How the game is played

I am moving this to the top because I believe that had the press in Florida done its job, Amendment 4 would have had a fighting chance.
Too late fact-checking now.

My mother was full of helpful moral suggestions: Play nicely. Share. Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.

My parents were good people and they instilled in me the belief that most people are good and deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I’ve been thinking about that last phrase a lot lately - the one about how you play the game.

Maybe I’m just naïve but working to help get Amendment 4 passed has been an eye-opening experience for me.

I didn’t think that people who are supposed to be respectable could lie with a straight face.

But I’ve seen it time and time again during Amendment 4 debates when elected officials say, as if it was written in stone, that if the amendment passes, people will have to vote on everything. The truth is, the only thing we’d vote on are changes to our comprehensive plans that those same elected officials first approve. I’ve heard them predict dire consequences for the economy when the truth is our economy is in dire straits because those same elected officials have been making bad decisions. And now they want you to believe that somehow, if nothing changes, they will suddenly have a solution.

I didn’t know that for a lot of people, the end justifies the means. I didn’t know that a group like the Florida TaxWatch would conjure up an economic report based on fallacy and present it as fact.

I’ve been making excuses for what I consider to be a shameful lack of impartiality on the part of Florida journalists. I used to be one of them.

But for the last year now, I have seen time and again newspapers printing propaganda by Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy without bothering to check the facts. I’ve seen articles that are totally one-sided and, in my opinion, shamelessly promote the agenda of a group of people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Newspapers are supposed to be more than just one big press release for the powers that be.

I wonder now, when I read an article, if I am really getting both sides of the story, if I am really getting all of the information I need to find the element of truth.

An institution which is supposed to be impartial has, for all intents and purposes, taken sides.

Our county’s strength has always centered on freedom; freedom of speech, of the press, freedom to change our laws when the laws we have seem to benefit the powerful at the expense of average citizens.

When it becomes ok for speeches to be full of lies that go unchallenged, when a sincere attempt to change the law to give citizens more power is treated with contempt, when an institution that bases its credibility on unbiased reporting starts having an agenda, we weaken the very foundation of what has made us strong.

All we have wanted is a level playing field. I’m sorry to say, we haven’t gotten it.