Political Journalism Ethics: What should the news industry in an average American city report to their customers, if a candidate for public office left his/her spouse coincident with filing to run for office, while involved in an extra-marital affair?

The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance

as though they were realities,

and are often more influenced by the things that seem than those that are.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Is the present a place you’ve never been?

Is present experience relative to the past

or memories of the past?

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Exodus 20:13

Can some things not matter until they do,
unless they actually do while you believe they don’t until it’s too late?

If there’s no certainty of what was, is will be or why

is the only certainty present thought?

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war,

the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture,

and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.

These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy.

They are deliberate exercises in doublethink.

George Orwell

Can what you think may be turn out more like what you thought,
even if it doesn’t?

What if what you think isn’t?

If players don’t necessarily follow the same rules

which can change without everyone knowing,

should you break rules if your opponent does?

Has everything happened the way you think?

Would you rather be happy or know?

You take the blue pill, the story ends,

you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the red pill,

you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Morpheus, The Matrix

Did the founding fathers want the communications industry
to keep an eye on the government for the people
or an eye on the people for the government?

Is an independent press essential to capitalistic democracy?

You shall not raise a false report

Exodus 23:1

Why is journalism the only profession
explicitly protected by the US Constitution?

Were it left to me to decide

whether we should have a government without newspapers

or newspapers without a government,

I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Information is the currency of democracy.

Thomas Jefferson

Should news outlets intentionally misrepresent truth?

Lying by omission

One lies by omission by omitting an important fact,

deliberately leaving another person with a misconception.

Lying by omission includes failures to correct pre-existing misconceptions.

…Propaganda is an example of lying by omission.

Wikipedia