{"id":29561,"date":"2018-05-05T00:44:11","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T00:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29561"},"modified":"2018-05-05T00:44:11","modified_gmt":"2018-05-05T00:44:11","slug":"obligation-no-prerogative-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29561","title":{"rendered":"‘Obligation,’ no; prerogative, yes!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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CNN anchor Don Lemon is not among my favorite TV journalists\/talking heads.<\/p>\n

He is the one who once asked — reportedly in all seriousness — whether the Malaysian Airlines jetliner that disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing had been swallowed up by a “black hole,” apparently not realizing that such an event would have consumed the entire solar system.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I got that out of the way.<\/p>\n

Now we hear that Lemon says it is his “obligation” to refer to Donald J. Trump as a “racist.”<\/p>\n

According to The Hill<\/a>: \u201cCritical thinking is important as a journalist. If you cannot surmise that this president \u2014 if he\u2019s not racist, he\u2019s certainly racist-adjacent,” Lemon told an audience as the keynote speaker at Variety\u2019s Entertainment & Technology NYC Summit. “We have come to a consensus in our society that facts matter. I feel like it\u2019s my obligation to say that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I beg to differ, young man.<\/p>\n

It’s not your “obligation,” although it is your “prerogative” to say what you want about how you perceive the president’s point of view. His obligation<\/em> as a journalist requires fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n

I am quick to agree that Donald Trump has provided plenty of evidence of racist tendencies. I keep turning to the lie he fomented about Barack Obama place of birth, as he kept alive the slanderous accusation that the first African-American president was born in Africa and was constitutionally ineligible to serve in the office to which he was elected twice.<\/p>\n

And, yes, there was that hideous assertion that there were good people “on both sides” of the riot that erupted in Charlottesville, Va., between counterprotesters and Klansmen, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.<\/p>\n

Lemon’s “obligation” only is to report what Trump has said; he should let his viewers make the determination as to whether the president is a racist.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, of course, doesn’t prevent him from hanging the “racist” label on Trump. Indeed, it allows<\/em> Lemon to say it, but it damn sure doesn’t require<\/em> it.<\/p>\n\n

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CNN anchor Don Lemon is not among my favorite TV journalists\/talking heads. He is the one who once asked — reportedly in all seriousness — whether the Malaysian Airlines jetliner that disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing had been swallowed up by a “black hole,” apparently not realizing that such an event would … Continue reading ‘Obligation,’ no; prerogative, yes!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[540,7240,1043,1420,1424,2692,7244,3808],"class_list":["post-29561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-charlottesville-riot","tag-cnn","tag-don-lemon","tag-donald-trump","tag-kkk","tag-neo-nazis","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29563,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29561\/revisions\/29563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}