The Columbine University Graduate School of Journalism announced today that it is eliminating from its curriculum a course on journalistic ethics that had been taught at the school continuously since its founding nearly one hundred years ago. “The ethics course has been poorly attended,” said Journalism Dean Edwin Boratt, “and the faculty agreed that it no longer is relevant in today’s journalistic climate.”

Replacing the ethics course will be a special, new program entitled “How you can twist the facts to destroy the careers of politicians you oppose” — Twist 101 for short.

“Let’s face it,” said Dean Boratt, “Journalists no longer are interested in reporting the facts straight, without fear or favor. Journalism today is a contest between the supporters of each of the two leading political parties, to see who can boost (or destroy) the careers of the politicians they support (or oppose). I know this trend offends the dying breed of old-school journalists, who have felt they had a duty to the profession to keep it honest and independent. However, the newer breed of journalists recognizes that its duty to the profession is far less important than ensuring that the nation has the political leadership the journalists prefer.”

The Twist 101 course will focus on five basic themes. Here is a gloss of the syllabus that will appear in the journalism school’s catalog next semester:

1. Making your candidate’s opponent look bad in news photographs. Students will be instructed in the use of fast-action, automatic cameras, which can produce dozens of photographs in a few seconds. If you catch every nuance of your subject’s facial movements as he is speaking, you are bound to produce at least some photographs in which he looks painfully constipated, or in which his tongue is sticking out, or spittle is flying from his lips.

2. How to edit quotations to distort their meaning. For example, if your candidate’s opponent says: “I may be an idiot, but I believe in motherhood, apple pie and the American way,” use only the first words and trim the rest. Here is how you can lead into the quote: “Rep. Smurf conceded that his intelligence is not on a par with his opponent’s. ‘I may be an idiot,’ he observed.”

3. How to ask leading questions. When your candidate’s opponent holds a news conference, ask him questions such as these: “Have you ever been confined to an institution for the mentally ill?” “Is it true that you are a sexual harasser?” “Was your father a war criminal?” You may be pleasantly surprised should he answer yes to any of those questions, but in the more likely event that he answers no, you are at liberty to publish a provocative headline that helps your cause: “Rep. Smurf Denies Hospitalization for Mental Illness”.

4. Manipulate the known facts to make the opponent look bad. Suppose the candidate states that as a child he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, and that he bravely fought off a guard dog that was tearing at his father’s throat, and that he was then beaten by the guards. In your story, you can accurately say “Rep. Goldberg acknowledged that as a child he indulged in cruel treatment of animals, a form of behavior that psychologists say is often the prelude to serial killings of humans, and that he was punished by the authorities.”

5. How to blot out favorable statements about your candidate’s opponent in television debates. Some TV news programs allow advocates of rival candidates to argue back and forth in a split-screen format. When an adversary starts making strong points in favor of his candidate, just start talking loudly at the same time. It won’t matter what you say, because nobody will be able to understand either of you. You can even recite a nursery rhyme. The networks usually provide limited time for these exchanges, so the segment probably will end before the program’s host can rein you in.

“It is our intention,” said Dean Boratt, “to provide expert training in journalistic practices that have become prevalent, but for which there is not yet an academic framework.”

The dean said that the course will be taught on a non-partisan basis, meaning that it will be available to students from both sides of the political spectrum. “However,” he added, “we have deemed it prudent to separate Republican students from Democratic students, because of certain concerns that our attorneys have expressed.”

He said that students who lean to the Democrats will meet in the school’s 150-seat main lecture hall, and that the Republican students should be accommodated adequately in an unused broom closet that “is being cleaned and painted as we speak.”

In response to a reporter’s question, Dean Boratt heatedly denied that his father had been a war criminal.