This is my article that was published in the Kentucky Kernel on the 7th of October under the title: Media Bias Harms Political Debate.  It can be found on the KY Kernel website here.
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I can’t begin to tell you how happy I will be once a final decision is made on the president’s health care plan — even if it is a decision I don’t particularly like, just so long as some semblance of rational and respectful discourse is restored.

I, like many other Americans, am sick of hearing both sides behaving like children.  One might think that those tasked with the heavy job of fixing the nation’s health care system would be able to do so without claiming that the other side wants to kill people, but we would be wrong, I’m looking at you U.S. Reps. Michelle Bachman, R-Minn, and Alan Grayson, D-Fla.

Unfortunately, though, it seems this problem may be a little more systemic than just disagreements over health care. The downward slope of American discourse has been going on for quite some time now, but it’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly it began.

It’s obviously not just those in Washington that been pulling this debate in the gutter, many in the media are just as responsible.  I’ve gone after the media in past articles for devolving this debate, but I think in the past I’ve been too narrow.

Yes, Fox News and Glenn Beck have affected this debate, but it is the whole of cable news that has fed into misinformation.  The networks, at some point, decided to stop reporting the news and start playing the ratings game.

Fox News wants you to be foaming at the mouth, MSNBC wants you yelling at the television and CNN wants you to tweet them and download their new iPhone application.  Unfortunately for the public, all of the methods these networks are using involve a bastardization of news and journalism.

To those who think I unfairly attacked Glenn Beck a couple weeks ago, let me make it perfectly clear that I think Glenn Beck is a symptom of the overall problem that exists in news today.

Another symptom of this problem is,  Keith Olbermann. Even though I generally agree with Olbermann’s opinions on issues, it must be said that he is not a news man.
Neither Olbermann, nor Beck, or the scores of others like them on TV, radio, or the internet, are responsible, thoughtful journalists, and don’t deserve to be on the same networks that purport themselves to be news focused.

News and opinion are meant to be separate. That’s very clear in newspapers, where opinions and editorials are published in the back of a paper under a large banner proclaiming them opinions.

They are not held up to the same standards as front page news, and the readers know that.  It’s very clear to those who read newspapers where news ends and opinion begins.  On television however, there is no distinction.  These networks operate under the banner of 24-hour-news.

Their viewers are constantly told by the networks that it’s all news all the time, or that they are “fair and balanced” or America’s number one place for news, but it can hardly be said that the shows Mr. Beck and Mr. Olbermann do are news.

When you lose the distinction between opinion and news it’s very clear  the entire operation cheapens.  All of the “news” on Fox and MSNBC has been tainted by opinion. Neither presents news as a statement of fact but rather as editorial masquerading as fact.

I don’t know that the same can be said for CNN because they come off more as needy than as biased, but CNN is probably another column entirely.

We can’t expect the people to be adequately informed when so much of their news is tainted by bias, and we definitely can’t expect politicians to act like adults when their ideologies are on display as fact 24 hours a day in millions of American homes.

It’s my hope that at some point we can separate news and opinion in all media, but until then, here’s to seeing this opinion piece published where it belongs, in the back of the paper.

This is my article that was published in the Kentucky Kernel on the 22nd of September under the title: Presidential Czars not just Obama's, Have historical presence.  It can be found on the KY Kernel website here.
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I feel that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately responding to and correcting falsehoods and misrepresentations about President Barack Obama and his agenda.  Today will, unfortunately, be no different.  From the tea party protesters at the National Mall, to cable news, and yes even on our own campus, a series of lies and misconceptions as well as outright vitriol has been spreading.

I have heard, personally, from people on campus who believe that President Obama is creating a “secret army”, whose purpose seems unclear to me. As I was told, though, I should open my eyes and realize that it’s happening, or that he already has a secret “SS” in Georgia to silence dissidents.  While I believe it takes a very special kind of crazy to actually believe some of this downright stupidity, I do think it’s important to address some of these matters, and let me be clear, I’ll be writing today on the assumption that we’re all intelligent enough to set some of these issues aside without addressing them. If you’d like me to tell you why the President isn’t a Nazi or anything like Adolf Hitler, I’d be happy to do so. So long as the conversation takes place in a padded room where you can’t hurt yourself.

The one issue that I have heard everywhere is that of presidentially- appointed czars.  It is also the one issue that I believe is worth my time and effort to address, because I can understand why some people might be led to believe some of the misconceptions of czars.  If all you hear is Glenn Beck’s notion of what czars are and what they do, then you may very well believe it.  The problem here is, as it is with many of Mr. Beck’s positions, these ideas are simply wrong.

As a bit of research for this article I decided to go straight to the source of a lot of this madness, Fox News.  More specifically, I made sure to catch a few episodes of the Glenn Beck show, although I must admit I haven’t been able to make it through an entire episode yet but I have made it past the halfway point a couple times and that should count for something.  There is a very clear distrust among some over the term “czar”, what it means, and what kind of accountability these czars have.  Unfortunately for those who are trying to make these arguments for political or media gain, these issues are ones that exist only in the minds of people like Mr. Beck.

President Obama is not the first to create czar positions or to rely on their advice.  The idea of executive branch czars is hardly a new one. The first czar positions were created in the 1940s during the Roosevelt administration and some of which were created at the behest of Congressional Republicans.  They were actually created, in part, to help ease the public’s mind about the pressing issues of the day.  The term czar was chosen to make the public feel as though there was a strong person at the helm, capable of steering America in the right direction.

It was under the Reagan administration that the Republican Senate created the position of a national “Drug czar”.  President George W. Bush appointed some 40 individuals to 36 different czar positions. As a point of comparison President Obama has 31 executive appointed czars.

Another often used argument against czars is that they have enormous amounts of power that they may wield completely unchecked and unaccountable to anyone.  On its face, this is absurd.  These czars are appointed by the President and are, therefore, accountable to the White House; they are not authorized to make a move without the consent and backing of the administration. Let me make it very clear, Czars report to and serve at the pleasure of the President.

To those of you who are also fed up with the lies and hate-mongering being propagated in America today, I as always invite you to come out to a College Democrats’ meeting.  We meet every Monday in room 211 of the Student Center.