Jack Nelson, a long-time reporter for the Los Angeles Times who covered the civil rights movement and incurred the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover, died on Wednesday.   I noticed a couple of interesting things in reading the obituaries summarizing this man’s impressive career and life.  First, to the simpletons who suggest Obama is compiling an enemies list only they can see,  here’s a reminder of what it really means for a journalist to end up on a government enemies list: “Longtime [FBI] Director J. Edgar Hoover sought to have [Nelson] fired” [Hoover spread a lie that Nelson was an alcoholic].

More importantly, Nelson was a journalist who understood the difference between objectivity and false balance.  As he noted “A reporter likes to pride himself on being as objective as he can, and…tell both sides of the story…Well, there’s hardly two sides to the story of a man being denied the basic right to vote…There’s no two sides to a story of a lynching, a lynching is a lynching.”

Well said.  Today’s press corps would be well served to ponder the applicability of Mr. Nelson’s words to current “discourse” involving death panels, euthanasia, and the impending threat that the Obama administration will institute a totalitarian state.