Reading the Dec. 18 Salisbury Post, I noticed the article “Trump calls impeachment action a ‘vicious crusade’ against him” by the Associated Press reporters Lisa Mascaro and Mary Claire Jalonick.

This article is obviously a hit piece directed at the president. Why? In the body of the article, these “reporters” inject their opinion as a fact by saying, “Portraying himself as a blameless victim, as he often does, Trump compared the impeachment inquiry to the Salem Witch Trials.”

This is not reporting the facts. It’s the opinion of two wanna-be journalists who are masquerading as reporters.

As a student in junior high school in the 1960s, my civics teacher cautioned the class not to believe everything we read in the newspaper. That was good advice. Today, many papers, the Salisbury Post included, purchase news articles from sources like the Associated Press.

These are not hard news articles, but opinion pieces that are usually slanted to the left. Gone are the days of Huntley, Brinkley and Walter Cronkite, who reported the factual news and let the reader or viewer decide how to interpret it.

Beware of the academia, the media and Hollywood. We must learn to decode what we read, see and hear. Not everything is as they say.

You have heard that a recession was coming, right? CNN, MSNBC, ABC and CBS all shouted it from the rooftops: “The sky is falling.” Yet, the economy is humming right along. How is your 401(k) doing? We have record stock market levels, low unemployment, jobs and manufacturing returning to our shores, low mortgage rates and energy independence. Where is the recession?

Democrats in the House of Representatives have spent the last three years trying to remove President Donald Trump from office instead of doing their jobs. You may ask why they are doing this. Is it because our economy is in better shape than it has been in years and they cannot take credit for it? Possibly. But you will not read or hear about that in the news.

M. Drue Gillis

China Grove