Beginning with Benjamin Franklin in the U.S., journalism was once considered a noble profession – the fourth estate – practiced by giants such as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, Judy Woodruff, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Peter Jennings, Jim Leher, Gwen Ifill, and many, many more. These people not only reported the news, they helped us understand the news. For example, when Cronkite tired of reporting the body counts of the Vietnam War, he almost single-handedly ended the war by vividly showing us the futility of continuing it.

Journalists have routinely risked their lives to inform us. Indeed, over the past 20 years 1,668 have been killed – most the result of murders, ambushes, contract killings and war. Just recently, it appears that the Israeli military specifically targeted seven Al-Jazeera journalists reporting from Gaza. To put the number of journalists killed in perspective, over the same 20-year time period, fewer law enforcement officers have been killed in the U.S. (roughly 1,300).

And journalists in the U.S. are now under attack as never before.

Reliable news outlets are labeled fake news while Fox News, NewsMax, OAN, and many radio and online “news” outlets report a wide-ranging litany of misinformation and disinformation in support of MAGA and the Republican Party. These outlets are little more than Joseph Goebbels-style propaganda megaphones, a fact made obvious by the large number of Fox News commentators who were nominated for key government positions by Trump.

Meanwhile, the MAGA regime defunded public broadcasting because its independent reporting made it appear too “liberal.” ABC bowed to Trump by “donating” $15 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit. Even more troubling, Paramount’s CBS settled another lawsuit for $16 million and agreed to accept a “bias monitor” that reports to the Liar-in-Chief.

Such deals should immediately raise questions about the networks’ objectivity!

Will they, too, become mere megaphones for MAGA? It seems they have already softened their criticism of the regime. How can any of their reports about politics be trusted? How can the Washington Post be trusted after its refusal to publish a cartoon by Ann Telnaes that accurately showed the newspaper’s owner bowing at the feet of Trump? Their willingness to submit to threats from the Felon-in-Chief stands in stark contrast to the legacy of Murrow, Cronkite, Woodward and Bernstein who often spoke truth to power at great personal risk.

Too often, the Trump regime’s lies go unchallenged or unreported.

This situation is partially due to the monetization of news beginning in the 1980s. Prior to that, networks did not seek to profit from news. It was considered a public service in much the same way as PBS and NPR treat news reporting. But traditional news media is now governed by readership studies and ratings. Unlike Cronkite who believed his job was to give you the news you need to know not the news you want to know; today’s reporting seems the reverse.

News reporting has become a popularity contest with Americans seeking news outlets that fit their ideologies. Truth, substance and context seem to matter less than speed and ideological affiliation. Where once the vast majority of the public got their news from three reliable networks, today news reporting and, not coincidentally, the public are divided and fragmented as never before.

Traditional newspapers are struggling for survival. Local TV news is overly sensationalized with crime reports. News from social media is, at best, suspect. And most online news sites are either single-issue focused or hopelessly biased. As a result, many Americans have spurned the news altogether. With dwindling audiences, more and more news gathering organizations are seeking funding and hiding their reporting behind paywalls.

Those Americans who crave truth and accuracy are forced to search for trustworthy journalists on platforms like Substack, Zeteo, DropSiteNews, or the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists). Ironically, some of the best alternatives for accurate reporting of national and international news are foreign news organizations like BBCAmerica, The Guardian, and Al-Jazeera. Even CNN International seems to have higher standards than its American version.

Of all our nation’s problems, I believe this is the most pressing. Without widespread acceptance of shared truths, our nation is doomed to collapse as we fail to address real issues while focusing, instead, on culture wars.