As reporters set aside their traditional role as fact seekers and veer into advocacy, they find themselves on a slippery journalistic slope.
— Sharyl Attkisson
Many Americans are eagerly watching the devolution of traditional news with relish because they agree with the prevailing narratives, whether based on true facts or imagined fiction.
Yes, there's still much good journalism to be found, if you know where to look. Yet, ask reporters who've been around a while, and many will tell you that a lot of good journalism is being left unpublished.
Many will debate the substance of the public impeachment testimony against President Trump. To me, each of the Democrats' witnesses of the past two weeks appeared to be well-intentioned and hard-working, and seemed genuinely to believe they know what's best.
But the government spying on me was not done under the authority of a court warrant. That's why my case is even more dangerous than the others.
I'm not a liberal or conservative journalist, I'm saying conservative-owned media corporations seem to be treated differently.
I gave up a long time ago thinking that people had to like or agree with what I was doing.
The beauty of American elections is that anything can happen.
I'm not a professional political analyst, so my political analysis is worth about what you pay for it.
The bottom line is: Polls can be provocative, informative, fun or maddening. But as we move into 2020, it's important to be mindful that news organizations or those interpreting their polling results may not always be providing context that would allow us to have the most complete and accurate picture of the public's mood at a given moment.
News organizations would best serve the public by sticking to the facts and the news. Speculation should be minimized.
I think very few of us have a thick bold line on every given topic that falls neatly into the box of a chosen political party or figure.
Ever since his inauguration, President Trump's political opponents have been pushing to impeach him. They just hadn't found the right excuse. In other words, they knew where they wanted to end up but they just hadn't found the right vehicle to drive them down the road.
A wiretap allows government agents to collect, listen to, read, rifle through and store emails, snail mail, phone calls, text messages, photographs, bank records - you name it.
One death is too many - and with careful management and a lot of luck, the coronavirus sweeping the globe will be curbed, in terms of illness and loss of life.
Many workplaces that never before offered telecommuting have had to do so in the face of the coronavirus. Once systems are established and practiced, both government and private employers will institute more telecommuting options.
There's a tendency in the news media, on the part of some managers, to censor or block stories that don't fall in line with the message they want sent to the viewers.
If you've read my New York Times bestseller 'Stonewalled', you know that I'm a fan of an intellectual exercise I call the Substitution Game. It involves comparing how the press treats similar events or people depending on how the reporter or news organization feels about the issue or the newsmaker.
Many news organizations have come to resemble the fact-starved blogs they once took pains to remain separate from.
The rules seem rigged to protect government lawlessness, and the playing field is uneven.
My court fight is clearly an uphill battle. The Department of Justice has unlimited tax dollars to spend obstructing and fighting my case, which is now in its fourth year.
The nature of the government's surveillance on me and my family is forensically proven and not subject to legitimate question.
Much like CBS and CNN are run by liberal billionaires, Sinclair is run by a rich conservative, so there are natural questions to be asked, especially when Sinclair is poised to become such a powerhouse.
Obviously, if I cared about what people said about my reporting, I wouldn't be a good journalist.
In fact, by Democrats pursuing the strategy of attacking everything President Trump does as the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it stuff, their criticism has just become white noise to many Americans.
Early coronavirus fatality rates as often cited may appear worse than they actually are for a majority of the public because they do not include the many undiagnosed, asymptomatic cases; and because they do not reflect the dramatically elevated risk for the elderly compared to the rest of the population.
From what I can tell, pollsters are generally fairly stick-to-the-facts folks. They deal in facts and statistics.
Even amid the heated political rhetoric that dominates the news media and social media, resurrected false claims about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., stand out as egregious.
Each political party in America contains people with a hodgepodge of beliefs. Their given positions on a topic may shift slightly - or drastically - from year to year or day to day.
I feel pretty safe in saying that most Americans can't tell you off the top of their head who the Kurds are or what the U.S. relationship with them is - let alone how that factors into Iran, Russia, China, Turkey and Syria.
Unless you believe that politicians and agencies are above a money grab, especially if it can be justified under the auspices of a public health emergency, then you should favor prudent, careful allocation of resources with accountability on the front end and follow-up after the fact.
With soap and hand sanitizer in high demand, many Americans will continue with their germ-fighting habits after coronavirus. They will wash their hands more frequently and implement 'social distancing' on a regular basis, particularly during flu and cold season.
I really am one of those people who are mixed on many issues and can see many legitimate sides.
Obama administration officials who were in key positions on Sept. 11, 2012, acknowledge that a range of mistakes were made the night of the attacks on the U.S. missions in Benghazi, and in messaging to Congress and the public in the aftermath.
Formerly well-respected news organizations and experienced national journalists are making the sorts of mistakes that aren't tolerated in journalism schools. When their mistakes are corrected at all, it's with little seeming regret.
We Americans like to believe we live in a free country with the right to use the justice system to ensure that government abuses are stopped or redressed. That's far from the truth, and it's an awful thing to experience first-hand.
Long before the 2016 presidential campaign, confidential sources had alerted me to longstanding misuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court system and the erosion of protections when it came obtaining permission for wiretaps and other surveillance methods.
I started working as a journalist under Bush, then Clinton, then Bush, then Obama.
Sometimes I rub people the wrong way, although I'm very polite.
I just don't care what people think. I'm just trying to do what I think is right.
My prediction for the 2016 race was based on a variety of observational and anecdotal evidence. I listened to Democrats, Republicans and independents across the U.S. I talked to people who consider themselves apolitical.
My own view is that only under very limited circumstances, and on a case-by-case basis, should we make advance policy decisions to artificially minimize information or censor it from the public's view.
When analysis and opinion are invited, various viewpoints should be represented. Allegations of political blame, when they occur, should be reasonably challenged on all sides, as good journalism requires.
And this may be hard to swallow for those deeply embedded in a particular political philosophy, but I think most people - whatever their choices - simply want what's best for themselves, their families and their country. They differ on what that means and the best way to get there.
In general, hateful speech and opinions are protected under the Constitution, except to the extent they are deemed to incite violence or otherwise become illegal. But, at the same time, civilized society tends to frown upon it.
Following sporadic reports of intelligence officials misleading Congress about surveilling U.S. citizens - even spying on journalists and political figures and their staffs - there was a series of red flags in 2016 and 2017 that should have drawn attention and action.
Everyone would like to believe that anyone possibly exposed to a serious contagious disease would comply with self-quarantine requirements. But history teaches a different lesson.
There's nothing like getting caught flat-footed in an emergency to convince us to better prepare for the next one.
I'm not a conservative. I'm not a liberal.
