After a long hiatus from posting to this Integrity Blog, I am resuming posts to the extent that my time allows. This post may sound like it is political but I assure you it is not. This post is about lack of integrity in journalism.

Bill Moyers, in his special on April 25, 2007, has had the courage and integrity to provide what I believe to be a journalistically responsible exposé of just how out of integrity the mainstream United States press has become. He has has dared to criticize both what others have branded the “liberal” press and the “conservative” press for having abdicated their journalistic responsibility to be discerning in their reporting.

I cannot strongly enough recommend that you set aside the time to watch this profoundly important piece of journalism. The URL to view it is:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html
The reporting by both conservatives and liberals prior to and immediately following the invasion of Iraq was drastically and consistently out of integrity with the facts. It made a mockery of the sacred responsibility the press has in a democracy to investigate claims made and to report facts the public needs in order to distinguish between propaganda and truth.
I believe the time has come for the American people to rise up in the most important revolution of our time: an Integrity Revolution. It is time for us to demand that the press stop using “pundits” espousing opposing propaganda spins as a replacement for responsible, balanced, truly investigative journalism.

Pundits debating on television and podcasts may be a form of entertainment for some. But, journalism goes over the line when from journalism into propaganda when news media use pundits as substitutes for having their own reporters uncover and report the very facts that the pundits are in the business of omitting in order to forward their own spin.

It is time for the American people to reclaim their responsibility they have to be discerning instread of being susceptible to being taken in by the powerful propgaganda machines that have replaced responsible government and a responsible media.

It is time for the American people to demand that all news media return to uncovering truth rather than promoting propaganda. It is time for the American people, and American business, to start refusing to patronize or support media outlets whose news departments are out of integrity with their sacred responsibility in a democracy to reveal the facts rather than promulgate propaganda.

Again, I cannot strongly enough recommend that you set aside the time to watch this profoundly important piece of journalism. The URL to view it is:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

While you’re on Bill Moyers’ page, check out Jon Stewart’s insightful comments about the press:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/profile.html

To read more about Discernment, one of the Seven WisePassions of 3D Integrity™, visit the WisePassions™ section of my website:
http://www.willingness.com/sevenwise.html

For the past 27 years, Project Censored, a program based at Sonoma State University, in Rohnert Park, California, has compiled a list of the top 25 underreported stories from around the country. This year’s list, arranged and reviewed by approximately 200 students and faculty, again contains stories that, for whatever reason, were deemed unfit for American eyes by the mainstream media.

Censorship is lying by omission. With very few exceptions (such as not disclosing military strategy during wartime situations, for instance), censorship is the opposite of serving highest collective good.

Censorship is not only done by governments. In the United States, which prides itself on having a constitution that guarantees a “free press,” censorship is being practiced by major news networks such as Fox and CNN. (Censorship has also been practiced at times by drug companies who withhold damning data from the research studies they publish in medical journals — Vioxx is a particularly well-documented example — but that is another story for another time.)

Fox is one of many examples of news network that has a clear political agenda that it is forwarding, which in turn determines how it slants news stories the stories it features and the stories it buries.

Burying a story is a euphemism for censorship. But, by calling censorship by a less ugly name, the media are able to fool an undiscerning public into believing they are receiving objective reporting.

This is not only an example of lack of integrity. It is downright dangerous. When people form opinions erroneously believing they are basing them on objective truth, they make decisions about, for instance, who they vote for, based on incomplete pictures. This, in turn, can result in the public unknowing supporting corruption or in supporting foreign policies that damage their country’s standing in the international community rather than strengthen it.

I therefore applaud Project Censored for their efforts to bring into public awareness this most dangerous form of unintegrity.

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In a speech given by Nancy Pelosi, the incoming U.S. Speaker of the House, she said, “”The three biggest differences in how I would lead are integrity, civility and fiscal discipline.”  Will her actions be in integrity with her words or is she only saying what she believes people want to hear? Only time will tell…

One of the most frequent reasons given for the why people in the U.S. so widely voted to oust Republicans on Election Day had less to do with political affiliation and more to do with an issue that transcends political party: Integrity. The way the voters put into words their change of heart had to do with being fed up with scandals. Are the American people beginning to wake up to the fact that putting people in office who have high integrity is more important than their politcal party or ideological beliefs? I sure hope so. How about you?

By now you may have heard about the Colorado pastor who was the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He was a crusader against homosexuality and drugs who stepped down in disgrace from both his national role and his congregational pulpit, saying to his congregants the following:

“The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem,” Haggard wrote. “I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.”

People who try to war against that within them that feels “dark and repulsive” cannot win that ware through using willpower. Only through fully digesting the originating trauma and its healing it negative aftereffects can this occur. Too many people in leadership and spiritual positions deny the vital importance of doing psychological healing in order to live in integrity with one’s professed values.

The moral of the story is that, as I have put it for years now, “People function at the level of their wounds not their wishes.” Huge amounts of damage have been done in political, business and spiritual circles as a result of denying this vital fact.

To read more about this particular example, click here. I only ask you to compassionately keep in mind that this is but one of a vast universe of examples — today’s example. There are, sadly, plenty more where this came from, and in all walks of life and all religions.

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