Journalism

Journalism, Media

Hating the Press …

Posted on by mjohnson

It’s hardly news that the news business is in deep, deep trouble. The vast disruptive power of the Internet combined with massive declines in advertising revenue have helped hollow out or kill hundreds of newspapers, put untold numbers of reporters out of work and left an increasing number of American communities “news deserts.”

Cutthroat venture capitalists are buying up newspapers to gut them, bleeding them of resources and shipping what money is left out of the towns that depend on the local fishwrapper for everything from baseball scores to news about whether the local county commissioner secretly engineered paving the road to his house.

The right’s attacks on reporters isn’t new, but it has gotten more wide spread

Opinion polling also tells us that many Americans – and a strong majority of conservatives – just don’t trust traditional news outlets. If I want to get an eye roll from a conservative, I quote the hated New York Times or the Washington Post. You can get a similar rise out of a liberal by mentioning Fox News, although disdain for the fourth estate is considerably stronger on the right than on the left.

It is not a coincidence, therefore, that the decline in confidence or respect for what Richard Nixon was the first to call “the media” has skyrocketed as the modern conservative movement has broadly embraced conflict entrepreneurs like Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Alex Jones. All have, to varying degrees, declared war on traditional journalism, while advancing conspiracies, authoritarian agendas and flat-out misinformation.

Donald Trump was hardly the first politician to making hating reporters the centerpiece of his appeal to the political right. Richard Nixon, fixated on reporters he believed were out to get him, became a press hating fanatic. “Never forget,” Nixon told Henry Kissinger, his reporter friendly foreign policy advisor, “the press is the enemy, the press is the enemy … write that on the blackboard 100 times.”

When Nixon ran for re-election in 1972, 93% of the nation’s newspapers endorsed him. But facts shouldn’t get in the way of a good bashing of people who live to ask questions of people in power.

Trump, of course, uses his absurdly self-serving “fake news” mantra to attempt to taint any story that is remotely critical of him. That, too, is a tactic as old as Gutenberg’s press and as common to the authoritarian playbook as when Nixon claimed investigation of Watergate was “a witch hunt.”

Yet, Nixon’s hatred of the press – and Joe McCarthy’s and Barry Goldwater’s before – was never as effective as Trump’s has become. “I believe that President Trump is engaged in the most direct sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history,” former Fox News reporter Chris Wallace said in 2019. “He has done everything he can to undercut the media, to try and delegitimize us, and I think his purpose is clear: to raise doubts, when we report critically about him and his administration, that we can be trusted.”

That explains Trump’s motive, but his effort to delegitimize an independent press goes farther. He’s succeeded in getting an entire political party, and the shameless straphangers who go along for the press bashing ride, to buy into yet another of his countless lies.

Truth be told, few politicians relish dealing with the press. Reporters ask pointed questions. They want to see the backup material. They are trained to harbor a certain level of skepticism. Most good reporters have a well-tuned bull s@*t detector.

But now, as reporter David Freelander wrote recently, “sitting down with the mainstream press has come to be seen by Republican primary voters as consorting with the enemy, and approval by the enemy is the political kiss of death.”

What better way of discounting every criticism than to label it “fake?” What better way to bluster out of an embarrassing exchange than to insult the questioner? What better way to tear apart democracy than to discredit the press? It’s all of a piece to trash vital pieces of a democratic system.

The Republican governor of Florida, to cite just one example, employs a $120,000 a year press secretary, a 31-year-old online troll, whose only job seems to be attacking reporters and spreading disinformation.

“Calling out this long-running, cynical, and ultimately corrosive approach to politics is long overdue,” political analysts Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Ladd wrote before the last election. “Politicians and media personalities can pursue conservative policies without undermining the public’s trust in the media, science, and government agencies. Now more than ever, they should do that.”

This undermining is precisely why shadowy state-based groups like the Idaho Freedom Foundation, run by a former reporter, and cynical candidates, like the former TV reporter in Arizona who is running for governor, attack the press. It works, at least with a certain number of voters who believe reporters are biased because they have repeatedly been fed that lie by self-interested politicians and contemptible political operatives.

Wayne Hoffman, the ex-reporter pushing Idaho conservatives to the far-right edge of the earth, says it’s the reporters who have changed, not hacks like him. That too is a lie. What has changed is that guys like Hoffman discovered they can make more money than they ever would have as reporters by hurling incendiaries, vilifying the right’s demons and manufacturing controversy.

A new tactic: Refuse to engage, but keep attacking

Talk about cynical. Hoffman’s group, like many on the far right, refuses to engage with reporters. And there is nothing transparent about his support. They know they can’t actually explain what they are doing – destroying public education and spreading public health nonsense behind a cloud of secret money, for example – to questioning, informed journalists, so they attack.

As a general rule, I have found reporters to be skeptical, smart, curious and profoundly decent people. Few go into the work, especially now with future prospects so dicey, anticipating a big payday or the fame of Woodward and Bernstein. Most care deeply about the truth or getting as close to it as possible. They see through charlatans. They’d rather help expose corruption and hypocrisy than make a living off it. Sounds a little like defending democracy when you stop to think about it.

Every industry has it’s cynics, wise guys, even the occasional crank, but reporters aren’t the ones aggressively trying to discredit American democracy. They actually embody the debate that is fundamental to a democratic system. In no system, particularly ours, should people and institutions with power, influence and money be above skepticism and scrutiny.

Sure, question the motives of reporters and news organizations. Hold them to high standards. But when some joker yells “fake news” and attacks the questioner rather than attempt to answer the question, have a look at those motives, too. If you look carefully the reporters will more often than not come out looking better than the jokers.

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Additional Reading:

For your weekend reading …

Three-way race for Oregon governor generating tsunami of campaign cash

I believe Oregon may have the most interesting gubernatorial campaign this year. Three women. Millions and millions of dollars.

From the Oregon Capital Insider.

Kurt Vonnegut | 1973

I’ve always read Playboy for the interviews. No, really.

Here is a classic interview with the great writer.

Kurt Vonnegut

“It’s an interview that plainly lays out Vonnegut’s pessimism and disappointment, both of which are self-admitted defining factors in his life. Neither feels good, but both are endlessly informative.”

Here is the link. Minus the centerfold.

Mike Pence Sold His Soul for Nothing

Mona Charon brings the goods on the former vice president – he was honorable on January 6, but not before or after.

“When Pence traveled to Ireland on an official visit, he didn’t stay in Dublin, but traipsed 140 miles west to stay at the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg, necessitating a 40 minute flight and hour-long drive each way. Must have been inconvenient, but then, if Trump had asked Pence to crawl both ways, he would doubtless have obliged.”

A soul is a terrible thing to lose. Here’s the link.

Thanks for reading. See you soon.

Great Britain, Journalism, Politics

Political Accountability …

Posted on by mjohnson

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he of the rumpled suit and head of hair that looks at all times as if he’s just rolled out of his bed, has had a bad few days.

Fined for breaking the law by having a crowded, boozy party at his official residence while all of the UK was in Covid lockdown, Johnson apologized, at least sort of. The mess has been dubbed “Partygate.”

One of Johnson’s parties occurred while Queen Elizabeth, strictly observing the government’s lockdown rules, sat alone at her husband’s funeral. Members of his own party have called on Johnson to step down. He’s adamantly refused.

The British prime minister at “question time”

It’s not difficult to make a 96-year-old hereditary monarch more sympathetic than a boorish and bumbling Boris Johnson, but this one was literally no contest. Boris is the first prime minister in British history to be cited for breaking a law while in office. Potentially even more damaging for the PM is the growing belief that he lied to Parliament about the booze parties. Imagine that – a politician held to account for a lie.

Johnson is additionally under fire for a hare-brained scheme to transport some UK asylum seekers to Rwanda for “reprocessing.” The idea was immediately denounced by, among others, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England. Johnson then privately criticized the archbishop, and the comments leaked. Of course they did.

Meanwhile, Johnson made a much-publicized trip to Ukraine recently to show solidarity with that beleaguered nation’s president and people. The trip was a not so thinly veiled attempt to divert attention from the scandals swirling around Johnson who is this week off to India for the same reason.

Amid cries that Johnson should “pack his bags and go,” the prime minister endured 40 minutes this week of that wonderful British tradition – question time. With support for Johnson eroding among his own Tory Party, but without, at least yet wholesale abandonment of their leader, the opposition pounded away. Oh, to have such debates in our system.

As the Conservative back benchers tried to shout down demands for Johnson’s resignation, opposition leader Keir Stamer couldn’t resist twisting the blade: “The party of Peel and Churchill reduced to shouting and screaming in support of this lawbreaker!”

Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer /Jessica Taylor/via REUTERS

At one level this story confirms that British democracy – and British voters – are every bit as capable as American democracy and voters of electing clowns. But what is different between these two old and venerable democracies is the apparent willingness of the British ruling class – we’ll see soon enough if Johnson survives – to hold politicians to account for their actions, separate from merely relying on voters to eventually correct their silly mistakes.

If Johnson is ultimately forced out of office, it will be because his own party has had enough of him and his nonsense. American conservatives should take note.

The former American president has been credibly accused of inciting an insurrection. There are hours of videotape of what happened after he sent a mob to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. His words of incitement are on the record. We now have text messages and phone logs confirming much of the basic story line, even a recording of the former guy demanding that election officials change votes to allow him to win in Georgia. A federal judge recently determined that the former president “more likely than not” was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress and derail the process that certified Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

What Boris Johnson did and eventually admitted to pales in comparison to our recent attempted coup. Nevertheless, the British political system, including elements of Johnson’s own political tribe, are trying to hold him to account. The police already have held him to account, rendering a verdict that the most important politician in the country violated the very law he put in place.

Additionally, as he did this week, the prime minister must stand, uncomfortably and often awkwardly, before his critics and absorb their brickbats. His job is to give back, if he can, a coherent response. It’s all carried live in television. By contrast, we may never hear directly from our own inciter-in-chief about his actions before, during and after January 6.

This American problem of political accountability has metastasized and grown more serious. Most politicians now routinely avoid any regular interaction with journalists or real voters. They gravitate to friendly talk radio shows where a tough question would be “what did you have for breakfast?”

Reporters in Montana have noticed that the state’s Republican governor routinely demolishes his own schedule after it’s been published, showing up an hour early for an event typically including a handpicked audience, and safely avoiding reporters. Veteran Idaho politicians who once would have climbed over their mothers to get in front of a TV camera are stiffing long established debates where they have to face opponents and answer pesky questions. The current occupant of the White House rarely holds a news conference or sits for tough questions.

There are a few notable exceptions that should more correctly be the norm. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden annually holds all-comer town hall meetings in every county in his state, as does Senator Jeff Merkley. Together they have held over 1,500 such events. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley visits every one of the 99 counties in his state every year and is often confronted with pointed questions. The video of many of the exchanges is both informative and gratifying for what it says about political accountability. Good for Grassley that he thinks it’s part of the job to keep showing up.

Grassley did say at a recent town hall that he supports term limits. He’s been in the Senate since 1980 – 42 years.

American democracy has a lot of problems. Too much face time between voters and politicians isn’t on the list. Submitting to pointed questions from journalists isn’t some quaint tradition that can be discarded by someone seeking the public trust.

Holding bumbling public officials to account for mistakes, law breaking and disregard for common sense is the very essence of democracy. Answering questions about their plans and blunders is a minimum requirement for public office. If politicians won’t comply, they don’t deserve your vote. And that is what accountability should look like.

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Additional Reading:

Some suggestions …

Mike Lee’s Role in Trump’s Attempted Coup

Mike Lee and the scandal behind his text messages

This is a truly amazing story about the senator from Utah, one that has received a fraction of the attention it deserves.

“In short: Lee outlined paths for Trump nuts to reverse the election. But, after giving these clowns all his attention, time, and effort, he didn’t, in the end, like how the Trump nuts tried to reverse the election. His disagreement was about tactics, not the mission. But his error was accepting the mission at all.

“And somehow Lee’s defenders look at this and say, ‘BOOM! Hands clean.'”

Here is Amanda Carpenter’s opinion piece from The Bulwark.

And here is a report on the interview the senator gave to his home state newspaper, The Deseret News. Read them both: what happened and the attempt to justify it.

As I said – amazing.

Opinion | The Jan. 6 Committee Can Make a Difference: Simply by Revealing What It’s Found

A good assessment here on what to look for in the public phase of the congressional investigation into the events of January 6.

” … the committee’s principal focus should ultimately be on how to present its investigative findings to the public, irrespective of a referral. The committee may indeed have a good deal of information that the Justice Department does not — depending, again, on the scope and intensity of the department’s work, which even the committee and President Joe Biden do not seem to know. The committee should lay out that information straightforwardly and professionally, just as it did recently in a lawsuit concerning Trump’s legal adviser John Eastman, who tried to withhold emails from the committee.”

I personally think a criminal referral is warranted and necessary, but getting the full story – or as much of it as possible – in front of the public is essential. From Politico.

Will Putin Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?

Hard to believe we are really thinking about this, but we certainly are.

“In plain English, as the Russian war effort to subjugate Ukraine falters and as the West pours in more weaponry, Putin is more than ready to brandish the nuclear saber. This is precisely the kind of development that haunted George F. Kennan during the Cold War—and should haunt contemporary Western statesmen as well.”

A very sobering read from National Interest.

Jackie Robinson was a Republican until the GOP became the ‘white man’s party’

Jackie Robinson’s parents named him “Jack Roosevelt Robinson” after Teddy Roosevelt. Robinson was a Republican until the party moved away from him.

Robinson in October 1960 with then Vice President Richard M. Nixon

“By 1968, Robinson was done with the GOP. He refused to support Nixon when he ran for president again in 1968. He also became more active in the civil rights movement and appeared with King on frequent occasions.

“Robinson also became a prolific writer, including a column for the Amsterdam News, a weekly Black newspaper, where he further developed his fierce opposition to the Republican Party.”

A very interesting piece on Jackie’s politics and activism. What a great American.

All the best. Be well.

Journalism

The Great Erosion

Posted on by mjohnson

By one accounting, more than 2,100 U.S. newspapers closed between 2005 and 2020.

We’ve all heard the stories, many pretty bleak.

Smaller newspapers are purchased by large chains, which cannibalize newsrooms in order to squeeze the last cents – and sense – out of “the product.” Hedge funds with track records of slashing costs – meaning jobs – and maximizing returns for a handful of already really wealthy people are buying up newspapers.

Alden Global Capital is one such hedge fund. The group recently purchased the Tribune Company, owner of the venerable Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the New York Daily News, among other papers.

“The purchase of Tribune reaffirms our commitment to the newspaper industry and our focus on getting publications to a place where they can operate sustainably over the long term,” said Heath Freeman, the president of Alden. Separately it was reported that at least ten percent of already depleted newsroom staffs at Tribune were taking financially slim buyouts, while senior top editors were replaced.

The spectacular Tribune Tower in Chicago, once home to a great newspaper, is now converted to condos

Freeman, the hedge fund guy, is doing great, however. He recently plunked down $19 million for a modest little six bed, six bath joint in an exclusive neighborhood in Miami.

More is at stake here than the survival of the local paper. As local news has been crushed under a variety of burdens from declining ad revenue to non-discerning readers and viewers who gravitate only to “news” outlets that serve only to confirm own ideological opinions, democracy has taken a hit, as well.

The non-profit Niskanen Center, a think tank doing first-rate, deeply researched work on a range of public policy issues, has produced an important new report on the links between local news and the health of American democracy.

“As local news has withered,” the authors of the new report noted, “so too has citizens’ ability to monitor the effectiveness of state and local officials. This has been a key driver in the ‘nationalization’ of politics, which refers to voters only drawing on preferences regarding national politics to evaluate politicians and policy at all levels of the federal system.”

Or put another way, as we increasingly frame all our thoughts about politics at every level around a question of “Biden or Trump” we ignore many of the really vital issues in our own communities. When the local newspaper shrinks or goes away this reality becomes even more pronounced.

As dire as the local journalism situation seems – and it is dire – there are some flickering signs of hope out there.

States Newsroom, a non-profit, now offers free online and first-rate coverage of state capitol and other news in 22 states. In every state with a States Newsroom – Idaho, Montana and Oregon have such outlets – the newsroom leader is a veteran “local” journalist doing superb work.

The non-profit news outlets under the banner States Newsroom represent a truly positive development

The Daily Montanan recently broke a blockbuster story, reported by Keila Szapaller, about sexual harassment at the University of Montana law school. The expose forced the resignation of the school’s dean and his deputy.

The Idaho Capital Sun and reporter Audrey Dutton have provided the very best statewide coverage of the state’s pitifully inadequate response to Covid-19. (Full disclosure: I have contributed opinion pieces to both organizations.)

In Arizona, as another example, the Arizona Mirror, reported this week on Congressman Paul Gosar’s recent trafficking in neo-Nazi and white supremacy images. A story larger news organizations missed.

Another potentially promising local news development is the union of legacy news organizations with public broadcasters. This type of union is unfolding in Chicago where WBEZ, the local public broadcast outlet, is fixing to acquire the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. Initial plans contemplate no layoffs, but instead the addition of more staff.

Authors of the Niskanen Center report offer another intriguing idea: “Political donors could redirect their financial support to local media.” A deep pocketed contributor to political campaigns might spend thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a candidate or cause never knowing if the contribution had any real impact. By contrast, the same amount of cash supporting a hyper-local news gathering effort could produce immediate and obvious results, and “could be a better return on investment for those who are alarmed by the state of our politics.”

A proposal in Congress contemplates creation of a national endowment for local journalism, something akin to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the long-established national endowments for the arts and humanities. The effort might be limited to “non-profit” news organizations and supported by individual taxpayers choosing a “check off” on their tax returns in the same way that millions of American provide public funds for presidential elections.

There are many reasons for the troubled state of American democracy – toxic cable television shouting matches that feed on fear and division, bald faced lies and conspiracy theories elevated by candidates, and a demonizing of legitimate news organizations and their reporters as “enemies of the people.” By any measure, the drastic decline of local journalism in so many communities, and the companion inability to focus on real and important local issues has to be part of the cause, as well.

We need to get on with addressing this.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “it expects what never was and never will be.” It’s worth remembering in light of our fractured, tribal politics that Jefferson champion a free and critical press even as he was often viciously attacked in print by his political opponents.

“For most of American history, localism came naturally,” the Niskanen Center report says. “But that’s no longer the case in our age of national and international connectivity. And while much has been gained in this changed environment, that connection to the local that our political system takes as a given has been severely undermined. Recapturing that type of community connection would help America’s political institutions function as intended. And a robust local media landscape is a prerequisite for a reinvigorated localism.”

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Additional Reading:

A few more suggestions from my reading file…

The January 6th Investigation is Ramping Up … Will it Matter?

A deep dive into the congressional probe of Donald Trump’s attempted coup from Lawfare.

“The committee has an enormous pile of information to dig into—some of it of potentially dubious value—and no end of questions to pursue about what happened on Jan. 6 and in the days, weeks, and years before. In doing so, it is likely to run into legal disputes over its ability to obtain information from recalcitrant witnesses close to former President Trump—along with information that Trump might object to releasing on the grounds of executive privilege.”

Here’s the link:

Ryan Zinke is Running for Office Again in Montana. On Instagram, He’s Often in Santa Barbara

I’m so old that I remember when being forced to resign in the midst of an ethics investigation would be disqualifying for future political office, but not so apparently for former congressman and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

You may recall Zinke as the guy photographed with his fly rod rigged all wrong...

Zinke is trying to go back to the House of Representatives, but Politico checked out where the self-proclaimed cowboy spends most of his time. Spoiler alert: it’s not in Cut Bank.

Miranda Green went looking for Zinke in Montana.

“But Zinke wasn’t in town.His campaign consultant had not responded to requests to make him available for an interview in his home state. I eventually learned from his wife’s Instagram account that the Zinkes were on a beach vacation in Bodrum, Turkey. (Lolita has family ties to Turkey, and the Zinkes travel there often, including at least three separate trips documented on Lolita’s Instagram account in 2019.)”

The Instagram account also documents how much time the guy spends in southern California, just like ever real Montanan.

Here’s a link to pretty interesting story:

Meet the man who pulled nearly 100 snakes from under an SF Bay Area home

Eeww…

I’m with Indiana Jones when it comes to snakes. I’m not a fan. A women in California had a nest under her home.

“”This lady wasn’t afraid of them,” the snake removal guy said. “She doesn’t mind having them there. There were just a couple too many.”

Well, right. There are pictures. Slither right to this one:

Thanks for reading. Be careful out there.

Journalism, Trump

It’s the Truth…

Posted on by mjohnson

Jim Lehrer, the old school journalist who helped invent a sane and sober television news program on public television that he co-hosted for years with Robert MacNeil, died recently and his passing is a reminder of how imperiled the craft of gathering and reporting the news has become.

“I have an old-fashioned view that news is not a commodity,” Lehrer told The American Journalism Review in 2001. “News is information that’s required in a democratic society, and Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

Long-time PBS journalist Jim Lehrer, a beacon of professionalism in a craft under assault

Lehrer’s death and his warning about the commodification of news ironically coincide with a sham impeachment trial in the Senate that featured the president’s defenders shamelessly repeating Russian propaganda. In the same period we’ve seen an attack by the secretary of state aimed at both the truth and a distinguished reporter for National Public Radio, the Fox News host Lou Dobbs bizarrely asserting that life-long Republican John Bolton is a tool of liberal Democrats and Senate leadership eliminating the long established practice that allowed reporters easy access to the senators in the Capitol. 

Literally from its first day the Trump Administration has been at war with the truth, and with reporters and legitimate news organizations that try to discover the truth. It has been a systematic, unrelenting assault on a free press unprecedented in its scope and only rivaled by similar tactics employed by Richard Nixon a generation or more ago. 

But where Nixon – and his later criminally implicated vice president Spiro Agnew – kept “enemies lists” and tried to use the Federal Communications Commission to intimidate broadcasters, Trump isn’t nearly as subtle. As always incendiary rhetoric is his weapon of choice, from calling out individual reporters by name to labeling any report critical of him “fake” and reducing journalists to “enemies of the people.” 

Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” created a scandal when it came to light. Trump’s list is in plain sight

“It’s insidious, it’s aimed to intimidate, it’s a kind of dragging through the mud effort, a character assassination from as best as we can tell, and it’s alarming,” says Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, a leading free speech and human rights group. Nossel was reacting to reports that Trump campaign operatives were determined to plant derogatory information about reporters deemed critical of the president with pro-Trump outlets.

“We need the press to do its job. We depend on them to hold politicians to account, to cover what’s going to be a very fractious campaign.”

Trump’s toxic treatment of reporters is clearly spreading. Republican Senator Martha McSally, one of this year’s endangered incumbents, recently called a CNN reporter “a liberal hack” after the reporter asked her a simple, straightforward question: should the Senate consider new information in the impeachment trial. 

It wasn’t a “gotcha” question, wasn’t asked abusively and was completely legitimate. The encounter went viral, which may have been McSally’s motive, and within hours she was raising campaign cash based upon the phony courage standing up to a reporter with a microphone. 

Idaho Senator Jim Risch has long had a contentious relationship with reporters, often popping off when he asked a question he’d rather not answer. “Oh, I don’t do interviews on any of that stuff,” Risch told the Washington Post when questioned about Trump’s shifting explanations on efforts to buy the silence of women who claimed sexual dalliances with him.

When the obvious follow up was asked – why not? Risch responded, “I don’t do any interviews on anything to do with Trump and that sort of thing, okay?” He then slipped into the Senate chamber. 

Last year when an Idaho radio reporter tried to ask Risch if it was appropriate for the president to implore China to investigate Joe Biden, Risch lost his cool, refused to answer and then walked away telling the reporter “don’t do that again.”

Risch almost certainly smiled his approval of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent silly run in with NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly. The two men are thin-skinned reactionaries who hate the scrutiny real reporters represent. You won’t be surprised that Risch has called Pompeo “a really good friend of mine,” adding, “he and I have very similar views on life in general.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, another Trump “mini-me” when it comes to attacking reporter doing their jobs

That’s true, of course. Risch was once a Trump critic and is now among his biggest defenders. So, too, with Pompeo who in 2016 said a President Trump would be “an authoritarian President” who would ignore the Constitution. Now the blustering secretary of state and the subservient senator vie to be a Trump “mini-me.”

Asked to explain his unwillingness to defend a career State Department official, former ambassador Maria Yovanovitch, who has been slimed by Trump after being dismissed in what surely was an effort to further the president’s misconduct in Ukraine, Pompeo blamed a reporter for having the audacity to question a great man. Then he lied about the circumstances that led to the interview. 

The incident was Pompeo’s “don’t do that again” moment, particularly after he threated Kelly with “people will hear about this.” He then doubled down by banning another NPR journalist from the group covering a trip to Europe. And naturally Trump praised Pompeo’s brutish behavior. 

Years ago I managed press relations for an Idaho governor who admittedly didn’t always enjoy handling a tough question from a reporter, but who nonetheless recognized it was a requirement for serving in public office. I’ve forgotten the specific budget issue at stake all these years later, but I remember Democrat Cecil Andrus asking his budget director Chuck Moss if a certain administration initiative could successfully make its way through the Republican legislature. Moss deadpanned that the idea could probably be sold to lawmakers, but “we might not get it past Fick,” a reference to the irascible, deeply informed Associated Press statehouse correspondent, Bob Fick. 

Andrus knew if he couldn’t explain his idea to a reporter who understood the state budget better than any legislator he was going to pay for it. Fick was dogged enough in his pursuit of a story that he would occasionally park himself next to the governor’s car in front of the Statehouse in order to buttonhole the chief executive on his way to lunch. 

Frankly, that’s the way it is supposed to work. These politicians work for us. Good reporters, and there are a lot of good reporters, go to work every day trying to keep the bastards honest. It’s hard and vital work, particularly when politicians with authoritarian instincts are trying to hide things. 

Shortly before being verbally assaulted by Pompeo, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly was one of the few U.S. journalists to report from Iran

Kelly, the NPR reporter, said as much in an article in the New York Times that was both more substantive and credible than anything Pompeo – or Risch for that matter – has said in the last year. “There is a reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution,” Kelly wrote. “There is a reason it matters that people in positions of power — people charged with steering the foreign policy of entire nations — be held to account. The stakes are too high for their impulses and decisions not to be examined in as thoughtful and rigorous an interview as is possible.” 

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Further reading:

  • “The New Enemies List” from Princeton historian Julian Zelizer in The Atlantic.
  • Attacking reporters is just one tool of authoritarian regimes around the world. “Don’t blame democracy’s decline on ignorance. The problem lies deeper” from The Guardian.
  • A “Freedom House” report on propaganda at home and abroad.
  • And a piece by historian and journalist Michael Petrou on the famous columnist and shaper of public opinion Walter Lippmann.
Journalism, Politics, Trump

A Carnival of Buncombe

Posted on by mjohnson

The journalist and social critic H.L. Mencken was made for the Trump era. Unfortunately Mencken, a guy given to using words such as buncombe, knaves, fanatics and fools in his Baltimore Sun columns and magazine articles, died in 1956, no doubt convinced that a Trump-like character was in the country’s future. 

“As democracy is perfected,” Mencken wrote, “the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

We have arrived. 

The Sage of Baltimore, Henry Louis Mencken

Not many Americans remember Mencken these days even though he was once the best-known journalist – and the most full-throated cynic – in the country. Mencken was an equal opportunity basher of politicians. One suspects he would have loved the daily business of scraping the hide off our current crop of Democratic presidential hopefuls and he would have had an absolute field day with our deranged national tweeter. 

In 1920, while Republicans and Democrats jockeyed for position and the chance to succeed President Woodrow Wilson, Mencken took on the entire field. He might have been writing about Beto or Biden or Bernie.

“All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form,” Mencken wrote. “This is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping.” 

We can only imagine what the Sage of Baltimore would have made of Trump and the president’s whooping mob, but charlatan was one of his favorite words. Fraud was another of his prized descriptions.  

I got to thinking about Mencken this week after the most powerful man in the world spent most of last weekend attacking a decorated Vietnam veteran, prisoner of war and one-time Republican presidential candidate on social media. “I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be,” the man with many grievances told us once again, seven months after most decent people came together, at least for a moment, to mourn one man’s courage and patriotism. 

Thoughts came again of Henry – Franklin Roosevelt, who detested the writer for his barbed takes on the New Deal and FDR’s patrician privilege, called Mencken by his first name hoping to diminish him – when the Tweeter-in-Chief took time out from ravaging American agriculture with his tariff policies to assault the husband of his White House counselor as “a total loser.” The reality show presidency has morphed into “real house husbands of D.C.”

Henry would have mocked such idiocy, such buncombe, such complete claptrap. 

What would one of America’s great social critics have made of the president’s daughter working in the White House while piling up patent approvals with a country we’re engaged with in a trade war? And what of the president’s grifting son-in-law, denied access to state secrets because he’s so clearly susceptible to – there’s that word again – fraud. And what of a political system that tolerates the nation’s chief magistrate maintaining a government lease on a gaudy hotel where every shade of influence seeker pays the rent knowing that their dollars flow directly to the cheater, the conman at the top? What a load of unmitigated rubbish. 

Henry Louis Mencken often bemoaned the American predisposition to be hoodwinked by shameless scoundrels. A favorite target was a prominent populist blowhard of his day, William Jennings Bryan, although unlike our own prominent populist blowhard Bryan had some genuine principles. Nevertheless to Mencken the three-time presidential candidate “was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted … [and] ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest.” He could have been writing for tomorrow’s paper. 

William Jennings Bryan

“A culture,” the conservative writer Peter Wehner wrote this week in The Atlantic,“lives or dies based on its allegiance to unwritten rules of conduct and unstated norms, on the signals sent about what kind of conduct constitutes good character and honor and what kind of conduct constitutes dishonor and corruption.” By those standards, or better yet by the decline of standards observed long ago by a Mencken, we have ceased to progress as a culture. We’re settling for buncombe when we might better demand brilliance, or at least competence.

Often H.L. Mencken reserved his most scathing takes on American politics not for the fools and knaves who occupied the hallowed halls of government, but for the gullible voters who put them in power. “The whole aim of practical politics,” Mencken once wrote, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” And to think he didn’t even know about the make belief “invasion” of the southwest border, or the “witch hunt” or the “fake news.”

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance,” Mencken once wrote. Cynics aren’t often the best judges of the overall direction of things, but our current tomfoolery is such that we’re left to a long-dead cynic to remind us that eventually “every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

—–0—–

2016 Election, Journalism, Trump

The Ministry of Truth…

Posted on by christian

 

      “By the way, newspapers are the first of over 50 companies that I started where my employees tell me how to run my business.”

Sheldon Adleson. Casino billionaire, Trump supporter, newspaper owner

——–

There is a move afoot to bring a National Football League team to the city where things that happen there stay there. The most likely team to relocate to Sin City are, at least by Las Vegas terms, the aptly named Oakland Raiders, owned now by Mark Davis son of one the original NFL bad boys Al Davis.zVFIAIDi

But, as ESPN reported recently, the “sins” of Al Davis, including a penchant for litigation, might not hamper his son’s ambition to embrace the Valhalla of American excessiveness, the Shanghai of Sin.

The NFL and its billionaire owners once took a dim view of gambling, which ruled out locating a team where people bet on games all the time, but the NFL’s oligarchs have now set aside any misgivings about either excess or sin. What happens in Vegas wouldn’t really stay there, but would flow out across the country fattening the wallets of NFL owners. So bring on the Raiders, bring on billionaire Sheldon Adelson and bring on the money, money, money.

In order to host an NFL team, Vegas needs a big ol’ stadium and boy oh boy does Sheldon Adelson think building one is a great idea. His recently acquired Review-Journal newspaper – the Adleson clan originally attempted to keep its purchase of the paper secret – has lavished uncritical front-page coverage on idea of building the stadium, while breathlessly endorsing the convoluted financing that has been proposed. Meanwhile, as he maneuvers to bring the NFL to southern Nevada, Adelson has pledged $100 million to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and has his aides at work creating a Trump Super PAC.

Sheldon Adelson
Sheldon Adelson

Another of Trump’s billionaire friends recently secretly financed a lawsuit aimed at destroying an internet media outlet, a move that, at the least, will have a chilling effect for other outlets reporting on the lives of America’s high roller class.

The richest family in Utah now owns the venerable Salt Lake Tribune and, of course, Rupert Murdoch is in a class all his own. Influence is a growth industry even if real journalism is not.

What a country.

Adelson is frequently referred to as a “supporter” or “financial contributor” to the Las Vegas stadium project and perhaps a part owner on a relocated team, but it is clear, at least when it comes to football, that Adelson is really not that much of a gambling man. Back in January before his minions at the Review-Journal began sanitizing coverage of the stadium proposal the paper actually reported some news about who will pay for the expected $1.2 billion football palace.

“Developers would seek $780 million in public financing, according to a document provided by Las Vegas Sands Corp., which is leading a consortium behind the project,” the R-J reported.

“Private investors would contribute $420 million toward the planned 65,000-seat stadium, with various tourist-driven tax sources — commercial conveyance on taxicabs, rental car taxes or hotel room taxes — providing the bulk of the funding.”

Other accounts have indicated that the Mark Davis owner’s contribution will be conditioned on $200 million “loan” from the NFL, further decreasing the contribution of “private investors” like Adelson. It doesn’t take a PhD in finance to see who is really going to pay for the new stadium. At least two-thirds of the cost will be born by the public.

A former Review-Journal columnist, John L. Smith wrote recently in The Daily Beast: “There’s been a conspicuous lack of skepticism in the local press, which with few exceptions has obsessed on the odds of the Raiders’ arrival instead of the audacity of the stadium’s financing plan. Only political journalist Jon Ralston has consistently questioned the deal’s leaps of faith and lack of transparency.”

Ralston, Nevada’s most respected political journalist, has also reported on the “gag order” that prompted Smith’s departure from the paper. Smith had aggressively covered the big name Vegas casino moguls, including Adelson and Steve Winn, for years, often quite critically and that coverage occasional brought a lawsuit. Now, under the new Adelson regime, Smith was ordered not to write about anyone who had ever sued him. Poof. There goes coverage of the Las Vegas power structure.151222212046-las-vegas-review-journal-sign-780x439

Oh, yes. I forgot to mention that before Sheldon Adelson bought the Review-Journal the paper had been an outspoken critic of the process of financing a Las Vegas stadium project.

Now – are you surprised – the paper calls the stadium a “must do” project.

Adelson denies, of course, that his attempt to secretly buy Nevada’s largest newspaper at a cost substantially over its market value and then use it as a sort of house ad to enrich his Vegas hotel and entertainment empire carries any sinister connotations. If you want to believe that I know where you can buy a bridge.

With the “news business” now as fluid and in flux as it has been in generations, perhaps we should welcome guys with fat wallets bringing new resources to newsrooms, as Adelson claims he is doing in Las Vegas and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos clearly has done at the Washington Post. Still, put me down as a skeptic about the altruism of billionaires. As the New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg says, “billionaires do not become billionaires by being passive about their own interests.”

America has a rich history of rich guys owning newspapers – Hearst, Pulitzer and McCormick, to name just a few – and using their power to advance their interests and punish their foes, but this new trend of billionaires meddling in the media somehow seems more sinister and more dangerous, perhaps because it is happening at a time when so much of the media is financially weakened and vulnerable.

So this is America in the 21st Century. The Republican candidate for president calls for a crack down on a free press and wants to change libel laws, he routinely denies access to media organizations that offer critical (read factual) coverage of his nonsense and labels as “sleaze” reporters who dare ask legitimate questions. Meanwhile some of the pals of the Number One Media Critic in the country – fellow oligarchs all – use their unlimited money to intimidate and influence reporters, editors and news organizations. Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” doesn’t seem all that far fetched in 2016.

The rise of the American demagogue and the companion triumph of the fabulously wealthy has happened for many reasons, not least because there unfortunately exists an ill-informed or misinformed American public. It also doesn’t help that we have a political class that encourages a Sheldon Adelson and his favorite candidate.

It’s a leap of faith to believe that a bunch of self-obsessed billionaires owning their own newspapers is going to improve this dangerous reality. The old journalistic notion that the job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable has been turned on its head.

 

2016 Election, Arizona, Federal Budget, Film, Journalism, Trump

What I Got Wrong in 2015…

Posted on by christian

 

“Get ready for the “Bush Rebounds” stories. You heard it hear first.”

One of my less-than-perfect predictions from 2015

———

In the spirit of the late, great Washington Post political reporter and columnist David Broder, who annually devoted a year-end column to the mistakes, blunders and wrong-headed notions he consigned to print during the previous twelve months, I offer atonement. Or, as the old year passes, here is my “I really got that wrong” list.

Who wasn't wrong about Trump? Certainly not me.
Who wasn’t wrong about Trump? Certainly not me.

Trump – There is little year-end consolation in the fact that I was not alone in misreading, not understanding and failing to take seriously the Trump…whatever it is. Thousands of self-styled pundits missed the political rise of the orange haired billionaire. Lots of smart people made the same mistakes I made, the political equivalent of the generals fighting the last war and assuming that the rules of political warfare never change.

So, while I’m in good company, fairness demands that I acknowledge that back in the early summer I went so far as to opine of Trump that, “I still think he drops out before he really has to reveal more details about the web of financial deals and debt that undoubtedly define his business empire…” Boy, was that off the mark. Not only did he not drop out, he’s been leading the polls for months.

I redeemed myself (slightly) in the next part of that sentence by observing “but in the meantime Trump stirs things up and not in a helpful way for the more sane and sober Republican candidates.”

In July I was thinking that Trump would be a short-lived distraction, not unlike a really bad reality television show, and that soon enough the rules of politics would again take over. Now – I can’t believe I’m writing this – I’ve come to believe Trump has a reasonable chance of becoming the Republican candidate for president of the United States of America. Now, that is one prediction that I dearly hope will be WRONG.

Jeb! – I plead guilty to embracing the conventional wisdom that the former Florida governor would finally find his political sea legs and make a strong run for the GOP nomination. Never say never in this crazy political year, but that prediction is looking about as worn as last week’s tattered and torn Christmas wrapping paper.

Paul Ryan's beard surprised me, too
Paul Ryan’s beard surprised me, too.

Congress – I’m second to no one in my willingness to always expect the worst from our hyper-partisan, mostly do nothing Congress and those 535 helpless souls rarely disappoint. But…I didn’t see new House Speaker Paul Ryan stepping in an engineering a year-end budget deal that forecloses government shutdowns, etc. for an entire year. Congress, or at least Ryan, surprised me. Anyone remember John Boehner?

Hollywood – I have often allowed my cynicism about the movie glitz and gore factory get the better of me, but late this year I must admit I’ve been wrong. A slew of amazing and important motion pictures have reached the big screen in the last few weeks that (temporarily) renew my hope that Hollywood can produce real entertainment that is relevant, even profound. Films like Spotlight, The Big Short, Carol, Brooklyn, Bridge of Spies and Trumbo make this Hollywood cynic want to head for the ticket line. Tinsel town ended the year with a flourish.

What else? I didn’t see the Kansas City Royals winning the World Series. I thought the Washington Nationals might win. And I never see the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series – period. I hope I’m wrong on that one.

I didn’t think the Washington Redskins would still sport that controversial name at the end of 2015. I wonder if that team name can really last?

I thought Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was a better politician than he is turning out to be. Rahmbo’s tough guy bluster goes only so far when you have to actually try to govern and lead a city torn between the grievances of its minority community and deep-seated problems with its police culture. And what politician takes a holiday trip to Cuba while his town is in turmoil? I’m tempted to predict that Emanuel can’t last, but that may just be wishful thinking.

I didn’t see oil prices going this low. I guess it must be Obama’s fault.

I have long been dubious, cynical and concerned about the state of American journalism, particularly the continuing demise of newspapers, but I did not foresee the wonderful, even spectacular rise of high quality “long form” journalism and non-fiction writing. Some of the material being produced is phenomenal. If one only had all the time in the world to read it all.

And, finally I did not foresee the shocking level of xenophobia (thanks Trump) that seems to have overwhelmed a good segment of the population in 2015.

In a fine piece in The Atlantic Richard Yeleson reminds all of us that change in our system comes slowly – very slowly. Yeleson makes a compelling case that America in 2015, with the widespread disdain for those who seem to be “un-American,” is in many ways not unlike America in the 1920s when anti-immigrant furor spawned violations of civil liberties and hatred for the unwelcome of that era.

“Americans are still accusing each other of not being American,” Yeleson writes, “and are even debating who should have the right to call themselves Americans at all. Both the pluralist left and ethno-nationalist right have urged their adherents to ‘take back our country.’ The left wants to ‘return’ to a country that doesn’t yet exist except in the minds of its artists and activists, and in the rhetoric, but not the actions, of its venerated Founders. The right wants to ‘return’ to a country which is ever receding from its view, and will never quite again exist in the way it wishes that it might. Between that ‘doesn’t yet’ and ‘never quite again’ lies a struggle over which side will get to impose its understanding of what ‘America’ should mean upon America.”

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake lit a candle for hope.
Arizona Senator Jeff Flake lit a candle for hope.

So, while I can believe that the xenophobia is distressing and ultimately works against the nation’s true best interests, I can be surprised – and even wrong – not to see a recent action like that of Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake, a genuine conservative of the Mormon faith, as hopeful, compassionate, courageous and very American.

While the blowhard leading his party’s race for the White House was calling for a complete ban on Muslims entering the country and threatening to “shut down mosques,” earlier this month Senator Flake took his wife and sons to a prayer service at a mosque in the Phoenix area.

“It’s just the antithesis of all we stand for here in America, and the freedom of religion that we all embrace so much,” Flake said of Trump’s anti-Muslim proposal. “I don’t think that it reflects well on, certainly not on the Republican Party, it doesn’t reflect well on us as a country if this were to go.”

The senator talked softly and humbly about the religious persecution his faith has suffered and, at least for a moment, he renewed one cynic’s faith in the good that exists within all of us. One Muslim participant in the service said,”To have him here today was really just powerful, very powerful, especially someone from the Republican Party joining our congregation was just a phenomenal moment for us.”

I was wrong to not to look for and find the bright candle of hope and tolerance amid all the dark, harsh rhetoric. I am delighted to atone.

Happy New Year.

Catholic Church, Economy, Film, Journalism, Wall Street

Grab the Pitchforks

Posted on by christian

     “The CDO – collateralized debt obligation – was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold.”
― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

—–

If you are able to sit through a screening of Adam McKay’s outstanding new film The Big Short and not feel, as New York Times critic A.O. Scott says, like “going out to the garage to look for a pitchfork” in order to slay the villains, there is a good chance you are: 1) a partner at Goldman Sachs, 2) a Republican U.S. Senator who has been voting to dismantle the weak financial reforms put in place after the Great Recession, or 3) clueless.

Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, an eccentric fund manager who bet short in The Big Short
Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, an eccentric fund manager who bets short in the movie “The Big Short”

The Big Short, a wildly inventive and superbly acted film that is both comedy and tragedy, joins Spotlight, a morality tale, also superbly acted, in exploring the corruption inherent in absolute power.

Both films show us again that Hollywood, the very essence of America’s unceasing appetite for excess, can – at least once in a while – bring about the self-reflection that is distressingly missing among those wrapped in privilege and pampered by power and money.

Recent History…Already Being Forgotten

McKay’s film, based on the bestselling book by Michael Lewis, focuses on the years immediately before the Great Economic Meltdown of 2008 when a handful of investment “outsiders” detected the inevitable bursting of the housing bubble that ultimately brought the U.S. and world economy to its knees. These outsiders, seeing the interconnecting disaster of sub-prime mortgages, mortgaged backed securities, CDO’s, credit default swaps and billions and billions of dollars, decided to beat the rigged “system” where big banks, credit rating agencies and government regulators quietly (and in some cases ignorantly) allowed massive financial fraud to occur.

These outside guys bet “short,” made billions off the fraudulent system and then watched in disbelief as the high rolling Wall Street banking crowd walked away from the wreckage almost entirely unscathed. Others, of course, were not so fortunate. As the film points out a cool $5 trillion dollars was lost when the housing market finally crashed and took with it pension funds, life savings, 401K investments, and the jobs, homes and futures of people who deserved much better.

In the dying days of the George W. Bush Administration the American taxpayer stepped in and bailed out the banks, with the notable exception of Lehman Brothers. The bankers then used vast amounts of the bailout funds to reward themselves with huge bonuses. As the Times reported in 2009, “At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers.”

No harm, no foul, but in fact there were both. There has been virtually no prosecution of the clear fraud that occurred – only one relatively low level banker went to jail – while business quickly returned to normal in the canyons of finance in lower Manhattan. Oh, there were financial penalties for many of the guilty firms, but most were sufficiently small to qualify as “a cost of doing business,” even  when the business is built on fraud.

Actor Steve Carrell in "The Big Short"
Actor Steve Carell in “The Big Short”

In one of the most chilling scenes in a movie full of startling scenes we look on as one of the “short sellers,” played perfectly by Steve Carell, is quizzing one of the big bank managers about who he really represents as he packages and repackages the mostly worthless mortgages – he knows they are worthless – that he then peddles to his unsuspecting investors.

“Who do you work for,” Carell’s character demands to know. The bank guy smiles and says, “the investors.” That is, of course, the very definition of fraud.

Given our startling short attention span it is probably not surprising that most of the political and economic elite – Bernie Sanders excepted – have moved on from these events of less than a decade ago. Wall Street is busy devising new, esoteric investment devices, many barely regulated and even more minimally understood. Meanwhile, as though it all never happened, Hillary Clinton – and every Republican who can – goes to Wall Street for campaign cash, while promising to be tough on the same people who write the checks. The recently passed federal budget deal included, thanks to lobbying by the financial industry, a provision blocking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “from taking action on a long-discussed rule requiring publicly owned companies to disclose their political giving.”

Surely They Have Committed a Terrible Crime

As stunning as the lack of fraud prosecutions is the easy return to the status quo for Wall Street. One voice in the wilderness has been U.S. Federal Judge Jed Rakoff who has courageously and indigently refused to sanction several settlement agreements struck by the SEC with the bankers who caused the big collapse. Rakoff has written and spoken widely on the tepid regulatory and prosecutorial response to the Great Meltdown and singlehandedly has shamed regulators into insisting that some banks pay higher fines. But, the judge remains dismayed – as viewers of The Big Short certain will – that individuals who clearly committed fraud are still spending their weekends in the Hamptons.

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff
Federal Judge Jed Rakoff

“You have to be careful,” Rakoff told The Nation in 2014. “It’s easy to descend to scapegoating here. But to this very day, it concerns me that too many people in positions of authority do not realize how, even now, there are so many people suffering as a result of this financial crisis. There are millions of people out there who have lost their jobs, have no prospect of getting any good job, have exhausted their resources and are living lives of destitution and hopelessness. If there are people to blame, surely they have committed a terrible crime.”

Indeed. Go see The Big Short and next time you encounter an elected official who could have done more back then and could still do more now ask them if they are ready to explain the next big crash; the economic turmoil that surely will tumble forth again from the greed and corruption that is so deeply embedded in our financial system.

Spotlight on Corruption in the Catholic Church 

The other great Hollywood study in power and corruption this season is the real life journalism drama Spotlight,the story of the Boston Globe’s investigations that exposed the extent of the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese. The film is exceptional on several levels. It is the best thing Hollywood has every produced showing how journalism really works, but it resists glorifying the scruffy reporters who miss stories right in front of them, descend into numerous rabbit holes, but still doggedly pursue corruption in high places, in this case all the way to the top – Cardinal Bernard Law.

Poster for "Spotlight"
Poster for “Spotlight”

Tom McCarthy’s movie has generated much Oscar buzz despite or perhaps because, as Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers noted,”there’s not an ounce of Hollywood bullshit in it. Our eyes and ears are the Spotlight team, played by exceptional actors who could not be better or more fully committed.”

At the heart of the church’s ugly and widespread scandal is the sobering fact that so many knew for so long what was happening and still did nothing. Lawyers, priests, bishops, well-heeled Catholics who enjoyed being on a first name basis with the Cardinal simply chose to look away. Few, very few, attempted to confront the power and influence of the Catholic Church, an institution as big in Boston as the Red Sox.

Ultimately, it took a Boston outsider, a Jewish editor in a Irish-Catholic town, Marty Baron, now the executive editor of the Washington Post, to zero in on the obvious issue: where does the real corruption come from? At one point Baron’s reporters are ready to publish a story on abuses by a few priests, but he says no. The story is bigger than just the individuals involved, he thinks. They need to go work some more. Ultimately, this is a story of institutional corruption that goes all the way to the top and the Spotlight team got the story.

A Failure of Accountability

Spotlight also draws into sharp focus the genuine threat to a democratic system from the continuing disappearance of the kind of investigative and accountability reporting that made the Globe’s critical stories possible. Critic David Sims correctly says by not cheerleading the journalist’s efforts, but “by quietly celebrating the work of The Globe’s reporters, McCarthy makes a far more consequential argument for the value of smart reporting and robust local newspapers.”

Still one wonders in the era of “click bait” journalism, shrinking newsrooms and a constant re-definition of news whether in the not-too-distant future big, powerful, corrupt institutions will have little if anything to fear from their local newspaper.

Cardinal Bernard Law
Cardinal Bernard Law

Not unlike the guilty in the financial meltdown featured in The Big Short, Bernard Law mostly walked away from his fraud, the 550 victims of abuse in the Boston archdiocese and the $85 million the church paid to settle abuse claims.

The retired Cardinal was forced to step down in Boston, but now lives comfortably in a modern apartment “in a very nice building,” near the Vatican in Rome. Reporters tried to talk to Law when Spotlight was released, but he was not available to answer questions. He, unlike the victims he failed, seems to have moved on. Law will have to wait for his ultimate accountability, as he must surely know.

Both these stellar films are classic tales of corruption, greed and the corrosive effects of money and power, but perhaps what they most share is the spotlight they turn on our culture’s frequent failure to hold those responsible in such egregious cases truly accountable.

Both these films stop short of preaching and seem instead to suggest that all of us have moral choices to make about the frauds and failures in a society that too often has trouble separating the important from the trivial. If we are content to shrug off the latest outrage then can we ever hope that politicians and church leaders, regulators and bond rating agencies will do a better job exercising their responsibility?

When fraud committing bankers are allowed to walk away from the financial wreckage they created, pockets bulging with seven figure bonuses and when one of the high priests of the Catholic Church seamlessly moves on from what may be the worst failure of accountability in the modern history of the institution one is left to wonder only one thing: how bad will it be next time?

 

Afghanistan, John Kennedy, Johnson, Journalism, Uncategorized

First Draft

Posted on by christian

wicker_s160x162My closest personal connection to the events of this day 50 years ago were the few hours I spent more than 30 years ago with the reporter who literally wrote the first draft of history.

Tom Wicker was a southern liberal, born and educated in North Carolina and passionate about civil rights and civil liberties. He also early on developed the ability to write eloquent, piercing, streamlined prose and he just happened to be assigned to the Kennedy motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Wicker was 37 that day, a hardworking, but little known backbencher in the New York Times Washington bureau. It fell to him to write a story about an event that is still making news.

Wicker called the copy desk at the Times from a downtown Dallas pay phone – some of you may remember pay phones – and dictated his most famous story from notes scribbled on a copy of the official White House schedule for that fateful Friday. Every reporter wonders if they’ll be up to the task of describing a tragedy and a few find out. His voice breaking with emotion, Wicker dictated his lead:

Dallas, Nov. 22–President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin today.

Only twelve words in the first paragraph of Wicker’s story. In fact four of the first five graphs of Wicker’s story was but a sentence long. Here they are:

He died of a wound in the brain caused by a rifle bullet that was fired at him as he was riding through downtown Dallas in a motorcade.

Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was riding in the third car behind Mr. Kennedy’s, was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States 99 minutes after Mr. Kennedy’s death.

Mr. Johnson is 55 years old; Mr. Kennedy was 46.

Shortly after the assassination, Lee H. Oswald, who once defected to the Soviet Union and who has been active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, was arrested by the Dallas police. Tonight he was accused of the killing.

In those five, sparse paragraphs you really have the complete essence of what we remember from Dallas half a century ago. No word is out of place or unnecessary. With so much drama and tragedy and with so little time it would have been easy to overwrite, but Wicker didn’t succumb. That first draft of history from Dallas is simply a first-class piece of reporting created under the most awful and demanding circumstances.

Tom Wicker went on to become one of the most respected and important journalists of the post-war period. He covered presidents, and held them to a high standard, from Kennedy to Carter, wrote 20 books, went inside the prison at Attica, New York during a riot that eventually claimed 39 lives, and made Nixon’s “enemies list.” He never had a bigger story than his story 50 years ago today.

Wicker came to Idaho in the late 1970’s as a guest of the Idaho Press Club. I was an officer in the organization all those years ago, had a drink with him, talked shop, had him sign a couple of books and was too shy – or maybe too naive – to ask him about the Dallas story. Only later did I realize what a masterpiece he crafted on that awful day. With all we know about that day, with all the pictures and books, the conspiracy theories and the what-might-have-beens, Tom Wicker’s first draft remains hauntingly moving and overflowing with sadness. It is a timeless piece of writerly craftsmanship.

Wicker brilliantly chose to end his Dallas story with four paragraphs devoted to the speech John Kennedy was to have delivered, but never did on November 22:

The speech Mr. Kennedy never delivered at the Merchandise Mart luncheon contained a passage commenting on a recent preoccupation of his, and a subject of much interest in this city, where right-wing conservatism is the rule rather than the exception.

Voices are being heard in the land, he said, “voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness.”

The speech went on: “At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the greatest threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

“We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will ‘talk sense to the American people.’ But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.”

Afghanistan, Journalism

There is No Herald Tribune Today

Posted on by christian

ihtSome years ago we visited the land of big lakes in northern Italy. I had heard that George Clooney – the actor George Clooney recently seen hugging Katie Holmes in London – owned a smashing villa on the shores of Lake Como where he entertained his Hollywood friends. For some reason, even though we were in the area for several days, George neglected to invite us over for dinner. Or even cocktails. I would have gladly brought a bottle of the local wine.

So, no George on the trip to Varenna and Bellagio – the one on the big lake in Italy, not on The Strip in Nevada. I remember lovely Varenna most fondly, a little town perched rather precariously on a steep hillside above the frightfully beautiful lake. The lovely woman who ran one of the town’s small restaurants announced the menu of the day by saying simply, “we have meat and we have fish.” Perfect.

The first morning in Varenna I set off to find the European vacationing American connection to the New World – the International Herald Tribune. A small newsstand near our hotel turned out to be promising even as I entered with a certain trepidation, Italian not being my first language. The woman behind the counter waited patiently while I looked over the newspapers – La Monde, Corriere della Sera,  the Wall Street Journal and the jackpot the IHT.

I pointed in my best Italian at the Herald Tribune, smiled and put down what I was certain was enough money to pay for the paper. The clerk returned my smile, handled me the paper and, thankfully, a little change. I went away happy, as Ernest Hemingway and John dos Passos must have in their day, with the paper that would catch me up on the pennant races, give me a flavor of news from Washington and tell me of a gallery opening in Milan.

I’ve bought the IHT in Paris and London, Milan and Buenos Aires. I had one of the few truly enjoyable airplane rides of my life when I boarded a flight in Europe and the smiling flight attendant handed me that morning’s Herald Tribune. How very civilized. How very international.

The paper has been through its good times and bad since James Gordon Bennett started the paper in Paris in 1887. In the 1920’s it became the tip sheet for ex-patriots living in Europe and has always offered a take on the world as seen through the distinct lens of Americans living in Paris. Simon Tisdall, writing in The Guardian, remembers that the paper – then called the Herald – figured in Hemingway’s great novel The Sun Also Rises.  The “first thing the autobiographical hero, Jake Barnes, does on his return to France from Spain is buy the Herald,” Tisdall wrote, “and read it in a cafe with a glass of wine.” How civilized.

In their infinite wisdom the powers to be at the New York Times – they own what until today was the IHT – have re-christened the old girl The International New York Times. The Times brass says it is furthering  “the global brand” for the mother ship and I suspect there is marketing wisdom, if not great respect for tradition, in the new name. I’ll just need to get used to it, I guess, as I’ve gotten use to smaller and smaller print papers and shorter and shorter stories. This “old school” newspaper lover is trying to adapt to what the newspaper folks call their “digital platforms.” Give me ink on newsprint, thank you.

Maybe the best thing about the transition to the new name is that there has been respect for the features and style of the old IHT, including the columns that the great Art Buchwald wrote for many years. If you’re too young to know who Art Buchwald was then let’s just say I’m sorry for you. There is no one writing today quite like Buchwald. In April of 1956 he wrote his IHT column about covering the wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, he of Monaco not the Washington volcano. Think of that celebrity wedding as on par with Kate Middleton and that British bloke she married a while back.

After reporting that his seat at the ceremony, courtesy of the bride’s family due to his feud with the Prince’s family, offered the choice of sitting behind a post or behind ex-King Farouk, Art decided he could see more from behind the post.

Buchwald wrote: “At the palace reception, after the wedding, the bridegroom’s relatives and the bride’s relatives kept separated and eyed each other suspiciously. Most of us from the Kelly side, as we ate foie gras, lobster, chicken and wedding cake, decided our Grace was too good for their Rainier, and she was a girl in a million. We decided that America had given Europe many things in the past, but nothing comparable to this beautiful princess.”

Buchwald might have actually been at the Kelly-Rainier wedding since he knew everybody, but the beauty of his very funny pieces was it was often impossible to separate his fanciful imaginings from his eyewitness reporting. Most of the time the fanciful won out. Buchwald once wrote, as NPR reported, “you know, there are only three things worth seeing in the Louvre museum. That’s the Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. And the rest of the stuff is all junk.”

Art Buchwald was a treasure and the IHT was treasured because of his wonderful prose. He was also right about “our Grace.” She was a girl in a million…but that is another piece.

On my second morning in Varenna, still wondering why the less-than-gracious Clooney hadn’t called, I wandered down to my newsstand and after a few grunts in English and gestures in Italian I bought my Herald Tribune. Perfect. On the third morning, I repeated the ritual looking over the offerings and trying to spot the Herald Tribune among all the papers whose names I couldn’t pronounce let alone read. Finally after some moments of unsuccessful searching the woman behind the counter, who had always responded immediately to my graceless pointing, quietly said in perfect English – “There is no Herald Tribune today. Sorry.”

I smiled my Ugly American smile. She spoke English all along and I can almost hear her saying the same words this morning – There is no Herald Tribune today. I hope the International New York Times can somehow carry on the tradition. I’ll miss the quirky and beautiful International Herald Tribune, just as I miss the quirky Art Buchwald and the beautiful Grace.