I often wonder why I torture myself.

Each weekday afternoon, I try to stay somewhat literate in what is happening in our world by watching the evening network news.

Most every day, I regret it. 

What was clearly established almost forty years ago about most of our mass media has only gotten worse. In 1986, a team of three political scientists presented us with a major research project correlating emerging media power elites and the effects they have on American society.

These three—S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter—put into print the first part of their study, which they titled The Media Elite: America’s New Powerbrokers.

In a departure from earlier studies on media bias, Rothman and Lichter sought to demonstrate “a causal link between liberal opinions and biased reporting.”

Their research was thorough, well documented, and scary.

Pick your poison. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and all major news television networks have an axe to grind. And they grind out their slanted worldview and shape the mush-minds of Americans unable to sort truth from fiction.

Even more disturbing is the linguistic trickery employed by media elites to shape our discussions on major issues. A most easily recognizable example would be on abortion issue coverage. When President Joe Biden presented his State of the Union (SOTU) address this year, he chose wisely to avoid the term abortion.

The abortion fan club, with full on media support, gets to choose their group identity: pro choice. It almost sounds very American! But that crowd and their media elite support team totally avoids the use of the term chosen by those who oppose abortion: “pro life.”

It isn’t an innocent mistake. It’s calculated. 

A more recently developed approach along this line is one that got the president a SOTU scolding!! From progressives, nonetheless! How dare POTUS refer to the killing of the female Georgia college student as being done by a border crossing illegal!!

It went like this—complete with a mispronunciation of her first name: “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed. By an illegal!” He even repeated,“By an illegal, that’s right.”

And then came the liberal spanking — the retraction from the guilty Chief Executive for not using the approved phrase “undocumented.” The game of words.

Your evening network news continues blasting forward with the lies that a recent (and false) looming budget crisis was due to Republican stubbornness over their demands to get control of our borders. Which Biden’s budget won’t do.

Jeh Johnson, formerly President Obama’s director of Homeland Security, told MSNBC that when he was in office, the administration considered it a serious problem if illegals crossing our border reached 1,000 a day. It’s reported that in the last three years, that number has climbed to nearly 7,000 per day!!! There were three million apprehensions in 2023!

Yet you hear nothing like this from the talking heads each evening.

Next? How about all those “Palestinians” who supposedly have died at the hands of Israelis in the Gaza conflict? Those numbers are fed to us by the Hamas-run Health Ministry. You know, the people who hide terrorists under hospitals.

Abraham Wynder, professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, isn’t convinced. In an article for the Tablet, he said: “Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real.” He added, “The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.”

And heavily overstated.

Will you hear evening news anchors David Muir, Norah O’Donnell, or Lester Holt explain this to us? No. Instead, both on local and national news, we see protestors at places like the Oscars screaming about Israel. Want the fighting to stop? Simple! Hamas…RELEASE THE HOSTAGES.

Instead, the president is picking a fight with the Israeli Prime Minister!

And now we are heading into the months leading up to the election. One thing you can be sure of. Only one party and presidential candidate will get favorable treatment from Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. I’ll let you guess the way their words will fall.

It’s the same with Illinois politics. Think school choice stands a chance in this state? Think our legislature has any hope of conservative viewpoints on any number of issues?

The Illinois Family Institute is one of the few prominent voices to raise concerns when they are needed. 

Truth must be found in a mind tuned to God and His Word. As the apostle Paul wrote, “For the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit itself to God’s law, for it is unable to do so.” Romans 8:7 (HCJB)

We must ask God for a discerning heart and mind. And always be testing for truth.