By William K. Black
(Cross-posted from Benzinga.com)
I did not know that there is a group that works every day to destroy any respect we have for our local governments and claims to generate 10 percent of the stories nationwide about local and state government. This is the group’s self-description: “Franklin Center identifies, trains, and supports journalists working to detect and expose corruption and incompetence in government at the state and local levels.” I’m hopelessly old fashioned, so I view their description as an oxymoron. A “journalist,” under my archaic definition, reports facts and analytics. Journalists are human and they have biases, but their function is not to write only stories that confirm their ideology. The Franklin Center is relatively new and works closely with Freedom Works (one of the Koch brother’s many entities).
