It's one of the most unimpeachable maxims about human relationships: trust is everything. Once it's betrayed, it takes an act of God – literally – to ever fully restore it.
Short of extraordinary penitence and a divinely-assisted commitment on the part of both parties to restore what has been lost, betrayal of trust is the quickest way to obliterate friendships, workplaces, marriages, families, and communities.
It's so grievous a sin that men will even jeopardize the fate of their own souls by mistakenly holding a grudge against God Himself when they foolishly attribute the consequences of living in a fallen world to a lack of faithfulness from the Almighty.
That's why whenever I'm asked what I think should be taught in journalism schools across America, my first and firmest answer is always the same: honesty, integrity, and a sober explanation of the civilizational damage that results when those charged with conveying information to the public betray that trust.
Take this parking lot exchange as but one example of the public's complete mistrust in its information gatekeepers, and then try to tell me we haven't arrived at that very point of no return.
Transcript
Reporter: I have no political agenda, sir. I really don't. No of the people I know does either. We're purely objective journalists.
Citizen: Uh, yeah you are.
Reporter: Truly, truly, sir, from the bottom of my heart. I don't have a political dog in…
Citizen: Ok, ok, what about all the compilation videos where they show thousands of newscasts in every city all reporting and saying the exact same thing?
Reporter: Nobody tells me what to say, sir.
Citizen: But what are those compilation videos on YouTube and Twitter? They got millions and millions of views where every reporter in every city at every station, they say the exact same thing, word for word. How do you explain that?
Reporter: I don't know what you're referring to so I can't really speak to that.
Citizen: Of course you don't.
Reporter: Ok, have a good one. Thank you so much for your time. It was great talking to you.
Citizen: It was great talking to you.
Reporter: Have a good one (pulls mask out and places it over his face and turns to camera)
Citizen: Put your mask on. Look out, the virus is gonna get you. And why do you – you didn't have your mask on the whole time, now you're putting your mask on. Here's a guy, he's been standing here the whole time without his mask, here's his camera dude with no mask on, but here he is, now he's still trying to scare everyone, now he's gonna put his mask on while he reports. Keep spreading that fear, buddy. Keep spreading that fear. Why didn't you have your mask on before? Now he's not talking to me. Why didn't you have your mask on the last 10 minutes?
Reporter: They're asking us to wear it per guidelines for television.
Citizen: Oh! Oh! So you're told what to do?
Reporter looks away and nods dismissively.
Citizen: Exactly, you just told me you weren't told what to do. You told me you could do whatever you want.
Reporter: I said I wasn't told what to say.
Citizen: Oh, so you're just told what to wear.
Reporter: We're trying to set a good example.
Right or wrong, I feel a bit of sympathy for this newsman who had been sent on location to file a report. He's right – company policy requires him, as it requires virtually every other reporter on American soil, to wear a mask, outdoors, completely isolated from anyone else, likely despite already being vaccinated. He's just doing his job.
But that doesn't change the fact that the citizen in this exchange could not have managed to expose the phoniness of modern "objective journalism" any more effectively than he did.
The journalist says they are being told to "set a good example." But of course, that is the last thing they are doing by maintaining a panic-fueling, misinformation-spreading, vaccine-discouraging mask policy outdoors, in flagrant contradiction of CDC guidelines.
It's the same offense that took place at President Biden's recent address to the absurdly sparse gathering of fully-masked, fully-vaccinated lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
It's virtue-signaling, meaningless, patently false propaganda being spread through imagery rather than words. Our news-makers and news-givers are both complicit, and consequently have obliterated any trust the American people once had in them.
That doesn't end well.
