We should bare in mind that, in general, it is the object of our news-papers [This was written before the age of electronic journalism.] rather to create a sensation - to make a point - than to further the cause of truth. The latter end is only pursued when it seems coincident with the former.

from The Mystery of of Marie Roget a short story by Edgar Allen Poe written in 1842

To foment grievance and to set men at variance is the trade by which agitators thrive and journalists make money. A dogfight, a brawl, or a war is always news; if news of that kind is lacking, it pays well to contrive it.

from page 89 of Creed or Chaos a collection of essays by Dorothy L. Sayers.

The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact -- of absolute, undeniable fact -- from the embellishment of theorists and reporters.

Sherlock Holmes in Silver Blaze

The most common falsehood told by journalist is a falsehood of omission. A critical fact is left out of the story and the listener/reader subconsciously fills in the details from their imagination which gives the story a whole new and false meaning. A similar item is taking things out of context.

There is a good reason for journalism to be described by the following phrases: Gutter Press, Media Event, Yellow Journalism and Flash & Trash. That reason is "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Since journalists have no competition, the public is easily fooled by the false and misleading information they pass out.

Terrorism [both international and domestic, such as individuals going on crime sprees to punish people they dislike] are only effective because of the publicity provided by journalists. If journalists ignored it, there would be less of a pay off for the perpetrators and it would occur less frequently. Journalists' claim that if they did not give it coverage, there would be fewer viewers and they would have to charge lower rates to advertisers, only illustrates the ancient saying that the love of money is the root of all evil. What is worse, is that journalists encourage such activities by reviewing how the person was able to delay capture, got caught easily, or produce more devastation in such detail that it trains the next person to be more skillful at evil. They also bandy about the records of greatest evil as if to encourage someone else to top the previous record. This so frequently triggers off other people to do the same that these are commonly called "copy cat crimes." This phenomenon is so common that an old folk saying about it is "monkey see, monkey do."

• Fundamental limitations
• Well-cooked moose droppings
• Observations by Malcolm Muggeridge who spent 50 years in journalism.
• Expert? witnesses
• Blatant falsehoods
• Loaded words
• Typical? views/bandwagon fallacy
• Wisdom beyond the lot of mortals
• Lies of omission
• Damned if you do, damned if you don't
• Mistakes are never admitted
• Logical fallacies
• Proof by blatant assertion
• Bulverism
• Unequal comparisons
• Guilt trips and emotional manipulations
• Observations on CNN by historian Bert Kinzey
• Practice what you have learned
• Bottom of this page
• Home, James

Fundamental Limitations

Things are seldom what they seem, skimmed milk masquerades as cream.

From HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan

There are many fundamental limitations in journalism. The first is that it involves concentration on the rare and unusual. This exposes the viewer or reader to an artificial experience of the world which colors their world view. They guard against rare dangers and expose themselves to common dangers.

Another limitation is the profit motive. If viewers were offended by being reminded that they corresponded to the people reported upon, they could not wag their heads at those other evil people and feel self-righteous. They would stop watching or reading and the advertisers would buy less time or space. Therefore, the journalists leave things out of the stories such as half of the accidents and acts of violence are committed by people under the influence of alcohol. Or that people who commit acts of violence frequently come from single parent homes and had biological parents that were not married and frequently were relative strangers at the time.

Children watching their parents watch the fates of others get the impression that watching the misery of others is an acceptable form of entertainment.

A further side effect of commercial journalism is the accompanying advertising. Viewers who are not well off get their nose rubbed in the fact and experience misery. The public generally is motivated to spend their resources on things that do them less good than other things that they could have bought.

Hype and Jive are used to make fake excitement to attract viewers. Live, on the spot coverage is one example. There was one case of a "live" report from the studio.

Well-Cooked Moose Droppings

Journalists can talk for hours about things they do not understand.

Malcolm Muggeridge

First a story. A group of people went on a camping holiday in Canada. The decided that they would draw straws to see who did the cooking. After that, anyone who complained about the cooking got to do it. The cook got desperate when a week went by with no complaints. The cook then hit upon an idea. The cook collected a batch of moose droppings and cooked them for the meal. One of the other people said, "This taste like moose droppings." But caught themselves in time by adding, "but well cooked moose droppings."

Journalism is very much like this. The journalists write or talk about things they are totally ignorant of, but do it with such confidence and elan that the public thinks that they are receiving the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. What they receive instead is well-cooked moose droppings.

There is a reason for this. Journalism is an undergraduate major. It takes people who only have a high school education and gives them moos dropping cooking lessons. It should be a graduate program that requires the people to have a bachelors degree in some other field.

In the past it was common for people to be practitioners in an area before being journalist reporting that area.

Observations by Malcolm Muggeridge

All of these are from Malcolm Muggeridge, A Biography by Gregory Wolfe.

From page 367: Television has even sensationalised news-reporting to the point where it is impossible for the public to get at the real issues.

From page 388: Not only can the camera lie; it always lies.

From page 389: The sheer glut of news he likened to the constant drone of saccharine music heard in elevators and medical offices: instead of Muzak, the medial offer Newzak. Moreover, the producers of news programs, anxious about their ratings, increasingly lean towards the lurid and sensational.

From page 397: The only image I could think of ... to describe my role at the [journalism] school was to regard the 30 or so graduate students as so many debutantes lately released from a high-class finishing school, who had unaccountably decided to embark on a career of prostitution.

Expert? Witnesses

Things are seldom what they seem, skimmed milk masquerade as cream.

HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan

You probably thought that the people interviewed by journalists are well known, respected and proven experts. This is not the case. They are chosen for their appearance on camera, fancy titles (not necessarily accurate or true), bias in the direction of the journalists' political beliefs, and availability.

During Operation Desert Storm there were two significant interviews. The first was with a genuine expert who described how and why the new weapons worked so well. This interview never made it to the public. The second interview was with a group of people from an organization whose title is along the lines of "The Society of Scientists Who are Wise Beyond the Lot of Mortals." They were straight out of central casting. They had done a computer simulation and determined that if the oil wells were set on fire, the smoke would shade the earth from the sun and all life would die from freezing. The oil wells were set on fire and the earth had record hot spells for the next several years.

What happened? The so called wise scientists were frauds. A quick sanity check would show that the earth has survived volcanic eruptions that sent much more material into the atmosphere that would come from the oil wells.

Back when president Reagan halted inflation so quickly there were two interviews by journalists. The first one described how the inflation was halted so quickly that professional investors were caught off guard with inflation hedging investments that had declined in value. The second interview was with a Harvard economics professor who claimed that president Reagan had done a poor job in bringing inflation down much slower than anyone else could have done.

Who was right? Very likely the professional investors knew more that the ivory tower theorists. If anyone else could have done it, why didn't president Carter do it?

A medical doctor advocated the surgical removal of certain body organs from all female infants so that when they became adult women they would not get cancer in those organs.

Blatant Falsehoods

This was satirized in a Prisoner episode entitled Free For All. Number six is interviewed by journalists and replies "no comment" to all of their questions. Later he sees the report of the interview that fills half a page in a newspaper.

Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post magazine on the changing role of the British Monarchy. The press intentionally misquoted the article and then condemned Malcolm. The BBC failed to renew his contract. The misquote included transforming "Compared with the cost of atomic submarines or guided missiles, the monarchy cannot be considered expensive..." to "..a drain on the British taxpayer."

Kathryn Lindskoog has written more books about C.S. Lewis than anyone else. One of her books was about strange occurrences in the posthumous literary estate. For instance, one of the executors claimed to have been Lewis' personal secretary for many years when he, in fact, had been a US tourist in England during the last 3 years of Lewis' life.

A review of this book by two literature professors of a religious school in Santa Barbara in the school alumni newspaper misquoted many passages totally inverting what was said. The author requested that the alumni paper allow her a rebuttal which would consist entirely of pairing off the false quotes in the paper with the actual book contents. The school refused. So much for religious frauds in Santa Barbara.

Loaded Words

Honey can also be described as bug spit.

Journalists frequently use words that have bad connotations in order to influence the viewers or readers.

"Special Interest Group" is used to have sinister connotations. The journalists are trying to enlist what in political theory is called "The tyranny of the majority." Society is composed of many minorities. It would be a dull world if everyone were an identical robot.

"Obstructionist" is used to vilify people who are trying to stop some foolish activity or operation. The Royal Air Force was obstructionist in trying to keep the Germans out of England in WWII.

"New Era" implies that all things and situations necessarily get better. There is nothing new under the sun. Every "new" idea has been thought of before and rejected for good reasons.

"Lobbyist" are nothing more than people who are knowledgeable about certain subjects who counteract the falsehoods put out by journalists.

Typical? Views and the Bandwagon Fallacy

It is common to air interviews with "randomly selected people." My father followed a news crew around town one day and saw them making these "typical" interviews. They were quite selective in choosing the people they interviewed and if the person made statements on one side of an issue, the interview was immediately terminated. If they made statements on the other side, the interview was completed. That night on the news the "typical" reaction to the situation contained only the views on one side of the issue.

The majority is frequently wrong. The earth has been spherical from the beginning, independent of the opinion poles.

Wisdom Beyond The Lot of Mortals

It is improper to hypothesize before all of the facts are ascertained.

Sherlock Holmes in the story about the disappearance of Silver Blaze.

Journalist take it upon themselves to make basic life decisions for the public by advocating which side of the classical tradeoffs for society to take. These include risk-gain and long/short term gain/loss type decisions. They always advocate the extreme case favored by people who suffer from the moral vices of envy and cowardice.

The host of an investment television program said that the economic editors of the New York Times newspaper had been consistently wrong in their economic predictions for three generations. I have noticed serious errors in science stores in the Wall Street Journal.

The 1932 Pulitzer prize went to a journalist that claimed that the Soviet farm collectivization program was a success and the people on trial for antisoviet activities were genuinely guilty. The farm program resulted in the country changing from a food exporting nation to having several dozens of millions of deaths from starvation. The evidence and confessions at the trials involved things such as conspiring with people who were dead.

Journalists give motives for other peoples' actions without ever having met them.

Lies of Omission

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; Oh help us God!

Any story sounds true until someone tells the other side and sets the record straight.

Ancient Jewish proverb. (18:17)

One of the most famous cases of this involved showing a picture without describing what was happening. The Geneva Convention on Land Warfare states that the combatants are to wear distinctive uniforms and only engage in acts of violence with each other and not the civilians. It also states that combatants that do not wear distinctive uniforms are spies and can be killed on the spot. The picture is of a person in civilian clothes being shot by a South Vietnamese Army officer who is in uniform. What the journalists left out was that the person in civilian clothes was an officer in the North Vietnamese army who had been caught while intentionally killing large batches if civilians.

Another example was a documentary of working conditions for guest workers in third world countries. The living area is shown to be just a small room with a table and bed. The workers are described to work 12-16 hours a day. It is only later revealed that all of these conditions are voluntarily selected by the workers to meet their goals. They want to minimize the time away from their families while being able to save a certain amount of cash. In order to do this, they work long hours and minimize their living expenses.

Another ploy is to report the least significant thing when more important things occurred. The recent (1999) public revelation that President Clinton sold military rocket secrets to the Chinese in exchange for campaign contributions is not new information. It came out in the campaign hearings in the congress in 1993. The journalists did not report this important information. Instead, they reported minor revelations, such as the president sitting in the wrong room while making telephone calls for donations.

Here is a further example. Recycling is highly touted. It is actually the fourth best way to use resources. The three better ways are: 1) don't get one to start with, 2) get more use out of the one you already have, 3) give yours away to someone else who can get more use out of it. Even requiring a certain portion of the product to be recycled is a second best idea. There are many cases where the current material content is smaller in a design that cannot be recycled than the not recyclable portion of a partially recyclable design.

A commercial example of this is Safeway food stores. They made a big deal of saving trees (a renewable resource) by switching to plastic bags (made from petroleum). The real reason was to save 3 cents a bag.

Economic news is only reported that advances the program of the journalists. During the several years around 1990 when the economy was improving, only bad economic news was reported. When the economy is in decline in 1999, only good economic news is reported.

Mislabeled legislation is repeated and not investigated. The people in congress who propose legislation can put anything they want in the title of the bill. You may remember some years ago when many cleaning products had synthetic lemon odors added to them to increase sales even though the synthetic chemicals had no cleaning power. A similar thing is done to legislation. Children and crime are big sellers. Legislation that has nothing to do with these subjects has these words in the title, and the journalists condemn anyone who opposes the legislation as being against children and for crime. A hypothetical example would be to have a tax bill with a 100% tax rate described as reducing crime. This is because if the government steals the money first, other criminals cannot steal it.

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't

You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

We do not live in a zero defect world. For instance, a natural source of vitamin D is sunshine on your skin. Skin cancer is also produced by sunshine on your skin.

Journalists will frequently emphasize the tradeoff that was chosen against instead of the one chosen by a public official they disapprove of. The city council voted against having a city wide Halloween party. It is not mentioned that they had a choice between library books and the party. There were not enough tax funds for both.

Mistakes are Never Admitted

This was satirized in a Monty Python sketch that involved a political journalist saying, "The election results are exactly as I predicted except that all of the other candidates won."

In the past the complaint was that the retractions were placed in less prominent positions than the original error. Now retractions are never made. This is because the journalists claim to be reporting what other people say, which is what they said, errors and all. The journalists claim that they are not certifying that the person has any knowledge or truth.

One complex example was during Operation Desert Storm. The journalists had been making totally false and ignorant conjectures about how soon the invasion would take place. A caller to a talk show tried to set them straight by saying that during WWII in the Pacific it was standard practice to shell the island for 30 days before invading it. In order to keep the public in ignorance of their ignorance, the caller was cut off with an announcement that there was a special, live, on the spot bulletin coming in. The switched to a person who announced that nothing had happened all day. They then took the next caller.

Logical Fallacies

Journalists commit numerous types of logical fallacies.

In the Correlation-Causation logical fallacy when two things that happen at the same time one is thought to be the cause of the other. The causation could be the reverse, or they both could be caused by a third thing. A ridiculous example is to say that since people who commit crimes are frequently wearing shoes, if laws were passed to make people go barefoot, there would be no crime.

In the Ad Homonym fallacy, the truth or falsehood of an idea depends upon who is saying it. It is assumed that an unpopular person has a monopoly on false ideas. For example, since Adolph Hitler thought that taking baths was good for your health, society would be better off if no one took a bath. Another variation on this is the news story about a whistle blower totally ignoring the charges of the whistle blower and concentrating on the personality traits, life style, or motives of the whistle blower.

The Either-Or logical fallacy assumes that there are only two options. If one is bad, the other is necessarily good. For instance, one candidate for public office wants to get his hand in the till, therefor the other candidate has only idealistic motives.

A variation on this is to show that a person who is a member of an identifiable group has some trait and then assume that all members of that group have the trait. Some people who think that the government is too big and out of control are mentally ill; therefore, people who are knowledgeable in history and see recurring patterns in the decline of societies and notice that growing government size precedes the collapse of the society are also mentally ill. Therefore, it is a good thing for government to grow without limit.

Suppressing the first premise and conclusion. "John gets up at night and sneaks out of the house." This is a second premise. The listener is induced to think badly about John. If the first premise and conclusion were added, the problem with this argument would stand out. 1) All people who leave their houses at night are up to evil activities. 2) John gets up at night and leaves the house. 3) Therefore, John is evil. The problem is in the first premise. Once it is stated, the fallacy is obvious. There are many good reasons for leaving the house at night. One example is people who work the swing shift.

The bigger box theory, or borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Person 1 says that they have a large box of things they have to store, but there is no room for it. Person 2 asks what they are going to do as there was no room for the first box. Person 1 says that they are going to put the box in a bigger one. Person 2 asks where they are going to store the larger box. Person 1 says that they are going to put the box in a bigger one. [This repeats infinitely. The US government national debt operates this way.] Journalists frequently advocate or air speeches of others advocating social or legal changes that need this type of process to remain solvent.

Suppressing the symptom instead of curing the disease.

Proof By Blatant Assertion

This is a dead giveaway when the assertion is preceded by "Some people think..." or "As everyone will tell you..." If everyone would tell you, why are the journalists giving you trivial information? At one time everyone would have told you that the earth was flat. That did not make it so.

Another form of this is the fake survey. People are filtered ahead of time, and then the survey is given to them. Another variation is to have the survey worded so that what they think cannot come out.

Bulverism

Bulverism is the method of assuming something to be true (even though it is not) and explaining how it happened or what should be done about it.

Since journalists, like academics, commonly suffer from the moral vice of cowardice, they want to eliminate all risks no matter how high the associated gains by use of social engineering. [This is why it is common for journalists and academics to advocate totalitarian forms of government and to report favorably on them. I once heard a British art historian professor claim that once England became totally socialist the privately held art would be confiscated and put into public museums. Once that happened the art historians would have their social status raised by being in charge of all of the art.] That is, all risks except those that they or their viewers do. You never hear of drunk drivers killing more people than murderers do. You never hear of people who died prematurely because of their excess body weight produced by recreational eating.

Unequal Comparisons

A common example is to show portions of speeches from several sources. The source the journalist disapprove of has a trivial portion aired, the other source has a substantive portion aired.

Activities that look alike are compared even though the invisible portions are vastly different. Colonel North shredding papers generated in the course of following orders of a government intelligence agency is compared to the president's wife shredding papers that are evidence of violating criminal laws.

Guilt Trips and Emotional Manipulations

The source springs an emotional story on the reader or viewer that is intended to stimulate their mental illness of sadism or vice of cowardice. This is intended to motivate the person to reduce their stress by advocating a change in what others are allowed to do. [Very much like killing the messenger of bad news.] It would be better if they would seek psychological or moral counseling.

In effect some peoples' mental illnesses and moral vices are used to run other peoples' lives.

Another common practice is showing a faked scene of someone crying at even a minor disaster.

Observations on CNN by Historian Bert Kinzey

From: Bert Kinzey

As many of you know, although some do not, I wrote a book about the Gulf War shortly after it ended in 1991. It was published by McGraw Hill, and was titled, "The Fury of Desert Storm, the Air Campaign."

While that book's primary focus was on the air war, much of it also addressed the news coverage of the war. I pointed out how there were two big losers during that war; Iraq and the news media. Both the news media and Iraq had many things in common, one of which was that they brought their problems on themselves.

I explained how the news media, particularly CNN, inaccurately reported the war, misstating the facts, and in many cases deliberately telling outright lies. I dedicated an entire chapter to a dishonest CNN report about the B-1 bomber and evaluated its inaccuracies line by line. I illustrated that the report was full of lies, and these were about clearly established facts and not about someone's opinion.

I spoke in person to the people in the Pentagon that CNN had been interviewed and filmed for that report, and they told me how CNN edited what they said to make it seem like they were saying exactly the opposite of what they actually said.

I spoke with CNN's people here in Atlanta and at the Pentagon, including Wolf Blitzer, and he admitted he knew nothing about the military. A CNN employee in Atlanta admitted to me that they did not care if they got their reporting accurate. They only wanted to get it on the air first and in the most dramatic manner possible.

Their primary purpose was to make money by selling ad space, not reporting the news. The story goes on and on. Unfortunately, twelve years later, the situation has not improved at CNN.

I have watched them as well as other news sources recently, and their lies and inaccuracies are even more common than they were in 1991. Their bias is also beyond belief. They are showing almost exclusively an anti-war stance by people who are so delusioned that they believe that peace is merely the absence of war.

While everyone, including news organizations, have their own bias, it is neither professional nor honest to concentrate almost exclusively on one side of an issue, particularly one so important as this. To do so presents an inaccurate and dishonest view of what is actually happening, and this does not allow viewers to form informed and valid opinions.

For example, CNN concentrates almost exclusively on those few nations that are against us in this effort and makes almost no mention of the many more that are supporting us. They ignore and do not report on our success in Afghanistan where we have returned women to classrooms and professional occupations and where people are returning to that country with expectations for a bring future free of terror, all thanks to America. Before we drove out the Taliban, people were fleeing Afghanistan.

CNN also makes the viewer believe that those who protest the war are in far greater numbers than those who are supporting it. This is clearly not the case, and even CNN's own surveys show that 66% of Americans support military action to disarm Iraq. (ABC and FOX surveys place that percent in the upper 70s.)

For example, this past Saturday, over 3,000 people turned out in Atlanta, the home of CNN, to support the war on a dreary and rainy day. At the same time, there was an anti-war rally in Atlanta that was attended by twenty-two, that's right TWENTY-TWO protesters. Anyone care to guess how CNN covered it? I recently heard the percentage of students that protested the war at universities across America, and in almost every case, it was less than one percent. That means that ninety-nine percent did not protest against the war, and in many cases the number gathering to support President Bush and our troops far exceed the number who protested against it.

But who does CNN report? Clearly, all sides need to be presented in a balanced manner, and CNN skews their coverage extremely in one direction. In my view, their coverage with its inaccuracies, lies, distortions, and blame America first bias is nothing short of criminal.

CNN has seldom reported much about the continuing atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein throughout his time in power. Here is a man who has attacked his neighbor to the east and his neighbor to the southeast. Here is a man who has fired missiles at his neighbors to the southwest and the west. Hussein has gassed his own people and habitually tortures those that disagree with him. He has had the wives and children of dissidents brought in and tortured, raped, and killed those family members before their very eyes. Here is a man who would destroy oil wells and dams to create ecological disasters and kill the Iraqi people.

On the other side of the coin are the Americans who will bring freedom from this oppression to the Iraqis, who will bring food and medicine to them, who will protect Iraq's infrastructure, and who will treat Iraqi prisoners who surrender in a humane way.

But CNN makes America out to be the bad guy! How does that work?

If you are like me and believe that the freedom of the press carries with it an obligation to be accurate, fair, balanced, and honest, I ask you to do two things. First, please pass this e-mail on to everyone you know so that they may realize what CNN is doing. Second, I ask you to stop the lies, turn off CNN, and send them an e-mail that you are doing so. I ask you to look elsewhere for your news coverage. I find the FOX News Network, The News Hour on PBS, and MSNBC to be far more fair. Sure, there is some bias anywhere, but it is not so extreme nor calculated.

On these networks I hear both sides about equally. I hear about France like I do on CNN, but I also hear about Japan and Australia as well as the many other countries that are backing us in so many ways. As of today, three countries in Europe are against us, and twenty-two have come out in support of us. Most of the twenty-two have never been mentioned on CNN, but representatives of France and Germany are on CNN almost hourly. So please take a look at several news choices and find one that is accurate, fair, and balanced. It is only that way that you will get an honest view of what is going on. I am not telling you which one to choose, I'm only asking you to turn off CNN.

It is not in my present plans to write another book for the general public on this war. But that may change. I am so sickened by the reporting of CNN that I may just do so. If I do, I will not focus on the air war this time. Instead I will simply state the facts that clearly prove that CNN is lying and distorting the news about our country, our leaders, and our military.

Finally, I would like to remind you to do a third thing. As most of you know, I have a son who is a Navy pilot and who has been flying missions in the Middle East since last November. So, as the father of one of our deployed military personnel, and as a former Army officer myself, I ask all of you to remember our troops, support them, and pray for them even more than you usually do in these critical days ahead. I know many of you also have family members or friends who are over there ready to do their jobs in support of our country.

It is those troops who keep us free, and who are ready to lay down their lives to protect our country. It is not the movie stars nor the news reporters that have ever protected us.

For those of you who pass this on to your friends, I thank you for your help in spreading the word about CNN.

God bless America,

Bert Kinzey

Practice What You Have Learned

Some British journalists claim that the royal yacht is a waste of money because it is used only eleven days a year.

Lets do some calculations. The yacht is 40 years old and has traveled a little over a million miles. This comes to 25,000 miles a year. If this distance were covered in 11 days, the ship's speed would be about 95 miles an hour. If they stopped in ports to allow visits, the speed would be even higher. This ship is a standard coal fired steam driven ship that goes 20 MPH at the most. Conclusion: the journalists are either dishonest or incompetent.

The reasons the Germans never invaded was the well-planned reception they would have had.

Calculate out how many sheets of paper it takes to keep a bond fire burning for three days and then how long it would take to write on the sheets. When you do you calculate that Lewis had to hand write, with his malformed hand, continuously for many hours each day of his life at over 25 words per minute. Also, the gardener had denied in writing and in an interview that the incident ever happened. The postmarks on the Major's letters show that he was out of the country at the time.

The president is accused of wrongdoing and replies that he will not dignify the accusation with a reply. What is going on? Why do the journalists not look into this? A few years later the president profusely apologizes for being a serial wrongdoer.

Journalists claim that 10% of society is homeless. I have counted five homeless people in my city of 100,000. Where are the other 9,995? They do not exist. The journalists were just bull slinging.

After the catastrophic fire in southern California, the San Jose newspaper had headlines that Gov. Davis had six months earlier requested federal funds to pay to clean out the dead trees that later fueled the fire. President Bush is blamed for the fire damage. What deductions can you make? What kept the state from doing their duty to the citizens by cleaning out the dead trees? The lack of federal funds did not do this. The state had their own funds. It was negligence on the part of Gov. Davis to let the trees stay. His overall incompetence in running the state is what got him recalled.