For police PR flacks, quack lives matter
Sounds like the citizens have a problem with their government.<p>Sooo, so for extreme clarity and simplicity, let&#x27;s break this issue down to about the 2nd grade:<p>Here in the US we have a <i>democracy</i>,
a <i>Constitution</i>, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.  We are supposed to have free elections and a free enterprise system.  Soooo,<p>Step 1:<p>When government is doing bad things --  illegal, unethical, violent, nasty -- with freedom of speech, some people should complain and with freedom of the press journalism should present the information, say, meeting common high school term paper standards, to the voters.  If the journalism is not doing that, then it looks like there is a business opportunity in the US free enterprise system.<p>Step 2:<p>Seeing the information, the voters are supposed to complain to their elected representatives in government. If the voters do not complain, then the representatives might wonder if many voters care and, thus, be reluctant to take action.<p>Step 3:<p>The elected representatives are supposed to correct the problem. If the representatives don&#x27;t do this work, then it looks like in our democracy there is an opportunity for some new representatives.<p>Sooo, why don&#x27;t these three steps work, i.e., why don&#x27;t the problems get reported by the journalists and corrected by the representatives?<p>For an answer, my guess is that journalists believe that, for their ad revenue per hour of work as  journalists, they have more profitable places to allocate their time than reporting on problems with government.<p>For a change, we might guess that the journalists will change and report about (A) representatives lying, police beating up citizens for no good reason, graft, kickbacks, wasteful spending, dangerous infrastructure, payoffs, no-show jobs, unfairly serving powerful special interests, cushy contracts, ignoring crime, etc., i.e., problems with government, instead of (B) police saving baby ducks as soon as voters and readers insist they want such change.<p>So, in my opinion, given our democracy and Constitution, the real, basic fault lies with the voters who don&#x27;t give strong feedback to the journalists and representatives.