About The Murder of James Foley, Reporter

There is something terrible and strange about having even an indirect connection to someone who is the victim of such a brutal and public murder as that of the reporter, James Foley.   His parents were casual friends of my mother.  I met his mother once and knew her voice on the phone, though that was as close as they came to me.   My mother worried a lot about James Foley after he disappeared, following every news story, not a close enough friend to discuss it with his parents.  I can't claim that I thought nearly as much about him as my mother did, but often enough so that the horror of his murder is enraging and chilling.

War reporters have minds I don't claim to understand.  I can't imagine such bravery as to go into battles and dangerous situations unarmed with a warrant of objectivity.  I can't imagine how they think but they obviously are some of the most important of journalists, real journalists who put themselves in the gravest of danger, going to the bother of seeing and finding out what really happens so they can tell us.  Knowing that they could get killed and that many of their colleagues do get killed.

So often reporters are obscure, unknown,  as the idiots, flunkies and liars, the pundits, the opinion "journalists" become famous and wealthy and their every bit of affluent angst due to their onerous work schedule of one to three columns of spewage a week cuts into their leisure and social lives, the real basis of their careers as "journalists", becomes "news", itself.  They are celebrities famous for being famous for lying, not reporters, not real journalists.  It is rather obvious that a lot of the biggest names in "journalism" put more time into their dinner invitations than they do fact checking. I'm sure as I begin to see what those people say about the murder of James Foley, how they use his corpse for their political purposes and as a prop in their propaganda, those will get more coverage than his work ever did before he was abducted.

There needs to be a real distinction made between real journalists, reporters of fact, and the parasite, "opinion",  that has done so much to discredit the profession of journalism, such as what fills up the cabloids on a daily basis and the weeks greatest concentration of lies and spin during the Sunday morning talk shows.  If there is any fitting tribute to journalists who are murdered as they try to report fact, it would be to get rid of those liars and spinners.

I'm not holding my breath but I owe it to reporters who sacrifice everything to do the service to The People, informing their political choices and decisions to point out how their work and their very lives are stolen, distorted, suppressed and spun to subvert the entire reason for their sacrifice.   James Foley died in service to government of, by and for The People,  exactly the kind of thing that ISIS wants to prevent happening in the places they rule by terror.  The opinion "journalists" here who will spin his murder don't serve representative democracy, either.