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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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.

Lying means telling falsehoods or concealing truths in order to manipulate you, especially when doing this does not serve highest good. Lying is the first of the eight epidemics comprising the Unintegrity Pandemic. One source of information about lying, its consequences and what to do about it is Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton. Also see the product on Fibs, Lies & Authenticity on the Willingness Works website.

Example of Unintegrity Through Lying: The Tobacco Industry

As most of us are aware, for decades, the massive tobacco industry denied and suppressed their own evidence that smoking cigarettes was a significant health hazard not only to the smoker but to those who breathed second-hand smoke from the smoker.

The tobacco industry was not only out of integrity because they lied to the scientific community, the public and the government. They lied because that was the only way they could get away with making massive profits through selling products that were out of integrity with what serves highest good (Unintegrity Pandemic Variety #6).

Another Example of Unintegrity Through Lying: Phishing

I am particularly amazed at how many people there are on the internet attempting to lure people into “consensual robbery by ignorance.” What I mean by this term is that people respond to phishing e-mails, enabling them to be robbed, because they are ignorant about recognizing the many forms phishing occurs on the internet these days. Phishing is the internet term for “consensual robbery by ignorance.” This is an example of word that is nice enough sounding so that the extent of the malice is watered down. If the internet gurus want to use “ph” in the word, then they should just call it what it is: Phraud.

Here are some of the more popular examples as of this writing. There’s the fraudulent notification about you having won tens of millions of dollars in a lottery. There are the threatening demands that confirm your bank account, credit card, e-bay or PayPal information in order to not have your account suspended. There is ever-present scam, with many different variations, about the person who died and left behind tens of millions of dollars that cannot be accessed, and how you can help for a piece of the action.

Other Examples of Unintegrity Through Lying: Name Your Cover-Up

There are far too many massive cover-ups that have occurred in recent years to recount. A couple of infamous examples include Watergate (this was a cover-up of a great example of Obsession – Unintegrity variety #5), Enron (a darling of the corporate world whose downfall came because of “cooking the books” and then covering this up), and multiple prisoner abuse cases in Iraq.

I offer you a couple of warnings before I launch into the examples:

1. This is Not About Blame: As I said above, the purpose of this chapter is not to lay blame but to expand your awareness of the range of ways in which Unintegrity expresses itself. Because I see the Unintegrity Pandemic as a systemic problem, I hold to blame no one individual, culture, religion, organization, business, profession, political party, governmental agency, country and organization of countries. I propose instead that each one of us has a huge role to play in solving this problem. Each individual, culture, religion, country, organization, business, profession, political party, governmental agency, country or organization of countries. So, as you read the rest of this chapter, I ask you to not dwell upon the question of who is at fault. Rather, simply open your eyes to how pervasive the Unintegrity problem is, so you can begin to focus on the solution (an integrity revolution), instead of continuing to view each of these illustrations as separate problems needing to be addressed separately.
2. Refrain From Despair: While it might be tempting to throw your hands up in despair as you read about the magnitude and pervasiveness of the Unintegrity Pandemic, please keep in mind that this book is about a solution to this problem. Only this chapter is about the problem itself. I therefore urge you to treat this chapter as a call to consciousness and as a means to motivate, not as an invitation to despair.
3. Examples Cross Categories: I have placed the examples you are about to read into individual categories to make it easier to understand each category. In reality, though, most of these Unintegrity illustrations could just as easily have been used to illustrate other categories as well. So, if you find yourself thinking, “This example could have been an illustration of arrogance as greed,” that is probably true.