World's religious leaders ask us to "Make Friends"

WHEN I was a newspaper editor, I'd often field calls and get letters complaining about how the media seems to focus only on the bad news.

Back then, being a bit defensive, I'd explain that the "news" - as defined by the media of the day - consisted of stories that were out of the ordinary.

Stories about the kids who made the honor roll or firemen saving a kitten stuck in a tree would get reported but they didn't merit front page or prominent headlines. The so-called "good news" was the normal state of affairs so they didn't merit the attention given to the unordinary or extraordinary. Dog-bites-man is not a story, I'd explain, but man-bites-dog is considered "news."

With so much of today's news seems tilted towards the outrageously stupid things coming out of Washington, like disguising a tax break for the ultra rich as health care reform or trying to direct the former FBI director's testimony by lying about tape recordings, or simply ignore the facts about climate change in favor of making a buck, or having Russian President Putin pick the U.S. president, it appears that "good news" or heartwarming news is now "out-of-the-ordinary."

Many Views From the Edge readers will have heard by now of the appeal by some of the world’s most prominent religious leaders, calling for making friends across religions. Elijah, together with the Havas Lemz advertising agency and letsheal.org, were the driving forces in creating this landmark appeal.

Members of the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders, along with other prominent religious leaders, issued a call to get to know one another, and to cultivate friendship across religions.

Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbis David Lau and Jonathan Sacks, Sri Sri Ravi Sankar, Amma and many other prominent religious leaders affirm that friendship is the antidote to hatred, fear and violence.

The appeal trailer was released on Twitter as a joint video message, using technology to translate the common purpose and common vision of the religious leaders to a visual of unity.

The appeal was launched June 14 at a press conference in London. The presentation included sociological analysis of attitudes and values of different religious groups across the world, their expectations and how friendship ranks on their scale of values.

The background to the release of the appeal trailer was a presentation of common attitudes of fear and ignorance, balanced by the recognition of common hopes and aspirations, as studied by Martijn Lampert of the Amsterdam based values research company, Motivaction.

Elijah director, Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, introduced the project highlighting its theological significance. Values that had previously been preached only to the in-group (friendship) are now being extended by major faith leaders beyond the narrow circle of the faithful. This is not only an important moment of social collaboration. It is a moment of religious teaching, that is carried out jointly by leaders in a collaborative moment of teaching and advancing the spiritual vision of the traditions. 

Differently put: By signing on this appeal, these leaders are affirming a particular way of practicing their religion, as distinct from other ways that religions are often associated with.

No matter what your religious or spiritual inclinations may be, (or, even if you are an agnostic or atheist), it's a simple message more people should hear.

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From the Edge: Fourth Estate under attack

TASS

Russian news service TASS, was quick to release this photo showing Donald Trump welcoming Russian Foreign Minister Sergev Lavrov, left, and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, right

ALMOST LOST in the chaos surrounding the firing of FBI director James Comey was what happened yesterday morning. Donald Trump met with Russia's highest ranking diplomat Foreign Minister Sergev Lavrov. 

The White House declared the unusual meeting to be closed press, meaning that reporters couldn’t attend and cover independently.

One news agency was allowed in: The Russian news agency TASS.


What has our nation come to when the U.S. chief executive trusts Russia's government-controlled media more than American media? 

Exacerbating the tension in Washington, the TASS photographs that came out of that meeting show Donald Trump yukking it up with Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the man Gen. Michael Flynn met with before becoming National Security advisor.

The jovial picture, the timing of the meeting in the midst of the Comey firing over the Russian probe, just does not look good.

Prior to the meeting, MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell shouted out a question to the foreign minister, "Does the Comey firing cast a shadow over your talks, gentlemen?" Lavrov smirked, "Was he fired? You are kidding! You are kidding!" shrugged his shoulders and walked into the meeting. 

The night before, a U.S. reporter got arrested because he asked a question a government official didn't want to answer.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, accompanied by spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway, was winding up a day in Charleston, West Virginia when a local reporter, Dan Heyman of Public News Services asked him if domestic violence could be a pre-existing condition in the GOP proposed American Health Care Act.

When Price ignored him, he persisted to throw out questions. “Do you think that’s right or not, secretary?” Heyman began asking a question, according to a recording an audio recording Heyman provided to The Washington Post. “You refuse to answer? Tell me no comment.”

He was “causing a disturbance by yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price,” the complaint says, according to the Post.

The criminal complaint filed against Heyman by capitol police says h was “causing a disturbance by yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price,”

He was released later that night after posting a $5,000 bail. Herman said that he was just doing his job as a journalist.

The legal director of the ACLU West Virginia, Jamie Lynn Crofts, spoke to reporters on Tuesday night outside the capitol, after Heyman had been taken into custody.

“Our First Amendment rights are under attack every day, particularly from the Trump administration. And it’s not surprising to me that an incident like this would happen when a reporter tried to ask a question of a member of the Trump administration,” she said.

Trump has battled with the mainstream media throughout his campaign and now that he is in office, he is under more intense scrutiny by the press. He has called into question one of the institutional pillars of U.S. democracy by calling their reporting "fake news" and his administration considers the media an "opponent."

The Fourth Estate has been criticized the last few years because they didn't take Trump serious enough from the outset of his campaign and rushing to his media availability hoping the candidate would blurt out another outrageous statement. By the time the media caught on to Trump's manipulative entertainment-as-value strategy to gain airtime and printed space - it was too late. Trump had  the momentum to defeat his GOP rivals and to upset Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

As someone who was inspired to become a journalist by the work exposing Watergate, the media's fall from grace is especially disheartening.

The public view of the media has deteriorated over the years as media outlets began to reflect a particular point of view, most notably Fox News which espoused conservative perspectives. In reaction, other networks began reporting with a liberal bent. 

In recent polls, journalists usually ranked near the bottom in how the public viewed them. 

Recently, some of the media have bent over backwards to appear "fair," by giving credence to some outlandish claims by climate-change deniers and anti-vaccine advocates. 

The New York Times recently added a noted climate-change denier to their oped retinue of columnists. They might as well give equal space to flat-earth believers and the followers of white nationalists. By giving time and space to these discredited viewpoints, leaving it to the reader to wade through the "he said, she said," muck. Even though there is a firewall between the opinion editors and the newsroom, the public doesn't make that distinction. At some point, the media has to distinguish between the facts and B.S. for a public inundated with information.

Apparently, in the Trump era, media outlets feel this need to create this false balance in order to keep subscribers or viewers who want to believe the disinformation espoused by these discredited pundits. What needs to done is to separate the "populist" views from fact-based information. Fake news, or phony opinions, is like a cancer, it spreads and throws into question all other news stories.

Journalists can save their profession by doing what they should have been doing all along: questioning the powerful, digging for the hidden motives, following the money, explaining the complex, and reporting the truth. By doing their job, they can save the republic. We are not yet living in a dictatorship.

There are signs the media is beginning to live up to its role in our democracy if they continue to dig into the Comey firing, the Russian connections to the Trump campaign, the role of the NRA on congressional campaigns and the impact of the GOP-sponsored health proposal.

It's a sad state of affairs when our nation's democratic institutions such as the free press and the courts can be threatened and shaken by 124 character pronouncements. If ever there is a time for journalists to step up their efforts in reporting what's happening and uncovering hidden motives, it is now.

"If you want to preserve — I'm very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press," said Sen. John McCain. "And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started."

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GOP wants to highlight diversity at its convention, but ...

UH OH. The GOP National Convention kicks off today (Monday, July 18) and before it starts it is already off to a rocky start and organizers are scrambling.

Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau couldn't believe his eyes when he saw the sign at the convention center in Cleveland. It read, "White Elevators." conjuring up images of Jim Crowism when signs were placed all over the south designating White Only drinking fountains, White Only restrooms and White Only entrances to restaurants and businesses.

In the middle of all the chaos is an Asian/American, Marcia Lee Kelly, who has been in Cleveland for a year organizing the Republicans' national conclave.

No one seems to know who put up the sign but Kelly is making sure it is being replaced. The best explanation is this tweet:

Hmmm. Do you buy that?

But the White Elevator kerfuffle is minor compared to what Kelly has to contend with: 2,470 delegates, more than 50,000 guests and about 15,000 members of the media, including a large international press corps. Various groups — from right-wing activists, some swear to tote their guns in this open-carry state, to left-wing anarchists — also have vowed to show up in a city still seething from the 2014 fatal police shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African /American boy with a pellet gun.

Marcia Lee Kelly

“We live in a volatile, somewhat dangerous world right now and we’re determined to make sure our guests and the city of Cleveland are safe,” Kelly told the L.A. Times. “You worry about what you can control. I write everything down. We start meetings on time. I always have an agenda. Always have next steps. It’s weird but the more intense things get, the calmer I get.”

RELATED: GOP'S' 2016 Southern Strategy

After releasing the initial list of speakers, it was pointed out that there was only one person of color among the scores of speakers -- Sen. Ted Cruz, who is half-Cuban. A day later, five speakers were added, including Lisa Shin, an Asian/American optometrist and founder of Korean-Americans for Trump.  The other speakers -- Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, TV personality Pat Smite, Senate candidate Daryl Glenn, Jamiel Shaw, father of a slain gang member, Pastor Mark Burns and Dr. Ben Carson, a former rival who has endorsed Trump -- are all African/American. 

It is likely that more speakers of color will be added -- think Omarosa, the African/American businesswoman who was a contestant on Trump's reality show, The Apprentice, and who has been just been appointed as Trump's African/American Outreach director.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will be attending after all after initially saying she hadn't made up her mind about going. She drew Trump's ire when she publicly criticized Trump's anti-immigrant and inflammatory rhetoric, once during the Republican response to the President Obama's State of the Union address and again, when she endorsed Trump's political rival Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. 

RELATED: Gov. Nikki Haley bets against Trump, endorses Rubio

For now, Haley is not on the speaker's list, but for diversity's sake, she might still get an invite. Until Trump has the nomination in the bag, Haley was seen as the future of the GOP in its attempt to broaden its appeal to minorities. That strategy, apparently, has all but been abandoned.

Expect the TV cameras to zero in on all the minorities in the audience to give the appearance of diversity even though the 2016 convention is expected be whiter than usual, even by GOP standards. Why do the networks do that? Are they under control of the GOP? If their job is to report the truth, then show the convention as it really is. Why focus on the few minority delegates when the overwhelming number of delegates are white?

Outside of a few Asian/American entrepreneurs who admire Trump's reputed business acumen, don't expect to see many AAPI delegates -- not after he mocked Indian/Americans and Chinese/Americans by attempting to speak English in their respective accents and called for a complete ban on Muslim immigration.

RELATED: Asian/Americans lean towards the Democrats

According to a survey conducted this Spring by three Asian/American organizations, only 19 percent of Asian Americans hold a favorable view of the presumptive Republican nominee, while 61 percent view him unfavorably.

As recently as the last decade, political pundits thought the Asian/American community would be the most likely ethnic group to vote for Republicans. The increasingly anti-immigrant positions taken by the GOP has pushed AAPI voters towards the Democrats. Asian Americans have also taken the racist language and positions into consideration, even when it is not directed at them.

RELATED: Asian/Americans are well aware of xenophobic rhetoric

The swing towards the Democrats has been growing over the last two Presidential elections. While just 35 percent of Asian Americans identified as Democrats in 2012, 47 percent do so today; those identifying as Republicans have declined slightly from 18 percent in 2012 to 15 percent in 2016, within the survey's margin of error.

If Kelly's claim is true -- that she really does get calmer as the situation gets more intense -- by the end of this week, she could be so calm, it would take an elephant stampede to awaken her.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.