Tag: news media

NC media “tells it like it is” and reports HOA information

It is quite a pleasing surprise to see the North Carolina media cover the important HOA hearing that took place for 3 hours yesterday by the House Select HOA Committee, led by the Charlotte Observer. The NC media has lived up to its obligations to provide a free press that covers all sides of the issue, like it or not, which is necessary for the proper functioning of a democracy. That’s why “free speech” protections were made the First Amendment.

I congratulate the proactive NC HOA homeowner rights advocates for their successful campaign to get the message out. The policy makers and the buying public need the whole truth in order to make sound decisions. Among the leaders are Jim Lane, Jane Jordan and Ole Madsen. Keep it up! Keep the ball rolling, and remember Gandhi, “We must continue to provoke until they respond and change the laws.”

You know, having attended years of Arizona legislative committee hearings, every now and then I would get a whine from a legislator, “When are we going to hear the end of HOA complaints?” I answered, When the legislature gets things right and stands up for the Constitution, and that starts with an open mind to all the facts. Local community government must truly be “of the people, by the people and for the people,” and not by profit-seeking developers with their top-down cramming of covenants, and government officials selling out their obligations to the people for a few shillings.

The perceived benefits of the planned community real estate package of ‘district’ ordinances and taxes and ‘private’ amenities can remain under a government that retains our constitutional system of democracy.  There are no excuses for this not to happen.  It is only when the facts get out for an open discussion will this happen.  Thanks again to the NC media “telling it like it is.”

See, advocate’s 10-point statement to NC HOA committee,  HOAs today do not exist for the benefit of Homeowners,  Statement to NC Select HOA Committee.

HOAs and the media: The media has failed as watchdogs of democracy

 

Tom Brokaw defines “the greatest generation” as “American citizens who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America.”  Among them were journalists Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. “Fellow journalists considered Murrow one of journalism’s greatest figures, noting his honesty and integrity in delivering the news.” He stood up to defend American values during the 1950s McCarthy era quest to uncover Communists in America. Murrow “criticized McCarthyism and the ‘Red Scare’, contributing if not leading to the political downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy.”

And there was Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” and of whom the Dean of ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism had said, “The values that Mr. Cronkite embodies – excellence, integrity, accuracy, fairness, objectivity – we try to instill in our students each and every day.” (Walter Cronkite and ASU).

Both would be appalled by what has happened to journalism and the news media today, with their quest for profits and entertainment over reporting the facts.   The media is failing their role in a democratic society and to America. Their silence on important issues is a constraint on free speech.

The crux of our democracy is the ability of citizens to obtain honest, truthful and balanced information, and the credibility and integrity of the individual journalist and communications professional are crucial in that effort.  (Arizona State University, Cronkite School Academic Integrity Policy).

 

And no where has the media’s complicity in withholding the truth from the American people been so obvious than with respect to the homeowner associations. Its has failed to “tell it like it is.” Some 20% of Americans, and growing each year, live under a homeowner association private government regime.  Whenever some event occurs reflecting a problem with HOA governance and living, the media has treated it as a local neighborhood issue. The media has selectively ignored the messages about the substantive issues pertaining to the lack of democratic institutions and the loss of constitutional protections. And it has repeatedly ignored the sources of authoritative advocate information available on the internet, such as The Truth in HOAs disclosure.

There are parallels between the acceptance of Hitler and Nazism by the common German with the quiet acceptance of the new world order of HOAs. In regard to the “good” German people and those who could understand what was happening, they went along

In the usual sincerity that required them only to abandon one principle after another, to throw away, little by little, all that was good [and]when men who understand what is happening — the motion of history not the single events or developments — when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to.  

(They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer, 1955).

The media is guilty of not trying to understand and report what is happening.  And there is no excuse for its policy of “No Negatives About HOAs.” One would think that the watchdogs of democracy fell under the same spell, the same con, as the advisers to the Emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. “‘Stupid I certainly am not,’ thought the official. ‘Then I must be unfit for my post. But nobody shall know that I could not see the material.'” That to speak out would make them unfit for their place in the new world order, The New America of HOA-Lands.

And after a little child had spoken out while on parade, “The Emperor himself had the uncomfortable feeling that what they were whispering was only too true. ‘But I will have to go through with the procession,’ he said to himself.” It appears that the journalists and the media as a whole have decided to go through with the procession.