The New Formula for Deceptive Journalists

In the age of parasites and armchair journalists, Censored News awards the Anti-Indian Custer Award to an AP reporter

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

There's a new formula to deceive you as readers, which makes it appear that journalists are out on the scene, covering news stories. The basis of the news story is plagiarism. The information is lifted from the coverage of a reporter who was actually there, or it is a rewritten statement or press release.

To further disguise this, the journalist makes a phone call or two, quoting people as if the reporter was on the scene. A free photo is also used from someone who was actually there.

In ethical reporting, the dateline on the story should be the location of the news reporter at the time of writing. However, in deceptive journalism, the reporter deceives, placing themselves in Alaska, California, Arizona and DC, in rapid succession.

As the news industry collapsed, many hard-working, ethical reporters continued to use their own funds to cover news stories, often going bankrupt in the process.

The unethical journalists -- willing to do anything for a dollar and without regard for ethics -- stayed in their easy chairs and kept their jobs, becoming armchair journalists. More often than not, they plagiarized the hard work of others. Today, their articles are often no more than a rewritten press release or statement, with quotes from a phone call or two added. Other times, it is simply a press release labeled "Staff reports."

Besides the lack of ethics, the main problem is the lack of accuracy. News coverage requires that a reporter be present. In Indian country, more often than not, the people that a reporter needs to interview do not have telephones, and often live a long drive from the highway. Without their voices, newspapers become self-serving tabloids for politicians and corporations.

As the news industry languishes on its deathbed, there's another criminal element capitalizing on the collapse. That's the corporate cheerleader, the anti-Indian Custer of moderday journalism.

AP has one of these reporters. Her name is Felicia Fonseca. Fonseca is the Prophet of Doom for American Indian Nations.

Fonseca is the first to cheerlead for corporations engaged in environmental genocide in Indian country. Fonseca is the first to promote the corporations who want to poison the Navajo Nation with uranium mining, coal mining and power plants. It is revealed in her coverage of new uranium mining targeting Navajos in New Mexico and the proposed Desert Rock power plant in New Mexico. Fonseca is the last one to ever actually go out and talk to Native Americans living on their lands and struggling to survive.

So, today Censored News awards AP reporter Felicia Fonseca with the Anti-Indian Custer Award for Modernday Journalism.

As for all you armchair journalists, you know who you are. Now, your readers do as well.

Brenda Norrell has been a journalist for 28 years covering Indian country. During the 18 that she lived on the Navajo Nation, she worked as a staff reporter for Navajo Times and a stringer for Associated Press and USA Today, covering the Navajo Nation and federal courts. After serving as a longtime staff reporter for Indian Country Today in the west, she was censored, then terminated, and created Censored News online.