their editorial policy that they own the website and they can do whatever they want to do with it, use it anyway they want or even use it against anyone they do not like. 

        This arrogance can be ignored or even forgiven if we are just trying to calm down a crazy media owner who obviously the public must be protected from.  What’s terrifying about it is this clear indication of ignorance of what the Fourth Estate’s role is in our free society. Pseudo-media men with a pen in their hand that conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte feared more than a thousand bayonets are in comparison, more dangerous than Al Qaeda that threatens our national security. 

      These sad findings indicate that in the year 2010, instead of taking a turn for the better the shady side of the Media that walks by night is turning darker or becoming more evil.  This danger zone in our known world of freedom of expression is a bad forecast for the year 2010 and beyond. 

      That’s because results of this study show that while raking huge viewer profits from a hyped Internet traffic, radical ideologues from both sides of the great divide, sponsor or use their websites, especially those owned by cash-strapped publishers, as a potent instrument of war to bludgeon their rivals out of circulation or truncheon to submission adversaries real or imagined in the free market of ideas and mayhems. We are aware how destructive the information war is fought in cyberspace; during election time incidences of character assassination rises to epidemic proportion in television and radio ads, talk shows, Youtube and in the cinema that the media board of censors and enforcers of our libel laws are unable to control or regulate.

      But this is totally different from websites that can be counted in our fingers whose only excuse for being is to serve the interest of the public rather than that of their owner.  One of these few online publication landmarks is this site – nationalwriterssyndicate.com.  

       For instance, the public is sick of the devastating misuse and abuse of power of people in the government.  The public monitors or tags news and written editorials here at NWS.com for general information, reference or retrieval.  That’s because in publishing an expose’, NWS does not stereotype its reliable source of information that the public needs to know, nor does it discriminate against any color or political orientation of reporters, writers, authors and journalists, whether liberal, conservative or libertarian or what not for as long as the public is given the rare opportunity to know the truth relative to what is published or exposed.

      But what is more unique about this site which makes it immutably different is that the reputation of the reporter, writer, author or journalist is protected from politically motivated character assassination or editorially isolated from foul mouths or dirt thrown by those who call themselves “political crusaders” or “paper revolutionaries” in a petty mudslinging debate.  Abuse of free speech is “normal” to professional badmouths trained to mutilate or disfigure the image of authors or journalists who expose a public lie that hurts their cause.

      It is in exceptional websites the likes of NWS.com that are undeniably dwindling in number where freedom of expression finds a real home.  Since we are experiencing this catastrophic Media mutation, for those threatened independent-minded writers looking for a haven of free expression and for free journalism to find a sanctuary here at NWS.com is like finding a needle in a haystack.

      Contrast this from those radically extreme talk shows or a liberal website where conservative writers are ridiculed as trolls; and so are neutral writers who have no political alliance with or ideological allegiance to anyone whose works are allowed to get published by a publicly visible revolutionary libertarian website only to be harpooned or to be made a punching bag for the entertainment of the publisher; in short, the authors’ reputation have no protection from libelous comments or personal abuse for the pleasure of the owner of the site. The website has also a forum for those who literally have no brain, only dirty tongues spewing hate on writers who exposed their imagined “rebellion” without a cause on top of their ignorance and prejudice.  

       Likewise, a liberal journalist is also a targeted dryad in many vulgar online publications run by pea-brain Republicans. Clearly, what governs is not public interest but only the selfish interest of the publisher or the owner.

      According to the polls this rapidly deteriorating situation in our fast-changing media world is bad enough to wake up a slumbering if not a lethargic or even indifferent nation.  It is getting worse that even brave journalists who are risking their life to expose charlatans in public – by writing and publishing the truth against the wishes of publishers to serve the interest of the public rather than the agenda of media ideologues or the political program of the publication’s sponsors – are disappearing steadily, perhaps no sooner than at the end of it we will but see token resistance down to the last man standing.

      The sad irony about this unusual happening is that the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression are supposed to be the constitutional call of the Fourth Estate or under the guardianship of a free Media in our democratic society. This land has been drenched with the blood of martyrs who fought tyrants to preserve this Liberty of the Ink and the Quell we in many years had cherished and lived with well down to this generation. But when those running the Media are now dictators of the public will, we need to realize sooner than later that the world we live in is turning upside down and that we should do something about it fast enough to stop it before it is too late.

      What could be worse is that to those genuinely dedicated editorial writers who shaped public opinion in particular, and to those selflessly motivated journalists who contracted their way of life to the common good amidst the hazards of the profession that they must survive, the freedom to think freely and independently and the courage that goes with it, are not there anymore.  What is left of this freedom is nothing but a myth.

      For example, online publishing outlets are so polarized by self-interest that a contributing freelance journalist wanting to publish his independently written editorial report must be either a media owner’s friend to publicly promote or a foe to publish in order to castigate and ostracize in public to attract the attention of advertisers to the medium of expression which the website is a good example, for revenue purposes.  

     To be accepted and published for any reason, a contributing writer must be an ideologue or at least a follower or advocate of the dictating publisher’s pin-up moral values and political beliefs [actually stated in a shingle of “self-serving editorial policy”] or personal crusade in life. The safest way to a Media dictator’s heart is by becoming a patron or sponsor of the publisher’s website in many ways.   

      Just help pay the publishing owner’s bill and you don’t pay the price for being a nonconformist, or in short, whatever you write, you get a pat on the shoulder instead of the proverbial punch on the nose.  Well-meaning editorial writers and dedicated journalists who have been married to their profession for years are catching those punches. I speak this out with empirical authority … I am a veteran journalist of more than 45 years whose nose is bloodied every time I decide to come out and fight so that our freedom to write may live.

      I have conducted a study of former President George W. Bush’s Social Security System plan -- the Republicans’ failed attempt to dump the earnings of our Social Security System in the stock market as a wagering bet for profit -- and wrote an editorial report against it. Conservative websites picked it up in the Internet as a high “hit” editorial report, dubbed the author, together with other journalists who were against the Republican SSS plan, as “liberal trolls”.  Name-calling was at its worst in the ensuing character assassination.

      In a change of editorial staff, leftist-liberal editors took over americanchronicle.com, once one of the public’s “favorites”. The take-over was openly announced and therefore known to the public. Independent-minded journalists like me who were critical of a Republican congressman aspiring to be nominated as candidate for president – the only strange candidate who was attacking the United States by delivering speeches that the 911 carnage was not the fault of Al Qaeda terrorists but of the American people, and that the Federal Reserve is run by “thieves” and should be abolished -- were described as “conservative trolls”.

      The editorial exposure I wrote of a presidential candidate who wanted to be president of the United States without a central bank and without income tax, ran counter to the agenda of Liberal extremists and the radical Left to promote a questionable Republican  candidate to defeat the Republicans in the last presidential election.

      This media shenanigan of control to protect their turf is no different from the “shredding” of journalists loyal to the truth than to the publisher’s libertarian belief or revolutionary agenda.  The website is so politicized that it hits hard on any journalist who criticizes their Libertarian candidate for president.  If you are a writer in that situation, you could have experienced the publisher’s technophobic skill in pushing the delete button that makes him scream with indescribable pleasure.

      The problem here is that the candidate’s libertarian platform is too radical to be true. For example, it is unimaginable for this largest push-button economy in the world and this mightiest nation on the planet to exist without a central bank and without an income tax. That is not possible at all in the United States. Many Americans laughed at this unusual political manifesto drawn by an obsessed politician dreaming to draw Americans who are now discovering new worlds in outer space, back to the cave. Such political platform which is relentlessly and vigorously promoted in the Web is inimical to public interest so much so that there is a crying need for the American public to know what this is all about before anyone exercises the right to vote.

        A journalist who fails to take the cudgel in reporting to the public this bizarre political vision of what America should be in the eyes of a Martin Luther King politician who walks with his dream, fails as well in his public duty to inform, educate and warn the public.

        In the last presidential election, Obama’s campaign for “wealth distribution” that attracted the attention of millions of the economically disadvantaged veiled his ideological intentions to change America … his brilliant oratory shrouded the road that leads the country towards the path of communal or collectivist-socialism which millions of Americans hardly expected.  When millions of voters fell for it, Obama was elected president!

        Rarely was there any entourage of the Media that came forward to sound the alarm that the nation will be ruled by a collectivist-socialist president who worships Islam that majority if not all Americans who were misled do not approve. Instead of pandering, responsible journalists should pierce the veil of this political subterfuge rather than promote it to feather their nest. To be always on guard is the nature of their calling … and that is to be aware at all times of their awesome responsibility to the public as sentinels of Press Freedom.

        To illustrate this point, there was a word war that ensued between the publisher and one of his libertarian followers when I exposed a public lie without fear or favor.  The furious libertarian follower was said to be a disguised sponsor of the website the publisher owns and runs together with an editor associate.  I authored and published a series of editorials exposing the truth that the Federal Reserve is a public -- not a private -- entity.

        The libertarian candidate for president and his followers were campaigning on a public lie that the Fed is a private institution owned by financial pirates and fiscal hold uppers for so long that it should be abolished immediately to save the American people from plunder and stop the wanton looting of the vault of this supposedly helpless country. Admittedly, the Fed is an imperfect public institution because it is not run by angels and saints. But attacking it with lies is even farther from our desire to make it a perfect entity which all of us hope it should or ought to be.

        This politically engineered falsity was exposed in these editorial links I wrote and published: Fed Is A Public Entity … Lying That Fed Is Private Property Is Dangerous. The disagreeing and disagreeable protagonists in the word war following this expose’ were all dye-in-the-wool libertarian “revolutionaries”.  The owner of the site was chastised for publishing the truth that the Fed is a public institution – not a private entity run by “thieves”. Obviously when the lie was exposed, it hurt the libertarian revolutionary cause.

         The resulting threat to the publisher was direct using a strong  language: “If I ever see anything like this again [expose’], you will be boycotted and any patriots [notably Libertarians] that I have turned on to this site will boycott you also.”

        Embarrassed by this public lashing, the beleaguered libertarian publisher put up a token or face-saving resistance in an open joust of words with his attacker for public consumption, but in the end heeded the warning of his furious colleague and complied as he was told what not to publish in their libertarian website.

         My heart fell for the owner of the website who was obviously controlled and dictated. I have been a publisher myself and I would have defended him in a public debate had I been given the chance to do it.  I was not.

        Notice that what you are reading here right now is a written testimony to the findings in the study based on the surveys of reputable poll organizations that the compromised Media which includes websites and/or online publications are no longer free to publish the truth.

         Inversely, websites that are no longer free to publish the truth, are forced to publish a lie to accommodate their sponsors in order to survive.

         In this report, nothing is personal at all … the author is simply climbing the belfry of concern to toll the bell of alarm so that any reasonable American can see the danger that lies ahead. #  
© Copyright Edwin A. Sumcad.  Access NWS January 26, 2010. 

The writer is an award-winning journalist.  He is a NWS columnist. Know more about the author by reading his published editorials and feature articles or you may e-mail your comment to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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