One of the unsuccessful candidates for the White House press secretary job proposed drug-testing reporters seeking credentials for covering the president.
I have to admit this idea has some merit. I’ll tell you why.
When I was running daily newsrooms and newspapers in major markets in the early 1980s through the early 1990s, I hired a lot of reporters and editors – hundreds of them, I would guess, over that period.
It was no problem finding highly motivated, experienced candidates for the positions. Newspapers were still cool in that time period. There would be hundreds of applicants for every open position on a major-market daily. Applicants for reporting and editing jobs would often be willing to take menial positions as what we misogynistically referred to as “copyboys.”
So there were always plenty of choices.
I’d make my selection, tell the best applicant he or she was chosen, work out salary issues, schedules, duties and then inform the lucky person he was hired conditionally. All they had to do was pass a routine background check and take a drug test.
That was the moment of truth for far too many.
I don’t recall any candidate flunking the background check, but, as memory serves, about half would flunk the drug test – almost always for marijuana or cocaine.
Half!
It was so frustrating for me that I began to warn them about this test, explaining how long it took for detoxing for various drugs – giving them a chance to quit and see for themselves that they could actually live without drugs.
It didn’t change the disqualification rate.
It was so “high,” pardon the expression, that I sometimes gave them another chance to take it – like in 30 days, in the case of marijuana, which takes that long to clear out of your system. Still many of them flunked. They would rather smoke pot than get the job they wanted.
It’s been a while since I worked in what we euphemistically call “the mainstream media,” but I suspect, based on what I see produced by journalists there, the drug problem is likely more acute today than it was 30 years ago.
Let me ask you a question as a news consumer: Would you want to get your news from someone whose judgment might be drug-impaired?
If not, let me suggest to you this is yet another of many reasons not to trust too much in “the mainstream media.” We just don’t seem to have that problem at WND. “Druggies” just don’t seem to have the desire to work here. I’ll let you decide for yourself why that is true.
That’s one reason I think the idea of drug-testing White House reporters might have merit.
Here’s another: We just don’t have meaningful standards any more in this country – about news or anything else. What’s wrong with imposing some minimal requirements on those who have reached the height of their journalistic profession – covering the White House?
After watching CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s outrageously rude, obnoxious, arrogant, insufferable performance at President-elect Donald Trump’s first news conference, he should, at the very least, be required to pee in a cup before ever being allowed to set foot in the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court or, for that matter, in the driver’s seat of any motor vehicle with more than four cylinders.
Don’t you think?
His act was like a commercial for such a proposal – not to mention one for a psychiatric screening.
And wouldn’t you like to see who protests such a policy?
I, too, like some of the other ideas proposed by this anonymous applicant for the White House press secretary position.
The would-be press secretary also suggested revamping the seating assignment in the press briefing room. Do you know who traditionally sets those? The White House Correspondents’ Association. In other words, the inmates of the state-controlled media establishment are running the asylum.
If you want to drain the swamp, how about starting by kicking the butts of those who have enjoyed wading in it for a generation by pulling the chairs out from under their sense of entitlement?
Or, as the unsuccessful press secretary candidate suggested to the incoming Trump administration, “clear a path to communicate more directly with the people and end White House press practices that serve no useful purpose other than feeding the beast.”
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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