Everyone quietly listened to the news. The Korean War began in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. My brother was in the Airforce. Newspapers did their best but were always a day late. News was an essential national security public service issue.

We sat quietly around the radio listening to news being calmly read by middle-aged men. News was factual because The Federal Communications Council (FCC) passed The Fairness Doctrine in 1949 to prevent the broadcast of propaganda.

Walter Winchell broke the rules. During the 1950s he combined news with salacious gossip. For example he vociferously broadcast support for Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign against alleged communists in the US government and other institutions. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs even though they were not communists.

What Walter Winchell did succeed in doing was teach radio network executives how to transform an essential national security public service into a profitable entertainment business.

Television changed everything. For the first time citizens saw dignified middle-aged men reading the news. Walter Cronkite, with his adherence to journalistic integrity, dominated television news with "And that's the way it is" for decades.

Facts were delivered in a truthful dignified way because that was how serious men were expected to behave, and partly because of the Fairness Doctrine mandate that if positions voiced were controversial, equal time had to be provided for a rebuttal by someone from the other side of the issue. Controversial statements were fact-checked because no one wanted to be proven a liar or to simply be wrong.

The Fairness Doctrine kept most televised broadcasters careful and respectful until it was repealed by President Reagan in 1987. He then invited Rupert Murdoch to move here from Australia because we have the "Free Speech first Amendment". In Australia broadcasters are fined and jailed for "libel" when they lie. There are no longer any checks or balances on what is broadcast as news.

Rupert Murdoch transformed broadcast and printed news into a money-making machine by improving upon Walter Winchell's combining salacious gossip with news system. He then took it further by making being factual no longer necessary.

Flamboyant entertainers then created talk shows that gained big audiences by adding inflammatory commentary. While Rupert Murdoc's broadcasts are advertised as "News" he described them as "entertainment" when sued here for libel.

Having learned how to make money broadcasting gossip combined with news, and supplemented news with inflammatory commentary, resulted in creation of a profitable new multi-media industry and then it got worse.

Fake news makes money. Internet providers are not legally liable for what users of post so truth is of no concern to them. They care about making money. As a result posts vary from factual to simply inaccurate to wildly inflammatory conspiracy theories.

This problem is compounded by the emerging Artificial Intelligence ability to create realistic fake videos of inflammatory events, to replicate the appearance and speech patterns of trusted authorities and to post credible fake news on the Internet for the world to see.

We live in a democratic republic wherein the general public has a say in development and execution of public policy. It is essential voters know the truth. Factual reporting is an essential national security service.

Members of the press are trained to find the truth and to disseminate facts within the guidelines of a code of ethics. Influencers, politicians and propagandists pretending to be members of the press, have no code of ethics, and use communication media to spread mistruths. Some even go so far as to repeat the anti-American talking points of dictators.

The normalization of lying. Until recently being caught telling a big lie could end a government official or politician's career. These are not normal times. Donald J. Trump is a serial liar who trafficked in racism, violence, bigotry and sexism to win the White House and continues to do so at an accelerated pace to this day.

He has great influence over his followers. One dangerous outcome of his lying is the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories; the most dangerous being that whenever an election is lost by him or one of his disciples, it is because it was stolen. The peaceful transfer of power is one foundation of our democratic republic's success.

Because of his lies millions of Americans now question the validity of all elections. Like in preparation for his failed January 6th attempted coup, he is using his influence again to incite his disciples into acts of violence should things not go his way. It is important to remember dictators like Hitler, Castro and Chavez failed in their first attempted coup, perfected their technique and returned to seize power with a successful second coup.

Saving our way of life is essential. Conspirators used communication media to organize and carry out the violent January 6th attempted coup. Purveyors of insurrectionist propaganda and lies are not members of the Free Press. They are dangerous insurrectionists out to exploit the way our democratic republic allows freedom of speech. Their goal is to seize control of our government, gain access to power and the national treasury

We must continue to fight passionately against any efforts to allow Trump, or those who work or worked in his administration, to be seen as normal. The day when what he and his disciples did is considered normal will be the day when our protestant work ethic inspired democratic republic of the United States of America we love so dearly, because it has served us so well, dies.

We must find a way to curb the use of modern communication media to create and spread lies and propaganda in an effort to convince voters to elect men and women who are out to destroy our way of life by electing a dictator.

My smarter than me wife says "Let them keep talking and people will figure out who they are" but I am not confident that will work. As long as the Internet and other broadcast media are unregulated there is no way to prevent lies and propaganda being broadcast to the gullible and no one reads rebuttals.