Politicians and just plain citizens have been accusing the press for nearly everything these days. For example, the decline of the economy is being blamed on the press, among others, for failing to alert us.

And the Republican standard-bearer, John McCain, has accused the papers and just about every TV network — except Fox — of practicing "Gotcha" journalism. Reporters are deliberately trying to trap unwary candidates, particularly Sarah Palin, instead of trying to be fair and balanced.

Bring back the good old days of fair newspaper reporting, the critics say. Just when were those days?

I have been a reporter for a half-century, and I must admit in this era of unabated public confessing that the good old days were not really that great.

At least not in New Jersey, where I worked in my salad days. It was at a time in the 1960s when 130 New Jersey public officials had been indicted. A mobster, testifying before Congress, declined to answer where he lived because it might incriminate him.

Well, no reporters went to the slammer, but maybe they should have gone. Perhaps, we needed to be more diligent in our reporting, exposing the miscreants while there was still time. Let me take you back to those colorful days of inaccurate and often dishonest reporting.

At the late Hudson Dispatch, printed in Jersey City, N.J., reporters regularly accepted "cash tips" from politicians of both parties to put press releases in the paper —untouched. Sometimes, the editors took the "tips" before they went to the reporter. I remember writing a piece about a political rally in Hoboken, N.J., without ever attending. It turned out that my editor was doing public relations on the side for the mayor; he had already written the story before the rally took place. He just told me to "pump it up a bit" and put my name on it.

I complied. As a young naïve reporter, I thought all papers did it that way. I suppose many did.

I actually worked for one honorable paper in New Jersey, the courtly Newark News, which put out a fair report each day. But the way the reporters were paid was another story — a story that didn't get printed until years later in a labor dispute.

I still remember my job interview in a cubbyhole at the paper, long since deceased. I was making $80 a week at the Dispatch and wanted a raise before jumping to a new paper. Well, the suburban editor said my salary at the News would be $75 a week, but ...

"But what?" I asked.

I didn't want to take a pay cut. The editor said I would receive an expense account that would raise my pay to $135 a week. As a suburban reporter, I needed to use my car a lot.

"But that's legitimate expenses, not a raise in salary, isn't it?" I protested.

The editor was silent. A fellow reporter clued me in that the "expenses" would be four times more than my actual costs; it was a tax-free way of giving me a higher wage.

Some of the copy editors, who never left the office, received the munificent sum of $60 a week in expenses — all bogus.

So when I hear that newspapers, run mainly by big corporations these days, have descended to a new low in ethics, I wonder.

E-mail Joe Volz at volzjoe2003@yahoo.com or write to 2528 Five Shillings Rd, Frederick, MD 21701. To find out more about Joe Volz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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