"The problem with politics isn’t Washington but the electorate."

The conventional commentators on politics seem to insist that the decline of the Democratic Party in South Dakota is because of some failures of the party  in gaining the approval of the electorate.  Over the years, as I maintained a list of the most active party members for Brown County, I have noted a demographic shift.  As attrition reduced the number of established Democrats, few people were there to replace them.  The children from Democratic families, especially those with political interests, have largely left the state.  As the county party held fund-raisers and campaign events in recent years,  they assumed a geriatric aspect,  and those most active in supporting and working for the party were decidedly older. Census and marketing data show that  people in Brown County who gravitated toward the liberal values and qualities promoted by the Democratic Party are being replaced by those who hold to the more discriminatory and excluding values of contemporary conservatism.  Current registration figures in the county show 9,612 Republicans, 9,300 Democrats, and 3,319 Independents.  Independents' voting shows that they lean toward the more conservative values and attitudes, although they also reflect a rejection of what politics has become.

All the would-be political strategists find fault with the personalities or campaigns of candidates, as if their pet theories could remedy all that ails the Democrats.  In reality, the constant self-sucking indulged by many Democrats is what repulses people, including members of their own party.  However, people cling to the assumption that campaigns manipulate the electorate, which is at the mercy and influence of strategists, while the fact is that the electorate has its own mindsets, composed as they are by prejudices, animosities, and values.  

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post takes on the notions about politics and quotes Rep. Alan Grayson:  “Essentially there are no undecided voters. Everybody has picked a team. The only question is, do your guys vote or not?”

 He cites a study by researchers at Princeton and Stanford, which finds:  "Americans now discriminate more on the basis of party than on race, gender or any of the other divides we typically think of — and that discrimination extends beyond politics into personal relationships and non-political behaviors."  Politics is now the hate game, and hatred is the controlling force in politics.  

The study finds:

In the contemporary American political environment, there is evidence of increasing hostility across party lines, which has been attributed to a variety of factors including candidates' reliance on negative campaigning and the availability of news sources with a clear partisan preference.

When political strategists are confronted with the deleterious effects of negative campaigning, they justify it because it works.  And the hate-mongering of people like Rush Limbaugh is dismissed as entertainment. We remind that public executions used to be entertainments for people, as they gatheedr en mass with picnic baskets to enjoy some poor wretches being hung or beheaded.   

South Dakota politics is dominated by a party which unabashedly promotes oppression and hatred as operating principles.  When people discuss the shortage of workers and their preferences for better pay and opportunity, they tend to leave out the political climate of South Dakota as a major factor.  When decrying the declining voter registrations of the Democratic Party,  they blame it on the failure of Democratic politicians to appeal to the voters, not to the possibility that people who subscribe to liberal ideas find the political climate of South Dakota hostile and unhealthy.  

Democrats are not leaving the party.  They are leaving the corrosive and morally depleted environment created by the other party.  Their priority is not winning elections.  It is finding a worthy and healthy life. As they leave, they leave the state to those who tolerate and even encourage oppression, corruption, and  injustice as the preferred way of life. 

“We are in talks with the major powers and not with the Congress,”

Iranian leader Rouhani makes a point about the tussle between President Obama and Congress over the nuclear negotiations with Iran.  He says, “We are in talks with the major powers and not with the Congress.” 

On a private email exchange,  some colleagues who include international relations professors have been discussing this point.  While the U.S. has taken the lead in the negotiations with Iran, its partners in the discussion are Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.  One professor pointed out that if the U.S. could not make a deal with Iran, it is possible that the other five participants could make a treaty without the U.S.  In fact, Russia has already lifted a sanction against Iran and has decided to resume supplying air defense missiles to Iran according to an agreement that has been held in suspension.  

Russia and China, some discussants point out, are very willing to proceed on the world stage without the U.S.  When the 47 senators signed a letter telling Iran that any agreement made with the Obama administration could be easily overturned by a new president, they in effect dismissed the other participants in the talks.  One writer said he heard that participants from Britain, France, and Germany were deeply offended by the dismissive letter and made overtures with Russia and China to proceed with an agreement without the U.S., if necessary.

Obama is concerned in these later years of his presidency with his legacy of accomplishment.  The GOP members of Congress which are so intent on obstructing him and destroying any claims to accomplishment seem unaware that in trying to take Obama down, they are taking the country down.  They have raised a serious question about America's fitness to have a leadership role in the Iranian nuclear negotiations.  

Campus rape, journalism, and defamation. Right here in Aberdeen.

Rolling Stone did something that is extremely rare.  It made a mistake on the University of Virginia rape story, it asked a high-powered university department of journalism to examine just how the mistake was made,  it published the analysis, and it is taking the heat, including condemnations for not firing anybody, over its act of mea culpa. What is not brought up in all the discussion of journalistic practice is the matter of fad stories.  When some trend occurs in society and gains public attention, news organizations rush to publish and broadcast stories giving examples of the trend in hopes of attracting readers, listeners, and viewers.  Most fad stories, as they occur in the local media, are bumbling atrocities of literacy.

It is important for news organizations to examine trends.  The Wall Street Journal developed a significant way to do this in what has come to be known as a Wall Street Journal style of story.  The formula is to explain a trend with all the statistical and evidentiary materials that define its prevalence and then focus on an individual who has experienced the trend and show how it affects a real person in a real situation. That is what Rolling   Stone was attempting to do with the account of Jackie being sexually assaulted at an alleged fraternity party.  The report by the Columbia Journalism Department on what went wrong in the story does not mention the perils of fad stories,  which is that some people will want to be part of a trend.  Some of the best Wall Street Journal type stories were written during the agriculture crisis of the 1980s.  They demonstrated in precise and moving ways how financing practices destroyed farms, families, and individuals.  However moving the stories were, they did not stop the integrated industrialization of farming.  But they made clear its effects.

Generally, when one finds specific people to illustrate the effects on them of a trend, the reporter has to get permission to open their lives to examination, verification, and risk some criticism. The reporter cannot rely upon the accounts of the individuals featured in a story, but must verify and fact check their accounts with multiple sources.  That is where stories involving rape and sexual abuse present problems.  Traditionally, journalists do not use the names of rape victims so not to cause further trauma, invade privacy, and expose the victim to public display, which tends to call down more abuse from the malevolent and vicious.  In the Rolling Stone story the name Jackie was a pseudonym.  In deference to Jackie’s sensitivities and privacy, the reporter chose not to check out accounts by her friends or the members of the fraternity which was allegedly involved in the reported rape. 

A reporter for the Washington Post did some of the checking that the Rolling Stone reporter decided to forgo and found discrepancies between the Rolling Stone story and what witnesses recalled and documents recorded.   The fraternity records showed that no party was held at its house on the evening Jackie said.  No one could be found who fit the description of the person Jackie said she went to the party with.     The Charlottesville police department investigated the matter and found no evidence to support that the incident occurred, which is another way of saying the account Jackie gave never seemed to have happened.  Although some friends of Jackie’s said something seemed to have happened to her that night,  her account was contradicted by their recollections of their encounter with her that night.  The Columbia report also pointed out the discrepancies which would ordinarily cause a reporter to aggressively check out Jackie’s version of events. 

That is where the dangers of falling into the conventions of a current fad topic come into play.  Sexual assault on campuses and the handling of them by college officials is an au courant topic in the press right now, and Rolling Stone found an apparent victim who could give the magazine a first hand account.  Rape gets special handling journalistically.  The convention is that the victims are never named and circumstances that could lead to revealing their identities are obscured.  The names of people whose associations with the victim are also given pseudonyms.  In the commission of other c rimes, the victim and witnesses will be listed and reporters and fact-checkers can contact them directly and ask for their accounts of the events.  In deference to the assumed trauma experienced by a rape victim, the right to privacy, and the sensitivities of the victim, probing questions are avoided.  As the Columbia report details, this deference and the fear that Jackie might pull back from the story led the Rolling Stone reporter and editors to glossing over the journalistic process of establishing the facts.  Part of the current stance toward reporting on sexual assaults is that the word of the victim should be accepted and not questioned.  The assumption is that if an alleged victim reports a sexual assault, it happened.  The hard questioning and fact-checking that goes into the making a case for other crimes is not applied in sexual assault cases. 

Although, much of the current controversy about sexual assault and its handling by university officials involves prestigious campuses, places such as South Dakota and Aberdeen also have their stories and concerns.

Northern State University had such case with tragic consequences a quarter century ago in 1989.  Students in dormitories got a party going that started in one dorm and ended up in the dormitory that shared a parking lot with the building my office was in.  A young  woman reported that she was sexually assaulted and three young men were charged with rape.  My knowledge of incident comes from news reports and transcripts of court trials.  My spouse was a reporter at the time and covered the proceedings.

The young woman got very drunk and, according to testimony of witnesses, exhibited some aggressively sexual behavior with some of the men at the party in a dorm room.  She was carried out of the room to a car in the parking lot where the behavior between her and some young men continued.  Other party goers were gathered around the car as reveling spectators while what we once termed heavy petting was taking place in the car.  There were many witnesses of both sexes. 

Eventually the young woman was driven to her dormitory and put to bed.  When she awoke she realized she had been part of a spectacle and told a dorm counselor that she thought she had been sexually assaulted.  The counselor sent the report up to the office of student services and an investigation began.  Three young men were identified as being in the car with the young woman,  were expelled from the campus, and the matter was turned over to the police, who later issued arrest warrants for the young men charging them with rape of a woman too incapacitated to give consent to sexual acts.  

One of the young men blew his heart out with a deer rifle, which is how I became familiar with the case.  I was an officer in the faculty union and acted as the grievance officer.  My job in that role was to insure that due process was carefully observed in any matters involving faculty discipline or grievances.  Two professors who had had the suicide victim in class inquired if the expulsion of the young men from campus before any hearings were held was consistent with the rules of due process.  One of the professors said that the young man could be a bit of a jerk at times, but that the handling of the matter in a way that resulted in self-extermination did not seem to be in the best interests of the young woman, the young men, other students, and the university in general.  As the procedures applied to faculty for disciplinary matters were a matter of a negotiated contract, they have no application to students.  The handling of student matters is left to the discretion of the administration.  However, we agreed that the summary expulsion of the students sent a signal that the university had determined them guilty before a full investigation had been made and appropriate hearings held, and that did not reflect well on the university.  The university appeared more interested in dispensing punishment than engaging in the due process of justice.   I consented to make this point to the administration and was told, in effect, to buzz off; it wasn’t any of the faculty’s business.  It was clear to me that the administration just wanted no part in the whole matter and handed it off to the police. 

The charges against the remaining two men were carried forward in court.  One young man accepted a plea bargain and received a sentence.  The third young man insisted upon going to trial.  As time approached for the trial in August 1990, feelings were heating up.  Death threats were made, according to the police, but by whom against whom was never clear.  When the trial commenced, police guarded the court house doors and inspected people going in and out for weapons. 

The trial revealed that the young woman had a history of psychological instability.  It also revealed how prevalent alcohol had become as a factor in the social life on campus.  And it  showed that colleges are not equipped to handle the misadventures of their students.  What was essentially a drunken brawl which certainly required disciplinary measures had turned into a criminal case with the resulting death of a student.

The third young man was acquitted of the same charges as filed against the young man who killed himself and the young man who was sentenced on a plea bargain. 

The misapplication of the processes that lead to justice were a subject for years among the faculty.  The administration did not talk about it. 

Now the fraternity that was accused of giving the party at which Jackie claimed she was sexually assaulted is suing Rolling Stone in an effort to deal with unjust accusations against its members.   Justice requires that students both be safe from assault and from false accusations. 

Justice is not as popular a subject right now as sexual assault.  And going for the popular is what led Rolling Stone to publish a story for which no truth was verifiable. 

Death by dog pack

Over a week ago,  a 49-year-old mother of five, Julia Charging Whirlwind,  was killed by a pack of dogs on the Rosebud Reservation.   In November, 8-year-old Jayla Rodriguez was killed by a dog pack on the Pine Ridge reservation.  There are a number of reports of dog pack attacks throughout the nation, some of them in crowded urban areas. 

The accounts of these attacks do not include photographs which show the injuries which  produced the deaths.  Most people could not stomach them.  If one googles "dog pack attacks,"  one will find many bits of internet advice on how to handle mass canine assaults.  Many of them are based upon theories of animal behavior.  A favorite theory is that dogs or their relatives will not attack humans unless they or their pack are threatened somehow.  However, ethologists, the scientists who study animal behavior, tend to differ. One of my first experiences with dog pack attacks introduced me to an ethologist who explained a science-based theory of why they happen.

I was the farm editor of an Illinois newspaper when I received a very early-morning call from Hank, a distant relative and friend of mine who was the county conservation officer, known in more colloquial terms as a game warden.  He said he was at the scene of the killing of more than 80 sheep by animal attacks.  I grabbed my camera and notebook and took off for the farm where the incident happened.  When I got there, many law-enforcement agents were surveying the scene and speculating on what produced this massacre of sheep.  The idea of a wolf pack which had come into the area was among the first theories raised, but Hank said that was not likely.  He said wolves left the region more than a century ago and the sighting of single wolf wandering through had not been made for 30 years.  Then the likely culprits raised were mountain lions.  Hank said there might be a few around, but they did not run in packs and did not engage in such mass slaughter.

A sheep killed by a dog pack.

Law enforcement was baffled, but at the outset Hank had his suspicions and called for the help of a well-known scientist who worked for a federal agency downstate and was often called in for cases of this kind.  He made it to the scene that morning and made a methodical survey.  Like Hank, he had a suspicion of the most likely participants in the slaughter and sorted out the evidence.  He found tracks.  They were canine tracks, but of different sizes.  He and Hank talked the sheriff's deputies and the state police into canvassing the nearby farms for dogs.  Within a very short period of time, he started receiving reports from the canvassers and visited the farms.  A number of the dogs on those farms had blood-stained muzzles, and he asked that they be gathered  together.  He also interviewed the farm families.

Some of the teenagers who were out at nights noted that the farm dogs tended to visit each other and gather into a  pack at night.  As the ethologist observed and examined the dogs when brought together, he was able to find evidence of which dogs participated in the sheep slaughter and determine which dog was the leader of the pack.  It was a German Shepherd, which identification made the owner furious.  But the ethologist was able to make a detailed reconstruction of the incident and put it in the context of hundreds of reports of such incidents his agency had gathered.

His explanation was that dogs descend from predators and retain some of the instincts involved in their survival.  Dogs which have been bred for their aggressive traits are usually the ones involved in attacks against humans.  But as dogs are social animals and tend to pack, they can revert back to predatory behavior when they get together.  Like humans who get a thrill from hunting, even though they aren't hunting for food,  dogs can take a kind of joyous delight in rampaging.  That is what happened to the 80-some sheep.  The dogs reverted to their packing and hunting instincts.

Many years later, the ethologist came to a campus where I was teaching at the invitation of a biologist who was teaching a unit on animal behavior.  It was a beautiful spring day, late in the afternoon, and the biologist, ethologist, and I were walking to the union for coffee when the ethologist had finished talking to a class.  The time was during the hippy era, and students were cavorting in an open field by the union, doing everything from flying kites, letting their children romp, romping themselves, and having a toque or two.  Some of them had very young children and the inevitable dogs with them.  The children were running and playing with the dogs, when we noticed that one dog was getting excited and playing rather roughly with a little girl. Then another dog joined in the action, and the ethologist said, "Oh, oh, that little girl is going to get hurt."  He ran over to the child just as the dogs had pushed her down and were jumping on her in what seemed like play.  The child was crying at this point.  The ethologist grabbed the child and shooed the dogs away, and the girl's mother came over.  The ethologist explained to the young mother that what seemed like play was turning into a mauling by the dogs, and the dogs needed to be controlled and their behavior needed to be discouraged.  When dogs revert to pack behavior, they can attack humans whether they are in danger or not.  They revert to behavior which is a characteristic of the species.  As the ethologist explained, the drive to hunt and the drive to attain some level of dominance within the pack combines and subverts the gentler behaviors of domestication. 

The dog attacks on the reservations are being addressed by tribal authorities.  But the problem is one that pet-owners and dog fanciers tend to dismiss.  In the domestication of dogs, the inherent instincts of social, predatory animals are modified, not changed.  One of the things that makes dogs such good companions is that they are loyal to the pack and obedient to the alpha member of the pack.  This loyalty and responsiveness is used for work such as shepherding, guiding, and guarding.  The need to fit into a pack is what makes some dogs such excellent and dependable members of a family.  But like humans, dogs are individuals.  Their temperaments vary.  They may  be great friends and guardians to a single person or family, while being dangerous to others.  Their domestic purposes dominate their personalities,  but they can revert to the tactics of predation and the struggles for dominance.  And in many cases, dogs reflect the intentions of their owners,  whether gentle or vicious.  

While we may condemn what dogs do when they form packs, we tend to place what humans do when they revert on a higher level.  The epithet that someone behaves like an animal is, as Mark Twain pointed out, a fallacy.  When it comes to depravity and viciousness, animals have yet to reach the accomplishments of humans in that regard.  Humans, too, revert to a primitive and vicious mentality, and when they pack together akin to dog packs or chicken flocks, their vicious streak dominates.  

One of the things that the social and digital media have done is make dog-packing much easier with fewer restraining influences to impede it.  Evidence of that is in comment sections on news pages and blogs.  A characteristic of most of the comments is the absence of mind and the verbal rampage characterized by hate and malevolence.  What readers are witnessed is the reptilian cortex of the human brain taking dominance over the layers of brain cortex that comprise what we might call the more humane developments in the species of mankind.  
  Mass shootings and other atrocities of the disciples of the gun and the jihadists aside, the darker and primitive side of human nature  on full display on the Internet, as people lash out like threatened snakes.  In many people and in many instances,  the reptilian cortex is triumphant.    The human legacies of thought, compassion, education, and literacy are overruled by the need for concerted hate and dominance over others.


We may note and cluck our tonques over the dog packs on the reservations but shrug our shoulders in submission over the things that characterize the antics of the South Dakota legislature and the U. S Congress,  as we witness intellectual death by the dog pack there. 

John Boehner gives the nation lessons in the art of niggering*

Barack Obama has violated the social order among those who believe that people fit into categories of rank and damned well better know their place.

It is okay for a black person to occupy the White House as a valet or food service person, but to fill the role of master is an outrageous affront.  It is one thing  for a black man to run for president, as it gives the nation a chance to show its devotion to equality and giving everybody a chance.  But to actually win the damned job—twice—is when uppity just goes too far.

No one has done more to restore the social order than Speaker of the House John Boehner.  He knows all the ploys for showing disrespect and trying to humiliate someone.  These ploys are not limited to racial discriminations.  They can be used in any work or social situation to let someone know they are regarded as shit.

One way is to exclude someone from plans for some social or business event for which their attendance would be mandatory.  This tactic is used often on college campuses.  One college president loved to do this when someone pissed him off. 

Our university had hired a vice president for public relations and development who had worked in that capacity for a prestigious military academy.  He hit the campus, which had beautiful lawns and flower beds, running.  He inadvertently  ran into the university president, who thought he knew more about creating public images of the university than his new vice president did.  The two disagreed about the best way to promote a good image of the institution.  The president did not like to be disagreed with.  So when he called a big meeting of the campus administrators to launch a fundraising and promotional campaign, which would ordinarily be the development vice president’s job, he did not invite his vice president to the meeting.  At that point the new vice president launched a search for a better job, which was successful, and he was gone in a matter of weeks.  As for the big image-building and financial campaign, it went with him.  The story of the president’s snub got around the community and the state, and established in the public mind the image of a big asshole into which no one would throw any money.

John Boehner used this tactic when he invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress without notifying the President.  This tactic cannot be taken as anything other than a contrived and deliberate slight, an effort to humiliate the President.  Boehner taught him who his boss and superiors are. 

Another tactic I have encountered on campuses prone to cliquishness and affected snobbery is not to invite someone a clique is down on to a party and then regale each other with the fun and hilarity of the party in front of the person who wasn’t invited.  Members of Congress did this as they wildly applauded Netanyahu and gave him chortling praise as a message of their contempt for the President.  That should put that black interloper in his place. 

Another tactic Boehner has used to show his contempt is not to answer or return telephone calls.  That was a favorite ploy of that university president I mentioned earlier.  He did not get on well with his academic dean, largely because that dean had twice been acting president of the college and knew too much about how to run the place.  When the dean was out-of-town at a meeting at which some issues were being decided that would affect the university, he tried to call the president and brief him and consult with him on some decisions.  The president refused to take his calls.  The dean, of course, realized he was being cut out of the loop, as they say, and soon resigned.

Boehner did this early in Obama’s presidency when they were trying to negotiate a deal about the national debt ceiling.  Boehner got miffed at the president, would not take telephone calls or return them when the president tried to keep the negotiations going, and Boehner tanked any potential deal.  That is how you teach a houseboy his place.

Of course, there is no element of racism in Boehner’s attitude toward the President.  Or in Mitch McConnell’s.  Or in the emails from the Ferguson police department. 

However, the President,knows what is driving this behavior.  And so do many of us who are old enough to remember the civil rights era. 

This episode should be remembered as an example of American exceptionalism.    

 *to inflict denigration, contempt, insult, abuse, and humiliation on someone in ways commensurate with what the N-word historically means. 

Top 6 instances of disrespect toward President Obama

Ballot issue in preparation for open and conceal carry on campuses

JUST MY BOOK, OFFICER.

Some South Dakota citizens are preparing a ballot issue that would permit students and others on college and university campuses to open or conceal carry books. Proponents say citizens have to arm themselves against stupid, which has launched relentless attacks on the state legislature. 

In response, legislators have hog-housed the education-funding bill and replaced the content with a requirement that any issue must require signatures of 110 percent of the voters to be placed on the ballot.  Sen. David Novstrup (R-Lower Colon), leader of the hog-housing, says having ordinary people dork around with education and stuff makes him nervous.  “Books contain all sorts of dangerous and unpatriotic ideas,” he said.  “We have to protect our young people from this menace.”

Critics have pointed out that a book-carry law is not needed because colleges were sort of created for consorting with books.  Proponents of the ballot issue say that being seen with a book on some South Dakota campuses is considered a social offense and results in harassment and abusive treatment.  Hog-house supporters say that the ballot issue is not needed because the market place of ideas regulates the use of books in South Dakota.  “We ain’t like some other states,” said Novstrup. “And there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the right to read.  We can’t have people running around violating the founding principles.”

Les Worthy, a leader for the ballot issue, stated that the unforgivable sin in South Dakota is the earning of a Ph.D., as it implies that the holder has read and maybe even understands a lot of books.  Most campuses employ many Ph.D.s and, Worthy explains, while libraries act as carefully regulated arsenals for keeping books, you can’t keep them under lock-and-key all the time and there is often a need to carry them about.  Those Ph.D.s need to look like they’re doing the jobs they were hired for now and then.

The ballot issue includes Kindles and Nookbooks in its carry provisions, although they seldom received much resistance on campuses because you can view pornography on them and use them to say mean and stupid things on the social media.  “How do you think legislators get informed?” said Novstrup in that regard.  “But we can’t afford to have those crucial resources in the hands of the unqualified.”

 

Rapid City Journal demonstrates what it means to suck

The Rapid City Journal’s handling of the incident in which the occupants of a luxury box at a hockey game are alleged to have spattered 57 native American children with beer and abuse is a symptom of degraded state of journalism.   The Journal has apologized for screwing up, but its apology did not grasp what was screwed up.

In a follow-up, now taken off the web, to stories on the original incident, the Journal cited an anonymous source who claimed that the abuse directed at the children was a response to the children’s failure to stand during the playing of the national anthem.  The headline to the story read, "Did Native Students stand for National Anthem".  However, the story itself reported that people who accompanied the children said that was not true. 

In its reporting in this story, the Journal committed a basic error.  It did not try to establish the facts.  In recapping the fundamental premise of journalism, the Pew Research center restates,  “[The] ’journalistic truth’ is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts.”  The Journal made the mistake of concentrating what people said about the facts without  verification of the facts themselves. 

First of all, the issue in the incident is about adults mistreating children between the ages of 9 and 12.  The abuse, according to those who witnessed it was racially driven.  Quoting an anonymous person who claimed to be a bystander in the VIP box is a violation of a basic standard of journalism for those who believe journalism has professional standards.

The use of anonymous sources as the basis for a news report verges far into the region of incompetence.  Sometimes a source will present information to a reporter that is essential to explaining a story if the source's account can be independently verified.  In my time as a journalist,  that meant that a reporter had to find two other sources who were not in collusion with the original source to verify the account.  If the account was not verifiable, it was dismissed as unrealiable or false. 

There is also the matter of using anonymous sources. It is also a reporter’s responsibility to make clear attribution of any information used in a story.  If a sources does not wish to be identified, the information the source provides is suspect, unless it can be verified.  A responsible, professional news organization would not have printed the accusation. 

The Journal compounds its errors in its apology for mishandling the story.  The paragraph that tries to explain away the reason for using an assertion by anonymous source totally fails to address the rules of responsible journalism involved.  It claims it withheld the identity of the source because of a death threat: 

Questions also have been raised about the use of an anonymous source in the article. On the day the article was written, the business owner who rents the suite where the harassment took place — who was neither present nor

involved — received a death threat.

A source in such a state of advanced retardation that he would claim the failure to stand for the national anthem as a motivation for abusing children is already brain dead.   But the issue for the Journal is its failure to follow basic journalistic procedure in dealing with factual matters, and its apology dissembles on that point.   Furthermore, if it wants to cite death threats, it needs to specify the nature of the threat, who received it, and how it was transmitted.  Its citation of a death threat is as specious as the claim that the kids did not stand for the anthem. 

The Journal is by no means the only news organization that sacrifices journalistic competence and integrity for a chance to provoke degradation.  As a medium that reflects community attitudes, it is a fitting voice for a town that has a well-earned reputation as a racist snake pit.  But some of the failings it embraces are a general state of affairs among news media which abandon good journalistic practice to compete for an audience with the Internet social media.  Polls have established that comments people make online about news stories affect the journalistic credibility of news organizations very negatively.  News media have to decide, apparently, whether to practice journalism and endanger their existence or join in the competition for stupidity and scurrility. 

Part of the the decline in news standards is the contribution of radio and television.  To connect with their audience and utilize the capabilities, the electronic media use sound bites as a required element in their stories.  Sometimes the person they show commenting is involved in the story, but whether or not the commentary verifies facts or contributes to an understanding of the story is not an issue.  Getting some kind of graphic or auditory element comprises the objective of a sound bite.  Often, the sound bites are not from anyone who can contribute information, but are only for providing an audio or visual element, whether it contributes to the story or not.

The other fallacy that pervades the contemporary news media is the idea of balance.  It is based on the notion that controversy is the primary criterion for evaluating newsworthiness as far as what an audience responds to, and so the media looks for controversy.  Although there can be disagreement about what  the facts are in a given situation, the facts are usually clear and straightforward if the journalists have done their primary job of assembling, clarifying, and verifying the facts.  Controversy is introduced in comments about the facts where commenters have differing attitudes concerning what happened.  Consequently, the media emphasizes what controversies they can find rather than hard facts.

They cite balance as the reason for including opposing viewpoints about a situation, even though there may be no disputing of the facts.  Controversy to the contemporary media is a matter of people getting into nasty and accusatory spat.  The veracity and quality of things they contend do not matter.  What attracts audience is the spectacle of watching people cast verbal and sometimes physical abuse on each other.  Journalism to many means inciting people into degraded and vile behavior of the kind that Jerry Springer promoted on television.  Balance is showing “both sides” no matter how inane and stupidly mean the contentions are.  Such is contradictory to what effective, responsible journalism is.

The Rapid City Journal had opportunity to be balanced on the abuse kids were exposed at the hockey game.  One if its own staff members wrote an account which related the experience from one of the chaperones who accompanied the incident itself.  Rather, the Journal chose to feature the idiotic claim that the kids did not stand for the national anthem.  Stupid sells big in South Dakota.  It makes a lot of people feel like somebody.

The state legislature demonstrates every day it is in session a retrograde movement away from an aspiring democracy.  It is enmeshed in the idea that the will of the people is to limit, eventually eliminate, liberty, equality, and justice for all.  The Rapid City Journal is more devoted to the opinions behind this movement than in reporting the facts of what is happening to people.

South Dakota’s intellectual and moral failure is rooted in the journalistic failures of its media.