Thou Shall Not Lie...

unless, of course, it is the easiest way to advance your position.

Go back to the earliest writings of civilization. Civilized people have always warned against bearing false witness. "Thou shall not lie!"

Remember George Washington and the cherry tree? "I cannot tell a lie." The legend says that young Washington believed that any punishment meted by his father was preferable to the disgrace of having been caught in a lie.

So, what, exactly, constitutes a lie. One dictionary definition is "to make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive." Not to be confused with an honest error... a mistake. But I believe it is also a lie to make an untrue statement because you have not taken the time to learn the readily available truth of the matter. Often that is the case with lies published by newspapers or magazines, or uttered by speakers. Someone hears a lie and repeats it without checking it out. They are still lying. It is still wrong.

Today, however, it seems that it has become okay to lie. Why bother to do fact checking when the lie so conveniently fits your point of view.

Here is a lie that originated with Mike Smith, a political cartoonist with the Las Vegas Sun, syndicated by King Features, and reprinted by the newspaper in my home town.


We expect political cartoons to be edgy, partisan. But, to just outright lie! And for supposedly respectable newspapers to happily reprint this lie... is that okay?

In the 1960s, I was involved in radio broadcasting in Kansas. First Lady Ladybird Johnson led a campaign to outlaw all billboards that obstructed the scenic view of passersby. As I have written before, we radio people could well have done without the billboard industries competition for advertising dollars. But we fought the billboard ban. Because it was wrong.

With the above cartoon, some newspapers have shown they would happily promote a lie to slander another news medium. Fox News Channel never mentioned Shirley Sherrod - never aired the offensive video clip, until hours after the White House forced her to resign. Notice that in the right hand side of the above cartoon, the representation of a TV screen labeled "Fox" shows the commentator as some sort of a loon. There was only one objective here: to declare Fox News Channel to be crazy. And, of course, they show a representation of President Obama pressing the "mute" button! Translation: Don't debate people who disagree with you - just call them crazy and shut them up!

That tells me a lot about the character of the newspapers which carried the Mike Smith cartoon. With them, lying is okay in political cartoons. Do they also lie in their regular news reporting? No wonder their circulation is shrinking.