"A column published on Slate.com over the weekend urged President Obama to 'pulverize' and destroy his Republican opponents -- even 'go for the throat' -- in order to cement his legacy'," reports Fox News.

"The words of advice, though, didn't come from a Democratic strategist or a former member of the president's inner circle," Fox notes. "The nearly 2,000-word playbook came from CBS News' political director John Dickerson."

"To hear Dickerson tell it, Republicans have proved so intransigent that Obama's only option is to obliterate them," Fox continues.

"The subhead on the article said, 'Obama must declare war on the Republican Party' if he wants to transform American politics."

Comment: We see again why the formerly mainstream media is formerly mainstream: In advising Obama, CBS's Dickerson has taken sides in a political battle. He could do this as a columnist but not as a political news director at CBS News.

A news director position requires a person who embraces fact-based reporting and whose commitment to objective, fact-based reporting supercedes any commitments to a political party, for or against the politics of Obama or anybody else.

Journalism is not propaganda; it is fact-based reporting of newsworthy events that occur in this world. 

This is what journalism is, and it is not what Dickerson has given us an example of. In this respect, therefore, he does not stand in the defining mainstream of journalism.

But also, in advising Barack Obama, Dickerson is advising someone who, as the record indicates, rejects the rules of freedom as set forth in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

This is the second way in which Dickerson is a member of the formerly mainsteam media: He operates outside of a) the rules for reporting and b) the rules for freedom.

Moreover, the further Dickerson operates outside of those principles, to that degree he practices an anti-reporting extremism in media and an anti-freedom extremism in politics.

If CBS News would like to live up to its name as a news organization, it would do well to insist that everyone hired to produce and report on news evinces a commitment to real reporting.

It is possible, after all, to be passionately committed to the discovery of truth.

Meanwhile, Americans would do well to practice an appropriate and humane skepticism toward all media.

To question authority is part of our birthright as human beings endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable abilities, among them the ability to reason, to check facts, and to demand accountability of those who hold positions of power in media and politics and elsewhere. Test everything.

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