Just How Ignorant Are Today’s Corporate Journalists?

By Robert Kimball Shinkoskey Photos: Wikimedia Commons TV journalists today are notoriously good-looking men and women having resonant voices and command of college-level vocabularies. Do they have any flaws at all? Yes, they do. Their flaws are the same kinds of intellectual flaws that American politicians, business leaders, culture mavens, and even educators have. In brief, they are unable to bring any real historical perspective to their informational commentaries on current events. The education of supposedly exemplary American leaders today has been very narrow-minded and falls well short of the depth and breadth of learning our founding ancestors possessed. Contemporary Americans know very little of the disciplines needed to understand politics in the real world, including history, law, political science, and even natural science, though they are proudly tech-savvy, which is the least important qualification for serving as a public leader in America. Just how ignorant and irresponsible are our techno-age pretty boy and pretty girl journalists? Let’s start with their reporting on the Iran War. Our handsome actors occupying the nightly news half hour have gotten well into the swing of using the official name of the Iranian nation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, in their reporting. However, I have never heard one of them mention that Iran is not anywhere near being a real “republic.” Iran is as much a republican nation as the People’s Republic of China is a republican nation or a nation of, by, and for the people. Both these countries are totalitarian dictatorships masquerading before their own people and the world as democratic countries. Why don’t we know this and why don’t our leaders and journalists tell us this? Because we and they no longer know what an actual democracy or an actual republic really is. Isn’t a democracy or a republic a place where people get to vote for their leaders? That is a D+ answer, people, yet that was your answer, wasn’t it? That kind of answer has just the right amount of ignorance in it to get you, your children, and your grandchildren marginalized, subjugated and dominated for the rest of their natural lives. Our Constitution fills in the correct answer much more fully, yet you and our TV journalists have never read or studied it before. On the other hand, we also no longer know what a monarchy, an autocracy, an elected kingship, a tyranny, an oligarchy, or an aristocracy is. Let’s think about what is going on at home as well. Have you ever heard one of our journalists or even our bright newspaper or magazine commentators explain to us the real nature and historical precursors of our Department of Homeland Security? Our version of it was enacted supposedly to counteract the rise of terrorist attacks by foreign agents and by domestic terrorist agents such as people like Rene Good and Alex Pretti, according to the year-one director of DHS in the Trump administration, Kristi Noem. That gives you a glimpse of the real historical use of such agencies in places like Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, communist China, and secret police agencies in autocracies around the world. Our department of citizen “security,” in the wrong hands, is really a department of domestic terror run by the government itself against the law-abiding citizens of the land. Homeland protection agencies have been used from time immemorial to control so-called “loyal opposition” groups, that is, those of another legitimate political party who are out of favor with the current lawless executive power in the land. When was the last time your favorite cutie-pie TV anchor explained that to you?   Robert Kimball Shinkosky is an award winning citizen editorial writer for Utah, west coast, and national newspapers. As a long time state government worker and student of the American presidency, he speaks out boldly about the need for citizen participation, a renewed democracy, and constitutional limits on absolute power. Kimball’s most recent book is a scholarly interpretation of the scope of the Ten Commandments, showing how those laws applied to government as well as citizens in ancient Israel. They match provisions found in the U.S. Constitution. and can help forge a path out of the wilderness of today’s culture and authoritarian politics. He can be reached at kshinkos@gmail.com