False Balance Threatens National Security
- Darren Phillips
- Aug 1
- 21 min read
Updated: Nov 6
As a former working journalist, journalism professor, and proud graduate of two different university journalism schools, ethical ideals pertaining to truth, accuracy, fairness and impartiality in journalism have always been top of mind for me.
It’s difficult to understate my level of commitment to core ethical principles of the profession. I have functioned as both a preacher of professional ethics and an apologist in my field, and I have done more than my share of proselytizing.
Having said that, I’ve observed over the last 10 years or so that American journalists’ time-honored commitment to impartiality has mostly morphed into a kind of false balance, at least where political reporting is concerned.
At best, false balance, or bothsidesism if you prefer, is creating confusion in today’s political landscape. At worst, it’s weakening democracy and threatening the safety and security of our nation and the world.
Context
Before I elaborate, allow me to provide some context and perhaps a short history lesson. This blog is a bit too new for me to truly know my audience, which means I’m fully aware these next 1,000 words or more may be entirely unnecessary. Either way, please indulge me here for a few minutes … or don’t. If you’re an industry insider, feel free to skip down to my final analysis under the State of Play subhead.
In any case, for media criticism to be credible, thought-provoking, or even moderately persuasive, it’s important for readers to understand the critic’s frame of reference. At the very least, they should be minimally acquainted with the thing the critic is attempting to dissect. If the perception going in is that the entire system is FUBAR, especially if that perception is largely inaccurate or uninformed, any concern the critic might express about this or that component part will be perceived as a waste of time and a nitpick. Depending on the reader’s perspective, a treatise on the dangers of bothsidesism, for example, could well be seen as something akin to the crew of the Titanic fussing over a muddy deck as the ship goes down.
That’s just it, though, and this is why context — or background, if you prefer — is important. I don’t believe the problems dogging American journalism today are enough to place us in a post-iceberg position on the Titanic timeline of doom. We may only be a hash mark or two shy of an icy death blow, but we’re not there yet!
Here’s why:
Journalists are not the cartoon villains they are made out to be in the partisan hack-o-sphere. It’s true professional journalists are facing a real crisis of credibility, and parts of this crisis are of their own making (see headline at the top of this page), but a lot of what’s undermining the mostly good and honest work of professional journalists today originates externally.
Journalism is one of those fields that is widely misunderstood and often unfairly denigrated. As is the case in other high-profile fields like law, police work, teaching and even medicine, laypeople see journalists behaving in bad faith and assume such misconduct is systemic.
In reality, the vast majority of professional journalists are scrupulous to a fault, just as most lawyers are not ambulance chasers, and most police officers have never fired their service weapons on duty. In fact, 98% of all citizen-police interactions in America do not involve use of force or even the threat of force!
Similarly, the vast majority of teachers and college professors are not Marxists [eye roll], nor are they working in cahoots with one another to “indoctrinate” or otherwise corrupt our children! In fact, according to some of the most recent survey data available, only 3% of American university professors accept the “Marxist” label.
Having worked in academia for a big chunk of my career, and having known and interacted with literally hundreds of educators across many different disciplines, I’m happy to report the research data aligns with my own anecdotal evidence. The vast majority of academics I’ve known and worked with at multiple institutions across the country are ordinary, good, politically moderate and reasonable people with a true heart for service.
Likewise, true medical malpractice is far from the norm in the U.S., and, no, doctors don’t push vaccines for profit! It turns out the overwhelming majority of licensed medical doctors are uniquely honest, highly trained and knowledgeable professionals who literally take an ancient oath to “do no harm.”
Getting back to journalism, as someone who’s lived and worked in that world and spent countless hours in real-life newsrooms, I can assure you that most professional journalists are just ordinary people who possess an extraordinary level of commitment to truth and accuracy in reporting. Like lawyers, cops, teachers and doctors, journalists can be both incredibly idealistic and incredibly jaded, but they are fundamentally dedicated to serving the public interest.
Most non-journalists would probably be shocked by the degree to which rank-and-file reporters and photojournalists are committed to getting it right. Sadly, journalism’s current crisis of credibility means many of you are laughing out loud right now. Such claims of integrity strain credulity.
This reminds me of an experience I had years ago when I was a young journalist fresh out of j-school. The newspaper I was working for at the time sent me to cover the Laila Ali-Jacqui Frazier boxing match at Turning Stone Casino in upstate New York. The fight was hyped nationally for weeks beforehand, and the venue was packed with media people including many elite names in the business.
Before the fight started, I was standing in a back hallway with a gaggle of photographers waiting for the two stars to enter the venue. I began chatting with a photojournalist standing next to me. He was a staff shooter for one of the world’s largest, most prestigious news agencies, and I just remember thinking this dude was the real deal.
Well, imagine my dismay when the boxers finally appeared, and the photographer I’d just been talking to started shouting Laila Ali’s name. “Laila, Laila! Over here! Look this way!” I was stunned and disappointed. Photojournalists are trained to never intentionally influence the events they are documenting. This had been drilled into me through years of training at two different journalism schools. It was also standard practice in every newsroom I had ever worked in up to that point, from Bay Area alternative weeklies to The Star in Johannesburg, to the daily newspaper in New York I was working for at the time. My point here is misconduct like this was/is the exception, not the rule.
Fast forward a couple decades and I’m mentoring student interns as part of my consulting job at the University of New Mexico. I remember this one young student stood out to me because he stated in one of his pre-internship questionnaires that his dream job, post-graduation, was to work for Fox News.
Later, after this student had been interning at a local news outlet for a few weeks, I hosted a Zoom check-in. At one point during our meeting, I asked the student to share the one thing that surprised him most about his internship experience up to that point. Without hesitation, he said he was most surprised by the degree to which accuracy was emphasized in the newsroom. I could see he was genuinely surprised and maybe even a bit annoyed that his colleagues were all so strict. This student, mind you, had two years of journalism school under his belt at that point. He should not have been surprised at all by his colleagues’ high standards.
It's almost like he was incapable of a priori belief in journalistic integrity. He had to see it up close to believe it, and even then it struck him as the exception rather than the rule. Contrast his point of view with my own frame of reference as a young journalist. In my day, professional ethics violations, not professional best practices, stood out as the exception to the rule.
I’m left to wonder if this student’s surprise at seeing journalists act with integrity is a mere reflection of our current age. It would appear an alarming level of cynicism is now baked into the zeitgeist. The words “mainstream media” today are synonymous with dishonesty, corporate shill, left-wing, or worse.
Speaking of the dreaded “left-wing” media, according to 2022 survey data compiled by researchers at Indiana University, approximately half of all journalists say they are Independents, while slightly more than one-third self-identify as Democrats. These numbers are more or less in line with the political makeup of the American public at large. The percentage of Americans who say they’re Independents stands at 43% as of 2024, and the percentage of Americans who identify as Democrats sits somewhere between one-fourth and one-third.
Notably, the percentage of journalists who say they are Republicans has dropped from approximately 26% in 1971 to under 4% in 2022, but I would argue this has everything to do with the Republican party’s significant shift to the right over the last 50 years or more. Both major parties have moved further away from the center, but the percentage of Republicans who describe themselves as “moderate,” politically, stands at just 18% as of 2024, versus 34% for Democrats. Moreover, according to the latest Pew Research data on members of Congress, “Democrats on average have become somewhat more liberal, while Republicans on average have become much more conservative (emphasis added)” over the last 50 years.
Journalists, by and large, are a moderate lot. As the GOP has shifted further to the right, journalists have remained closer to the center, politically, which accounts for the sharp drop in the number of journalists who say they are Republicans, and the sharp increase in the number of journalists who now identify as Independents. Democratic party affiliation among journalists has remained relatively steady, hovering around 35% for the last 50 years.
None of this data surprises me in the least, but it will surely surprise people on the outside looking in. It will surprise them that journalists — much like lawyers and cops and firefighters and teachers and nurses and doctors — mostly mirror the public they serve.
The “mainstream media” haters among us will also be surprised to know that when I worked for Gannett, which is about as mainstream as journalism gets, any staff reporter or photographer who committed three errors that required running a correction or retraction within a single calendar year was summarily fired pro forma. How’s that for accountability? I don’t know of a single independent media figure, blogger or podcaster who is held to that same high standard when it comes to accuracy. I can think of very few jobs in any discipline, for that matter, where the margin for error is so narrow.
One last point I’d like to make is tied to remuneration. Lest anyone thinks professional, mainstream staff journalists are grifters or are otherwise motivated by money, I can assure you virtually no one’s making “Anderson Cooper” money. Even your local, weekday TV news anchor is likely earning less than $60,000 a year. It’s true. (The average is closer to $50,000.)
Journalists, much like teachers, are not in it for the money. At least most teachers and police officers, too, for that matter, are reasonably assured of stable employment and a pension. Not so for journalists. I saw a meme about journalism once that made me laugh out loud because it’s accurate. The meme goes like this:
“Journalism is a tough job with insane pressure and crappy pay. On the other hand, everybody hates you.”
So why do it? I can’t speak for all journalists, of course, but most reporters and photojournalists I’ve known dating back to my college years were motivated by curiosity, a strong penchant for writing or photography (or both), a desire to tell stories, a desire to do something noble and good, a desire to speak truth to power, to meet “interesting people doing interesting things” (as one of my college professors used to say), a desire to travel, a desire to document world events, to shine light on the truth, to expose wrongdoing and corruption where it exists, and to be a voice for the voiceless. These reasons may sound like platitudes, and, yes, some broadcast journalists are only in it because they want to be on TV, but most journalists I know are in it for all the right reasons.
Note: Readers should assume that when I refer to “professional journalists” here, I’m referring to people who work full-time in the field as an employee of an accredited news organization (corporate, independent or otherwise) where ethical accountability and established industry best practices rule the day. People can refer to basement podcasters and independent armchair content creators as “journalists” all they want, but that doesn’t mean they are. I can refer to people who’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos or even taken a law class or two as “lawyers,” but that doesn’t make them lawyers. I might refer to minimum-wage security guards at my local shopping mall as “police officers,” but that doesn’t mean they are. Referring to them as such merely showcases my ignorance.
History
So how did mainstream journalism come to be what it is today? It may come as a surprise to many, but American journalism has been proudly grounded in strict allegiances to accuracy, fairness and professionalism for the last 100 years. The first journalism school in America opened its doors at the University of Missouri in 1908. (Go Tigers!) Columbia University in New York City followed suit four years later, and by 1920 there were journalism degree programs in ten different states across the nation.
These early journalism schools served as incubators for the development of ethical standards and widely agreed upon industry best practices. They also served as an early “farm system” where aspiring journalists could be developed and trained and ultimately prepared to enter commercial newsrooms as reporters and editors.
Yes, the journalistic standards and ideals in place today are manifestations of a century’s worth of deliberate thought, action and scholarship. Many of these ethical principles were codified as early as 1922, when the newly formed American Society of News Editors (now known as the News Leaders Association) adopted its “Canons of Journalism.”
Sigma Delta Chi followed suit in 1926 with the adoption of a similar code. Both organizations still exist today, and both still serve as standard bearers for professional ethics in journalism. ASNE’s code was revised and renamed “Statement of Principles” in 1975, and Sigma Delta Chi (now known as the Society of Professional Journalists) adopted its own code in 1973.
American journalism wasn’t always committed to impartiality and strict ethical or professional ideals. The colonial press was distinctly partisan, and news publications of that era were directly funded by political parties.
Later, during the late 19th century, journalism would come to be defined by sensationalism and exaggeration. Fueled in large part by fierce circulation wars between newspaper publishers like Pulitzer and Hearst, the so-called “yellow journalism” of the Gilded Age is widely viewed by journalists today as a low point in the history of their profession.
In 1927, a concept known as equal opportunity in broadcasting emerged and was codified into law by way of the Radio Act. It was later replaced and expanded upon under the Communications Act of 1934. The equal opportunity statute stipulated, among other things, that broadcasters must operate in the "public interest, convenience, or necessity" if they are to receive a license from the Federal Communications Commission.
More specifically, the statute required broadcasters to give all legally qualified political candidates running for the same political office equal access to their stations and airtime. Known colloquially as the “equal time rule,” the provision was (and still is) meant to limit omission bias and promote robust public debate.
The rationale behind the statute is rooted in the concept of resource scarcity. The number of broadcast frequencies is limited, therefore the number of broadcaster licenses that can be issued without creating signal interference is limited. Historically, this limitation led lawmakers to view radio and television broadcasting as a relatively scarce and extremely valuable public resource to be regulated and protected.
Later, in 1941, the FCC established something known as the Mayflower Doctrine, which prohibited radio broadcasters from editorializing on air. Like the equal opportunity statutes already on the books, the Mayflower Doctrine was also rooted in the concept of signal scarcity and the growing concern that broadcasters would use the precious few publicly available FCC licenses to spew propaganda. In short, the regulation stipulated that broadcasters must remain politically neutral, and that they “could not be an advocate.” This went beyond the more generalized directives contained in the equal time rule, as it expressly limited what broadcasters could and could not say. The Mayflower Doctrine ultimately proved too restrictive, particularly during the war years, as serving the public interest necessitated freedom to editorialize.
Enter the Fairness Doctrine. Established by the FCC in 1949, this regulation basically replaced Mayflower. Under the Fairness Doctrine, broadcasters were free to editorialize so long as they presented competing sides of controversial political issues. Like all the other regulations that came before it, the Fairness Doctrine was also rooted in the “scarcity” rationale.
The Fairness Doctrine was eventually repealed in 1987 under the direction of President Ronald Reagan. The primary argument for its repeal was that it ran afoul of the First Amendment and the constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech. A more significant factor embedded in the Fairness Doctrine’s repeal, however, was tied to technology.
After cable television went mainstream in the early 1980s, the scarcity rationale was essentially rendered obsolete. Unlike broadcast television, cable TV was not limited to a finite spectrum of airwave frequencies. It offered a new era of unlimited bandwidth that critically undermined the outdated notion that mass communication, at least as far as television was concerned, was a scarce and precious public resource that needed to be strictly regulated to protect the public interest.
With that in mind, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was probably inevitable. Even if it had remained intact, broadcasters’ influence was seriously diluted once cable TV news took off. The advent of internet technology in the 1990s only added to this dilution. In short, technological advancement and the unlimited mass media bandwidth that came with it meant the need to regulate broadcast media content was not nearly as important as it was back when over-the-air broadcasting was the only game in town.
Of course, one unfortunate byproduct of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was that it accelerated the media landscape’s shift toward more polarized news coverage. Although radio and TV broadcasters were (and still are) bound by the equal time rule, which requires broadcasters to provide competing political candidates with equal access to broadcast airwaves, they are no longer required to present both sides of controversial political issues. In the late 1980s, this newly acquired freedom was quickly manifested in the meteoric rise of hyper-partisan news radio. Rush Limbaugh, who became the leading voice of right-wing grievance politics in America, was syndicated a year after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, and by 1992 had amassed 20 million weekly listeners.
"'Impartiality' in today’s political landscape can actually look more like its opposite. Mainstream professional journalists — in their rigidity, stubbornness, rote adherence to the letter of the edict rather than its spirit or intent, and in their baked-in aversion to accusations of bias — are actually legitimizing harmful government misconduct, abuses of power, and objectively dangerous policy decisions."
State of Play
So where does all this leave us? What is my original point about false balance, and is it really a threat to national security?
Here’s the deal:
While the ethos of mainstream journalism today rests on monumentally important, time-honored core values like truth, accuracy, accountability and impartiality (see context and history above), the notion of impartiality, in particular, has been perverted to the point that mainstream journalists themselves are often unwittingly functioning as their own countervailing force.
“Impartiality” in today’s political landscape can actually look more like its opposite. Mainstream professional journalists — in their rigidity, stubbornness, rote adherence to the letter of the edict rather than its spirit or intent, and in their baked-in aversion to accusations of bias — are actually legitimizing harmful government misconduct, abuses of power, and objectively dangerous policy decisions.
In the SPJ Code of Ethics, the first two of four fundamental tenets of ethical conduct are as follows: Seek truth and report it, and minimize harm. Unfortunately, under mainstream journalism’s rigid commitment to absolute neutrality, the truth can be difficult to discern. This descent into bothsidesism has fomented confusion and obscured the truth, and in so doing has ultimately harmed our nation and the world.
Journalists are basically working to reduce their own profession to stenography. Mainstream news reporters have become mere scribes who stand for nothing and no one. In such an environment, where the Fourth Estate is fundamentally anodyne and basically toothless, the Overton window is allowed to shift in near perfect alignment with the increasingly radical and dangerous mores of the ruling political party. Rather than working to keep the window relatively fixed and in reasonable alignment with time-honored democratic ideals, constitutional constraints and the prevailing views of the public they serve, journalists have basically allowed the range of acceptable political norms to shift dangerously far afield. In essence, mainstream journalists have kowtowed to a radical and objectively dangerous political minority.
"In essence, mainstream journalists have kowtowed to a radical and objectively dangerous political minority."
I’m not blaming journalists for all that ails their profession, not by any stretch. Again, journalists are far from the cartoon villains they are widely made out to be. Journalism is under heavy attack by any number of external forces, for sure. For starters, professional journalism today is fiercely at odds with technology. Generative AI, from deep fakes to bots, is waging war on the truth, and bad-faith actors are exploiting algorithmic information silos for profit and political influence. Moreover, any dipsh*t with an internet connection can easily publish outright propaganda that goes viral in an instant. These are easily among the greatest threats to professional, honest, accurate, reality-based journalism today. That doesn’t mean, however, that professional journalism isn’t under attack from within.
In years gone by, when the most contentious arguments in politics largely centered around legitimate, “kitchen table” policy issues and good-faith political disagreements, impartiality wasn’t nearly as slippery, and the potential dangers of bothsidesism were far less consequential. In this day and age, however — when the executive branch recklessly oversteps its authority in objectively dangerous and unprecedented ways, when the sitting president of the United States openly engages in a level of corruption previously unseen in American politics, when the majority of the president’s cabinet-level appointees are so objectively unqualified it borders on the absurd, and when the sitting president is so uniquely dishonest and utterly lacking in character it strains credulity — such blind allegiance to journalistic neutrality flies in the face of the Fourth Estate’s duty to provide a critical check on power. Moreover, this dereliction of duty normalizes uniquely abnormal behavior, thus misleading and confusing news consumers, and eroding trust in journalism even further.
Look, when it comes to covering spot news — fires, floods, earthquakes, car crashes, etc. — impartiality in journalism is entirely appropriate and necessary. Suffice to say, I would still classify impartiality as a journalistic pole star. I’m okay with journalism resembling something akin to stenography where spot news is concerned. There are any number of instances where reporters should give us the five W’s and little else. If need be, the “why” can be tackled using quotes from the people who are most qualified to tackle it, but the who, what, when and where of it all should not require much interpretation. Later, of course, a follow-up piece can include analysis and perhaps even a bit of editorializing, but the initial breaking news report should maintain an entirely neutral point of view. This kind of dispassionate reporting is necessary if journalists are to at least maintain a base level of public trust.
"Sometimes the truth is politically biased."
When it comes to political news coverage, however, as well as news analysis and investigative reporting, etc., strict allegiance to impartiality can actually be a disservice to the public. If Elected Official X shows up to a press conference, for example, and falsely claims a life-saving vaccine will kill them, reporters are duty-bound to challenge Elected Official X, to aggressively report the truth, and to unapologetically set the record straight, even if such actions amount to aligning themselves with the official's political opponents. Sometimes the truth is politically biased. It’s really that simple. To do political journalism in America in this day and age requires tremendous courage.
With that in mind, I would submit impartiality is a potentially misleading term that should be handled with extreme care. It should come with a huge, red, flashing asterisk because, well, telling the truth and doing reality-based journalism often require journalists to take sides! Interestingly, the word “impartiality” only appears once in the SPJ’s official 772-word Code of Ethics, and only in the context of accepting gifts, favors, fees, and special treatment that “may compromise integrity or impartiality.” As an aside, the word “objectivity” does not appear in the code at all.
And lest you missed the history lesson above or it remains unclear to you what the “equal time” rule actually means, allow me to reiterate. Equal-time statutes were passed to ensure competing political candidates had equal access to broadcast airwaves. They were never intended to force journalists to give equal weight, value, time and word count to differing political viewpoints.
Same goes for the now defunct Fairness Doctrine. It was not meant to force broadcasters to give equal weight, value, time or credence to all sides of a given political issue or topic, nor was it intended to prohibit editorializing. It was simply intended to ensure that broadcasters covered controversial issues thoroughly and accurately, and it was meant to prevent broadcasters from engaging in political advocacy. It seems journalists themselves often misunderstand and ultimately overemphasize the concept of impartiality in defiance of their own stated ethos and 100-year history of codified professional ethics.
This brings me to my next point. My criticism of false balance here is not implicitly tied to support for advocacy journalism. In fact, I would argue there is little room for advocacy journalism at all in the mainstream press.
When I was working as a reporter and photojournalist in Johannesburg, South Africa, my stated goal at the outset was to focus on “stories of success” in post-apartheid South Africa. Back then, I would have classified the endeavor as “public journalism,” which is a close cousin of advocacy journalism. The problem with applying a predetermined agenda or goal to journalistic work, no matter how righteous or objectively good that agenda may be, is that it hamstrings the journalist in ways that are often impossible to foresee.
I’m not comfortable with pre-labeling journalistic reportage. How can I be sure that my proposed story on a white-owned and operated, Eurocentric classical music academy in the heart of a black South African township, for example, is truly a story of “success”?
Here’s an idea: How about I get in there, to paraphrase Jay Rosen, and “dig under the surface of things, call around to find out what happened, verify what I’ve heard, and work to understand it better than almost anyone,” before I label it. If I’m bound by a premeditated agenda to only tell “stories of success,” I may be tempted to overlook inconvenient facts and nuance, and ultimately force a square peg. No thanks.
I don’t want to overemphasize my position on advocacy journalism here, but I think it’s worth sharing the following excerpt from a piece I wrote in 2007 about my work in South Africa:
“In order to produce a body of work that was truly uncompromising, provocative, and that possessed the kind of journalistic weight and discipline I have come to demand of myself, I needed to tackle the good with the bad. To attempt to limit my journalistic endeavor to ‘stories of success’ was to limit journalistic freedom and allegiance to the truth.”
There you have it. Again, please don’t interpret my condemnation of blind impartiality as some kind of endorsement for advocacy journalism. That’s not what this is.
In any case, it’s been difficult to watch the slow decline of mainstream journalism over the last 10 years. My first major moment of frustration and anger came when I observed major (mostly cable) TV networks giving a minor presidential candidate (the guy was polling at 3% in those days) more free airtime than all the other Republican candidates combined. Why did they do this? You guessed it. His unique brand of incendiary, racially coded rhetoric, showmanship, and reductionist policy ideas were good for ratings and the networks’ bottom line!
The dereliction of duty and decline in quality continued from there with bothsidesism and considerable “sanewashing” to the point that reckless behavior and rhetoric, unquestionably harmful policy decisions, and even overt violations of constitutional law were normalized. More recently, omission bias appears to be growing at an alarming rate, especially at the major broadcast TV news networks.
Stories of unprecedented graft and self-enrichment, emoluments violations, naked cronyism, criminality, gross government overreach and outright fraud are routinely ignored or buried far down in evening newscasts below far less newsworthy weather and breaking spot news stories. I’m amazed by the number of minutes ABC World News Tonight now devotes to weather, localized flooding, fires and other spot news events at the expense of much bigger, more consequential national stories emanating from Washington D.C. (It’s hard not to wonder if the current climate of political bullying by a uniquely litigious president has had a chilling effect on press freedom.)
This abject failure by elements of our national press corps to stand up to political bullying and hold elected officials to account was perhaps best exemplified by two recent legal disputes. The first happened in December 2024 when ABC/Disney capitulated and agreed to a $15 million settlement over a frivolous libel suit brought by the president-elect. The second happened earlier this month when Paramount/CBS settled with the sitting U.S president in an even more frivolous and unfounded defamation suit. Again, doing political journalism in America in this day and age requires tremendous courage.
One final topic I’d like to touch on pertains to the role of editorializing in journalism. In short, there is room for it, but it must be clearly labeled as such. The op-ed, which takes its name from its placement opposite the editorial page in conventional print newspapers, provides valuable analysis, commentary, depth, nuance and texture. As an aside, I’ve never been a huge fan of newspaper editorial boards endorsing political candidates (I think the optics are bad), but that’s a whole other post.
On a personal note, although I still consider myself a journalist of sorts, I have not worked as a full-time staff reporter or photojournalist for a bona fide news outlet since the early 2000s, and I have not actively engaged in freelance reporting or shooting since 2016. I’ve actually spent a big chunk of my career working in public relations and education, which is why I feel empowered and basically free to post my opinions here, although I’m still careful to label them as such. Please note some of the older blog posts you see here were originally published in private social media feeds, and were really only visible to select friends and colleagues.
In closing, I’ll leave you with this thought, which is hardly new:
A free, robust, independent, courageous and uncowed press corps is a true ally of liberty, and an enemy of authoritarianism. Be courageous, my friends. Be courageous. ☮︎
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer(s) or any other organization, group or individual.
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