By TJ Ray

Edward R. Murrow. Douglas Edwards, Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite. Read those names again, and reflect on what they did for the public. What, you might ask. Simply put, they told it like it is.

National news media today paint a vivid picture of national meltdown. Predictions warn of imminent disaster for the country. Endless panels of talking heads dissect and redissect each event to the point where real news is chopped out. All that remains is arrogance.

The salient distinction between the four newsmen in the first paragraph and the folks delivering news today is that most of the “news” on the air these days is not news. It’s little more than details of events folded into personal diatribes. No apparent effort goes into presenting straightforward details of anything. And instead of seeing the single announcer, we now have to listen to the spin on things by a panel of “experts.” Most of these folks have one single credential: they graduated from college.

Experience in the real world is not in their resumes.

What too many of them operate on is their bias, which empowers them to make one and one equal three. The lesson liberals need to learn is that despite their arrogance, they do not have the power to alter reality.

The slanted reporting of the presidential campaign has been succeeded by endless attacks on everything Mr. Trump has done.

Agree with him or them, the fact is that he is the president, not because he stole the election but because a majority of votes authenticated by our election system says he is.

Watching the media in Washington is not the only way to monitor our political mess. Take a gander at what our brain trusts (i.e., universities) are doing these days.

Consider a single incident reported by a professor at George Madison University, Walter Williams. In a column titled “Universities Cave to Snowflakes,” Williams wrote this: “One wonders just how far spineless college administrators will go when it comes to caving in to the demands of campus snowflakes. For those unfamiliar with the term ‘snowflakes,’ it is increasingly being used to characterize college students easily traumatized by criticism and politically incorrect phrases. They demand safe spaces and trigger warnings so as not to be upset by views that challenge their own. Snowflakes feel as though they must be protected against words, events and deeds that do not fully conform to their extremely limited, narrow minded beliefs built on sheer delusion. This might explain their behavior in the wake of Donald Trump’s trouncing of Hillary Clinton.”

As supporting evidence of his perception of academia, Williams offers this: “To help avoid microaggressions, the University of North Carolina administration posted a notice urging staff and faculty members to avoid phrases such as ‘husband/boyfriend,’ which they claim is heteronormative.”

As a retired professor, I can remember a number of folks whom I considered flakes. Oh, but “snowflakes” seems so much more accurate. They drift in and out, perhaps causing a momentary ripple in the scene, and then melt away. Sadly, many of them become news anchors or reporters.

TJ Ray is a retired professor of English at Ole Miss.