DO WE STILL HAVE A FREE PRESS?

One of the strong memories of my childhood is seeing my father at the kitchen table every morning before he went to work. He would eat the two sunny-side up eggs he had just fried. My dad always had a hot cup of coffee and two pieces of slightly burned, heavily buttered, toast with his eggs. He would be reading his delivered copy of the Chicago Sun-Times while he let the egg yolk drip on the toast and devoured that combination. When he finished the paper he would light up a cigarette and start the crossword puzzle before he left. This was only part of dad’s routine.

When he returned from work he would have a beer with my mom and they would discuss the days events. Only after they finished would we be allowed into the front room to pepper them both with childish questions before dinner.

After dinner my brothers, sisters and I would do the dishes while mom would go and relax and dad would sit on the couch with his dinner coffee, a cigarette and the Chicago Daily News. He was a quick reader and often would finish the paper before we were through with our chores. He would be doing the The Jumble (A word puzzle) when we came in.

Dad would pick up a copy of The Chicago Tribune on Sundays- it wasn’t a newspaper, it was a book, a large book, with all of the adds, color comics and The Sunday Magazine I would estimate it weighed a few pounds.

One day I asked him why he read the paper so much, and why he needed to read different papers. He told me they had different views on the stories they covered and he felt it was important to know the whole story. He added that he really liked Mike Royko, who was writing for the Daily News at the time and then mentioned some Sun Times sports writers who he liked a lot. I asked why that was so important and he got that “dad look” which meant he was going to tell me some life changing stuff.

Dad told me that in America we elect our leaders and that to be a good American you had to make an effort to know who the good leaders were, and what leaders should, maybe, be replaced next election. He told me that The Republicans were a more conservative party and The Democrats were more liberal. I had no clue what that meant and he could see it in my eyes. He said Republicans don’t want to change a lot of things; they would like to keep it how the founding fathers ordained it should be if that is possible. They prefer to have less governmental intervention. The Republicans say the government shouldn’t interfere with neighbors who don’t get along, the less rules the better. He added that Democrats want to have more governmental control, they would be more likely to make a new ordinance to solve the neighbor argument.

I asked what we were. He told me he was independent and I would have to decide what I was. He explained he voted more for what each candidate said he would do. He added that he reads newspapers to find out if they are keeping their promises.

When I grew up I walked in my dad’s footsteps. I would watch the local outlets for news from the 4:00 until the end of the 6:00 broadcasts getting national coverage and a couple of different channels worth of local news. I would read the newspaper at lunch and mix news stations in with my rock and roll/ country tastes on the radio. I enjoyed talking politics with my friends, and somehow, we all remained friends. I was a blank sheet of paper, I wanted to learn as much about the candidates and continued to watch them closely to see if promises were being kept, or ignored.

During the Ford Administration, Yea! I know, I’m old, I noticed a disproportionately large amount of coverage for falls The President would have in the darkness behind various stages on campaign tours. I heard of a few accomplishments in his campaign literature that I had not heard of at the time despite my news aholic nature. Could there be bias? Are they only giving me what they want me to know about President Ford? Could all of the major news outlets be colluding?

When Clinton beat George H. W. Bush I was driving with my wife and kids and heard a “journalist” say, “I felt it was our duty to get Bush out of there, and we did.” I yelled my disapproval loud enough for my wife to feel it was necessary to caution me that the kids were in the car. I continued to plead my case to her, quietly. I said, “That’s not his job! He’s supposed to give us the facts, and all of the facts so we can make an informed decision.”

I was a police officer and I started to notice news coverage that was, I felt, biased. There were cases I heard covered by the main news sources that I felt were unfairly portraying the police roll. I would hear, “The suspect’s family said….the police alleged…” My undergraduate degree was in journalism and I felt “alleged” had a negative connotation while “said” made the statement sound believable. I stopped watching one news show, then another and finally I found that I had 4-6:30 pm open. I wasn’t watching the evening news at all. I felt I was being brainwashed by it.

I kept reading the newspaper at work, but felt it was slanted left also. On one occasion my department sent several officers to assist at a big political event in the city near the lake. We sent 4 of our guys down in plain clothes. They returned very early in the morning and reported to us that they were running from one call to another as back up to the assigned officers. They dealt with several stabbings and shots fired calls. After speaking with them I returned to my squad and listened to the news radio station from that big city. I heard how there were no problems at all as a result of the event. Wow, that was just a blatant lie! I told our officers who had just been there and they laughed, one said, “Holy s@#t, maybe we went to the wrong town!”

I had been watching FOX as my main news source and would occasionally listen to the others to keep FOX honest. I was surprised that, during this years election, even FOX seemed to have turned. My son told me that he had heard that my go to station had been under new management. He said the father had turned day to day operations over to his liberal son and he was slowly changing it. Well, it turned out that on election night I switched to CNN and the coverage was actually better! Have I fallen in Alice’s rabbit hole? Nothing seemed as it should be!

I watch the internet and see presentations of doctors who say they have used Hydroxy Chloroquine with Zinc effectively to deal with the virus. I later look for the same post and I can’t find it, funny, I can find all the other posts that were on at that time. I saw a post of several doctors on the steps of the Supreme Court saying that the masks we are being forced to wear are not effective and many other FACTS that disagreed with what the politicians are trying to sell us then, it was gone. 

Now I write a conservative post to share my feelings about Trump, or the election, and if anyone shares it they get a warning that they should go to a “Fact Checker” or a site that says Biden is the president elect (Which he is not with no concession and active counting, recounting and court cases ongoing).

My bottom line is this. If you are happy with the Main Stream Media, continue to watch it, but I urge you to seek out conservative news. I just looked it up on the internet and, after a long search, I found these- decide for yourself as I am not familiar with these: THE NEW YORK OBSERVER (On-line newspaper owned by Jared Kushner) MILITARY TIMES, COMMENTARY MAGAZINE, AL.com, REASON, ORLANDO SENTINEL, and QUILLETTE let me know what you think of them. 

I have seen some good reports on THE NEXT NEWS NETWORK and THE DAILY WIRE there are also the “go to’s” O’Reilly, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens usually have good information

My opinion is that in order to be good citizens we need good information and to get good information we need to go to some source other than the Main Stream Media and now, other than Facebook, Twitter and Google. 

I posted similar feelings about 6 weeks ago, but I have many new followers and thought I would put this back out there. On my previous post a few people gave me names of other news sources I should try- I lost that and would appreciate if you could send that information.

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