Unbalanced

Roger Ailes, bye-bye. Aloha. Auf Wiedersehen. Sayonara. Adios. Arrivederci. Au Revoir. Bon Voyage. The Chief Executive Officer of Fox News has gone to that fair and balanced retirement in the sky. Okay, not necessarily in the sky, though one could imagine that his severance package would allow him a nice penthouse someplace or other. Up the elevator and to the right. Always to the right.
Which brings me to the subject of right and left, fair and balanced, liberal and conservative. I remember when I was in fifth grade and we studied journalism. This was back in the seventies, and things were probably very different than they are now. We've got smart phones now. And cable TV. I am sure those things make a huge difference, but what I remember being taught by Mister Conklin was that a journalist should be objective. We were to consider ourselves to be the silent, passive observers of what happened around us. We were asked to report on incidents without giving our opinion on those matters. There was a place for opinions: on the editorial page. Otherwise, we were restricted to those five w's: who, what, when, where, and why. For those of us who were more advanced, we were allowed an h: how. Once those questions had been answered, our job was done. Our thoughts and feelings about how and why things went down was not part of our reportage. We were asked to focus on the facts. Just the facts. This was back in the seventies, as I mentioned. The early seventies. Richard Nixon was president. The only president to resign from office. That's a fact. How  I felt about President Nixon was of no consequence, at least not when it came to reporting on the politics of the day.
Which is why I found myself a job on the editorial page as quickly as I could. Which is why I have this blog. How I feel about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is what keeps me prattling on here. I expect that may have been  what got Mister Ailes started, founding his own news channel, where he could decide what the editorial slant might be. If there was such a thing. It should be noted that Roger got his start as a medial consultant for Richard Nixon. People used to call him "Tricky Dicky." That's a fact.