By Charles Rein

I discovered an advanced review book copy while traveling in the American Southwest recently. The 2020 book, "Words On Fire: the Power of Incendiary Language and How to Confront It" grabbed my attention. The cover by chance, has a photo of the back of the head and shoulders of the most powerful man in the world, President Trump. Okay maybe not such a coincidence.

Now why would I select a book that does not present both sides and seeks to portray Trump as the anger management mascot for this book regarding incendiary language? Before you dismiss this review let me ask you a question.

Close your eyes and picture the unbelievable-that you're able to visualize the yet as unpicked winning Powerball lottery numbers an hour before they would actually be played Saturday night! A glance into this alternative reality book can actually be invaluable if you need to prepare yourself for a heated conversation, say with a Democrat friend.

In fact the whole book isn't bad. The author, Helio Fred Garcia, teaches leadership, ethics, crisis management and communication in N.Y. University and Columbia University and has coached more than four hundred Fortune 500 CEOs. With a biography like that I was expecting a lot (more) of this author!

This author, Garcia quotes James Poniewozik's book, "Audience of One" including a colorful line: "Trump's life looks like the last five seconds of a commercial for scratch off lottery tickets."

Now how many of you are disappointed with today's news and would agree that it's no longer the Walter Cronkite style of reporting?

In a 2007 essay published in the book, "What Orwell didn't know: Propaganda and the New Face of America" media professor and author Martin Kaplan describes cable news coverage as "crisis porn."

Remember those black and white former tabloid story headlines we use to laugh at: "J.F.K isn't dead"; "Dick Cheney is a robot."

We'd glance at those stories for fun, while waiting in line at the checkout: silly entertainment fodder that no one took seriously. Yet many of today's news type stories are almost as full of fiction that some would call these types of reporting "alternative facts." Yet, strangely we want it more! The result is that we've become a nation of sensationalism addicts-who can't wait for the next media "breaking news" story!

How has this happened?! Professor Kaplan in Garcia's book indeed contrasts what cable news today is not good at: "Insight, context, depth, reflection, perspective, humility, analysis, news."

I believed it wasn't supposed to be this way. Looking back in time, I discovered the news was there to inform us and incredibly in the 1960's "wasn't even there necessarily to make money." according to one of Cronkite's Executive producers, John Hewitt, who later founded the CBS News Magazine program "60 Minutes."

Arriving back to the 21st century, it's different. Garcia writes about Jonathan Klein who was brought into CNN as the new president from 2004 -2010 to upgrade the network's news standards (don't laugh).

CNN's revenue was approximately $745 million in 2004. To put that into perspective that much money could purchase more than 66,000 U.S. Superbowl tickets (in 2018) for you and your closest friends...twice(!) with $45 million left over for beer and hot dogs! By 2010 CNN's revenue had risen to $1500 million!

I'd venture a guess that with this financial shift towards "Show me the money!" influenced these Godzilla like news beasts. Like challenging him or King Kong to an arm wrestling match, it would be impossible for honesty and truthfulness to ever win. Gone forever were the days of more honest reporting, a simplier time in the U.S. Cronkite era of networks.

My suspicions paid off as I read that this former CNN president Klein (profiled in The Wall Street Journal) admitted about his quest to "re-think the news." One of his top priorities back then was to revamp programs so that they "focus on dramatic storytelling." For this to be effective, the news needed to include the 5 C's: "conflict, contradiction, controversy, colorful language, cast of characters."

Seems these 5 C's replaced the former journalistic integrity of the 5 W's and the and the one H! - who, what, where, when, why and how. A story told through the "lens of a storyteller" should be viewed the same way you would view this book review-as an opinion piece.

The author respectfully states: "Donald Trump is not the cause of a political, social and moral division in the nation." But in the very next sentence Garcia states, "but Trump is an intensifier of them. He took a very unhealthy situation and made it worse." In my opinion this author seems to find a lot of blame: media politics, changing times, but I wonder why so much of his venom and hatred is focused solely on President Trump? Over the last three years we've had many Democrats as well as Republicans who said some crazy, polarizing statements.

If you can control your emotional temper then is a great book! It's a play book for the other side!

Yet keep in mind, that just like the inflatable rubber boat I was on during a white water rafting adventure I had (while living in Germany, caring for our military men and women on R&R) it's also a challenge to hold onto till the end. This is a book where you may not agree with a lot of what the author has to say, especially when he focuses most of his anger on the most powerful office in the world rather than even handily exploring the rantings on both sides of the political aisle. There's more than enough reasons why we're in polarized mess, yet in this book, Trump seems to get most of the blame.