By "The Fifth Columnist"

I am an employee in one of the several departments that provide a service to the newsroom of a major metropolitan newspaper: graphics, photography, the legal department, etc. All of us work very closely with reporters and editors but the agenda, policies, and decisions are determined by the reporters and editors. We witness at first-hand the decision-making process while not being primary players in it.

From my intimate point of view, I have become well-acquainted with the informal newsroom culture. I know what is considered funny and what is forbidden to discuss. I know what the spoken and unspoken assumptions are. And I can assure the reader that knee-jerk, left-wing liberalism and extreme political correctness are firmly entrenched. The notion that the newspaper might be liberally biased is considered laughable.

This article must also remain anonymous. I am, to some extent, betraying my employers' confidence. I do not do so lightly. And in spite of the fact that I disagree with the vast majority of the newsroom journalists on almost every issue, I still like and respect quite a few of them as hard-working, intelligent people. Many of them just need to end their extended intellectual adolescence.

But the mainstream media are betraying this country. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are collaborating with the enemies of the United States and all that is decent and sane. And so I feel compelled to do my small part to expose this larger betrayal, sticking to what I personally have observed. I will focus in this article on how race and ethnicity are reported (or, in many cases, NOT reported).

White males are an increasingly rare species in positions of authority in the newsroom. Blacks and Hispanics have been systematically advanced to top department positions over the heads of more qualified white men. White women are the second preferred choice. In a couple of cases with which I'm familiar, blacks or Hispanics were indeed the most qualified candidates. But in most cases, the new chiefs are obviously way out of their depth and quickly become either irrelevant or actually obstructive. They rely on their more experienced employees and end by becoming defensive about their inadequacies. White men who have any options at all generally leave, thus depriving the organization of its most dynamic members.

At my paper, whites in general, and white men in particular, are the subject of the most incredible racial and ethnic slurs and jokes. All other races and ethnicities are treated with an almost pathological sensitivity.

For example: I have worked for years with an Asian colleague, a third-generation American. He and I couldn't have greater mutual respect for each other. But as long as I have known this man, every year or so he, his wife, or one of his two sons has wrecked at least one vehicle. Sometimes two. None of them has ever been seriously injured, but they are hard on the machinery. One day, after he had to leave work to deal with yet another of his wife's accidents, I commented, "That guy's family has more wrecks than a family of circus daredevils." Immediately, another colleague - white, kneejerk leftwing male—accused me of making "bad Asian driver jokes." I told him I wasn't aware of any such category of joke. I was merely commenting on a fact about a specific individual and his family. I also pointed out to my accuser that he was the one who brought up "bad Asian drivers."  He took this as an outrageous insult.

The newsroom bestows the exalted status of hero/victim on all minorities, both as individuals and as groups. Typically, large photo spreads and front page feature stories depict blacks and Hispanics who have achieved at an above-average or even just an average level—in their education, for instance. The writer goes on at length about a normal, everyday person who has done the right thing in spite of difficulties: difficulties that the story will inflate to the point of seeming nearly insuperable.

While this is all very nice, the reader will never see white people written up in this way (unless they are AIDS patients or quadriplegics). Nor will he have it pointed out for him that our high-achieving minority victim/hero is, in general, an exception to the rule. The implication is that all blacks and Hispanics are, or could be, dynamic, high-achieving victim/heroes, while most whites (unless they are leftist fanatics) are racist oppressors who have had everything handed to them.

It would be totally forbidden, by newsroom standards, to observe that modern civilization was invented and advanced by whites and that blacks have a better life here than they would in Africa. It would be forbidden also to mention that Hispanics (and others) are flocking to this country in record numbers from their own overpopulated and badly ruled countries, because our European institutions, laws, science, and industry have allowed us to become the richest and best-governed people on earth, along with the Western European countries and a couple of Asian exceptions. That these people are flocking, and staying, here is evidence of an unbelievably self-destructive degree of tolerance on the part of whites. They get no credit and receive no gratitude in the newsroom.

Every now and then, my paper prints front-page feature spreads depicting the lives of black and Hispanic gang members. These people, who have embraced a life that is defined by a violent criminal ethic, are deliberately posed to show the reader tragic, heroic, proud people bound together by love for each other and their people - whom in fact they mercilessly victimize - bravely united in a struggle against the uncool and oppressive white citizenry.  They are "fighting" an impersonal, hostile culture that "forces" them into behavior destructive of themselves and, incidentally, of the entire social fabric. (Liberals, you see, love a beautiful loser who has a violent temper. It's how the middle-class, liberal, overgrown adolescent likes to imagine himself.)

The paper also publishes stories and graphics about the erosion of English as our common tongue. These stories invariably portray the cultural balkanization of the United States as a positive development! The unending flow of illegal aliens coming here in violation of our laws, and the Mexican government's intolerable demand that we embrace them all unconditionally, are either reported approvingly in a prominent place on the front page or simply as normal everyday events.

Staff writers praise our local high-crime neighborhoods that resemble some poverty-stricken third-world hell for their "vital", "lively", and "diverse" mix of cultures and languages. The greater the number of languages spoken in these neighborhoods, the more marvelous they are, my employers believe. The fact that these mutually hostile people inhabit a drug-infested danger zone is glossed over—except, again, to depict the crime and violence as some sort of impersonal force or as a symptom of white malevolence.

One of these neighborhoods near downtown, mostly populated by blacks, Hispanics, and newly-arrived Asians, has the shabby deco appeal that inevitably attracts the aesthetically-sensitive liberal. Therefore it was decided by the liberal Democratic politicians that this, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in town, would become the new city arts center. All the downtown galleries would be encouraged and helped to move in behind the boarded-up storefronts. Artists would be urged to move into the upstairs areas converted into lofts.

When the artists began moving into these spaces, they were shocked to find that the neighborhood inhabitants were not friendly. The inhabitants were, however, attracted by the artists' possessions. Many arts people were attacked and their spaces burglarized. At least one was killed during an armed robbery as he settled into his trendy new digs. Most art patrons, though, had the sense to stay out of the neighborhood. As a result, several of the galleries failed. Our artificial Left Bank was abandoned. Less than five years later, the neighborhood is as much of a slum as it was before.

My newpaper has had very little to say about the "arts center" since it began to fail. It has printed no stories about the stupidity of it all, or the wasted money. When the failure is mentioned, it is blamed on middle-class whites for being insufficiently supportive of a noble community effort.

On many occasions I have had a hand in stories or serials about local crime. In all of these projects, I have been able to see the raw statistics, including the racial and ethnic breakdown of both criminals and victims. Of course, the criminals and victims were disproportionately black and Hispanic. But in every case the breakdown statistics were simply left out of the story, without any debate whatever about the omission.

Once, when the artist in charge of graphics presented charts displaying the unwelcome data, he was immediately told to forget about it by an embarrassed and scandalized editor. There was debate, however, as to whether to publish a map showing the worst neighborhoods, by census tract, in terms of number of crimes committed annually. There was tremendous anxiety that it would anger the minority mouthpieces in these neighborhoods. This anxiety was justified. Black and Hispanic pressure groups pitched the usual tantrums.

The newsroom's portrayal of minorities versus the police offers what perhaps is the most disgusting display. Invariably, my paper portrays police as ignorant hillbillies. The typical reporter or editor seeing videotape of cops forcibly subduing a dangerous criminal condemns the police. He never mentions, in writing about these incidents, that they are rightly trained to use force in a way that minimizes the chance of harm to themselves. Never does a front-page feature on the police appear explaining that they are fallible human beings doing an impossible job, dealing every day with the scum of the earth of all races. And doing this job, furthermore, in the face of public opposition from the very people who have the most to lose. Any sort of force used by constituted authority is automatically sneered at in our newsroom as an act of oppression if it is directed at a member of a minority, a rock star, a drug addict, or a left-wing protester.

I could go on and on about the refusal to tell the truth about minority crime rates. I could mention that the recent dispossession and massacre of white Zimbabweans has gotten little or no coverage at all. I could mention the headline on the front page earlier this year that ran WHITE MAN ATTACKS BLACKS. Whites attacking blacks are rare occurrences, an exception to the rule. Nevertheless the story was given front-page display as if it were just the latest in a racist epidemic. It was not, and never will be, balanced by a front-page story reflecting the reality that blacks attack whites far more often than whites attack blacks.

The journalists where I work have abandoned the concept of personal responsibility, and ignore the reality that contradicts their wishful thinking. They regard the exception as the rule, the loser as the winner, the criminal as the hero, the sick as the healthy, and the winner as the oppressor. Here, as in newsrooms across the country, left-wing revolutionaries and their deluded, intimidated followers are writing the news and defining the mainstream view of reality.

If this situation continues very much longer, the United States will not endure as a civilization, as a geopolitical entity, or even as a society.

And those thoughtlessly tearing the U.S. down today will be among those to regret its passing when it's gone.

[The Fifth Columnist works for a major metropolitan daily newspaper.]

March 05, 2002