Government Should Not Control Our Information

Government Should Not Control Our Information

MAY, 17, 2022

By Dannie McIntire

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told lawmakers on April 27, 2022, that a new board at the Department of Homeland Security will focus on countering misinformation and disinformation.

Yikes! Did I hear that correctly? The government agency of Homeland Security has established a new board that will be responsible for telling us if what we are being told is true or untrue. Seriously, are you kidding me, our government wants to be in charge of verifying “information” that we are exposed to?

Now, what could go wrong with that?  If that doesn’t scare the heck out of you I don’t know what will. I’m wondering what reference materials they’ve used in formulating the new board operating guidelines, Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kamp” or Russian President Vladimir Putin’s playbook “How Best To Shut Up Your Critics”. 

In an August 12, 1984 news conference President Reagan quipped: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” 

Throughout the history of our country, the journalistic media has done an overall remarkable job of fretting out misinformation. Many times it has been at the expense of our government, which was endeavoring to hide the truth from us. In my opinion, our government assuming responsibility for deciding what we should know “as the truth”, is like putting the fox in the hen house!

I grew up listening to the weeknight broadcast of Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley. Like millions of Americans, they were welcomed into our homes each evening, and as I recall their validity of the news as they reported was never thought of in any way but “truthful”. 

Fast forward, a 2021 Gallop Poll found that only 36% in the United States had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media. Why is this? In my opinion, news reporting today seems in many cases to have become overtly political, news stories are often manipulated to favor the writer’s political leanings. So, you’re left with deciding what do you believe? 

I have developed my own “search for the truth system”. First, I read the News on the Fox website, on Yahoo News, on MSN News, and finally the BBC news.  After reading the news perspectives on all four sites, somewhere in between lies the truth. Another good “truth source” is “Snopes.com” a fact-checking site.

I’ve not lost complete faith in today’s mass media. There are still many competent and truthful journalists, who adhere to “the Journalist’s Creed”, written by Walter Williams in 1914. A quick synopsis of the creed follows; 

• I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of a lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.
• I believe that clear thinking and clear statement, accuracy, and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.
• I believe that a journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true.
• I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible.
• I believe that advertising, news and editorial columns should alike serve the best interests of readers; that a single standard of helpful truth and cleanness should prevail for all; that the supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its public service.

The days of Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley are a by-gone era; their names if mentioned to more recent generations would most likely bring blank stares. We, the American public, need to have faith that the news we are being told is in fact truthful. However, I believe that a government “misinformation and disinformation” board being in charge of what we’re told is the “truth”, is a slippery slope none of us want to go down. 

FOOTNOTE: The City-County Observer posted this article without bias or editing.