Saying Goodbye to ‘Reliable Sources’

From CNN.com, logo of "Reliable Sources," last episode was today, Aug. 21, 2022.

So, today was the final show, after 30 years, of CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Ratings were not always great for this show, and CNN informed host Brian Stelter this week that it was ending the program with today’s episode.

I’ll miss it. Stelter showed class in the final show, ending it by thanking the boss who had fired him, noting that it’s rare for a news program to get a final episode to say goodbye. And he expressed hope that CNN would continue to push its news coverage.

“The free world needs a reliable source,” Stelter said of CNN.

CNN has new owners, and the corporation is shaking things up. One thrust of those changes is to try to emphasize straight news coverage, which is OK, but “Reliable Sources” was useful as a look at the media world. It wasn’t an “infotainment” show of just opinion commentary. While Stelter often made his own comments, at is heart, the show was an interview program and panel discussion about the media.

CNN image used on YouTube clip of Brian Stelter's final show.

Some of those guests, and Stelter, made key points during the final show:

It’s not a coincidence that democracy is on decline at the same time that independent news media is on the decline. “The pendulum swinging against democracy all over the world,” Carl Bernstein said. He noted that he and Bob Woodward, who 50 years ago uncovered the Watergate scandal as reporters for The Washington Post, understood that their job was to report “the best obtainable version of the truth.”

But, what truth? Journalists are not stenographers—using sound news judgement to frame events in context is also a key to what journalists need to do. As David Zurawick, a CNN analyst formerly with the Baltimore Sun noted, the current call to report “just the facts” ignores the reality that facts need context—that the body politic needs what he called “explanatory journalism,” such as the many times Carl Bernstein was able to compare action by former President Donald Trump to actions by Richard Nixon.

Zurawick also noted that, in the 30 years that "Reliable Sources" was on the air, local newspapers and local TV news have been on the decline.

Part of that decline is fueled by ownership changes—there always was an elitism problem in American journalism where it was typically rich families that owned media companies, but at least those families had some sense of responsibility that hedge funds lack.

Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg said that owning a media outlet is “not like owning a chicken restaurant or whatever. You have to be willing to stand up to authority.”

I agree. It’s good that in this social media era, rich owners can’t control the information anymore but it leaves media chasing the eyeballs at the expense of any sense of mission. And the impulse to report “straight” news can be a positive one, although the danger now seems to be a false equivalency where facts and nonsense are reported as equals.

Jodie Ginsberg, president of the Committee to Project Journalists noted that a true journalist doesn’t ask if it’s raining, they go outside to feel the rain. These days it’s harder to agree on “the importance of facts, the importance of agreeing on some fundamental, important information.”

“When those in power denigrate journalism, journalists become fair game,” she said.

The panelists and guests on the final episode, not all of whom I quote here, were insightful and interesting. It impressed me that, although lots of media and news trends are dark, the tone of the show was nonetheless hopeful.

And Stelter ended on a positive note. It was a classy way to go out. The CNN "Reliable Sources" newsletter continues for now, which is nice, but it’s still a sad day when a show that provided valuable context on the media stories of the week is suddenly gone.

Rating “The Anthropocene Reviewed” by John Green

There is a lot to like in a new book by novelist and vlogger John Green. His newest work is not a novel, but a collection of nonfiction essays, some of which appeared in a podcast that has the same title as the book: “The Anthropocene Reviewed.” (The Anthropocene is an idea of a geological age named due to the way in which our species has reshaped the environment of our home planet.)

There are also some things to not like. I don’t always agree with him, and dislike a few of his reviews. He manages to extract meaning from an opening sequence of “Penguins of Madagascar,” which is cute of him to do, but I worry it might lead some innocent soul to experience that movie—and, please, don’t. It’s a horrible movie, more horrible because it successfully appeals to the lack of aesthetic sense of the young via flashy action, simple gags and silly characters. A bad movie made all the worse by being part of a trend of contemporary movies that make the meaningless artful as a way of thoughtlessly entertaining us, especially children. Do yourself a favor. Pick any Pixar movie for your kids instead.

In defense of John Green, I will agree that a point of his in this essay—that we, humans, make consequential decisions for other species—is important, and one of the many compelling factoids in this entertaining set of essays that comes from this review is that lemmings never commit suicide by casting themselves into the sea.

We choose to believe many things that just aren’t so.

As a journalism professor, I also think John is too hard on CNN—although I agree with his premise that a huge problem with news media is the lack of context in most news. I also concur that long-term, important trends are under-reported because they don’t cause unusual day-to-day events. My issue with his point is that I don’t think CNN is central to these trends—those tendencies existed before that cable TV network and are exacerbated today by social media. Lack of grounding in context has been a problem with American journalism since colonial times, although the problem is getting worse. CNN is not innocent in this, I just don’t it’s as guilty as Green implies.

In my kitchen, a monarch butterfly has emerged. My wife and I adopted a caterpillar in a program run by a local nature center, and we successfully raised this one to butterfly stage (not much to it, it was large when we got it and formed its chrysalis the next day). We are leaving on a trip and will have to have our daughter release it after its wings dry, so I have not seen the other side of its wings to confirm its biological sex. But I see no evidence of scent spots that males have. We named our caterpillar Anderson Pooper. After the CNN anchor. Turns out it may be Andrea.

Still, agreeing with his opinions or disagreeing with them is not really central to enjoying this book. In many ways, I like reading an essay that I don’t completely agree with—it causes lots of thoughts in me, which is pleasant to experience.

And good writing should encourage the reader to think—full credit for that, John Green.

A daughter got me this book for Fathers Day. It's cool that John Green signed thousands of sheets of paper so that each copy of the book has his actual signature in it. I don't think he doodled a cat, however--I think that image may be courtesy of a 5-year-old grandson who has a cat. Or his mother. Cool, either way--I am happy to have a book signed by John and decorated by family.

Beyond the nits I can pick, the book, overall, is excellent. Green has a pleasing, repetitive structure to many essays. He’ll open either with a personal anecdote or a seemingly unrelated tidbit, ruminate on it for a page, and then the main idea or thing that this essay reviews enters the stage, with Green sharing what he likes or does not like using the opening tidbit as narrative glue or for comparison. Each essay ends on the titular topic of the essay being rated on a 5-point scale.

He also writes about how artificial, how human, the 5-point rating scale is, which is part of the fun. He’s rating the works of humankind on a contrived, human scale. We live in a universe that our complex mammal brains give us the ability to reshape and tell stories about and make sense and nonsense of.

I’m listening to “The Mountain Goats” as I write this, a band I have never tuned into before. I don’t know that they’ll be a favorite of mine as they are of John’s—so much in musical taste depends on your age when you encounter that music—but I can hear his point. It’s good music.

It’s also media consumption that feels more useful than both CNN and “Penguins of Madagascar.”

To me, the book is all about the duality of humanity. We are a global species and we are doing a lot of damage to this Earth—and yet, we have the capacity for shared endeavor and understanding that maybe leaves some room for hope that we can learn to shape that impact in a less disastrous way.

One of my favorite essays is early in the book: “Humanity’s Temporal Range.” Temporal range refers to how long a species has been that species (or will be that species). We are, as humans, much younger than many types of life whose existence we have ended. The dodo was far more ancient than us. Elephants, whose long existence we now threaten, have been modern elephants for approximately 10 times longer than we have been modern humans—homo sapiens have had their hands on this planet for something on the order of 250,000 years, compared with the African elephant, lumbering along for more than 2 million years.

And one reason for us to think about the future of the elephant is that we are part of a complex web of life that we ignore at our peril.

As John puts it: “We probably didn’t know what we were doing thousands of years ago when we hunted some large mammals to extinction. But we know what we’re doing now. We know how to tread more lightly upon the earth. We could choose to use less energy, eat less meat, clear fewer forests. And we chose not to. As a result, for many forms of life, humanity is the apocalypse.”

A profound point, even if the editor in me want to remind John that the name of our planet—Earth—is a proper noun. Maybe he means we are treading upon dirt—earth—but I think the sense of the noun in his sentence refers not to soil, but to our planetary home.

Consider another nit picked.

“The Anthropocene Reviewed” is a book of our time. It is written during the pandemic, which is one of the points. Such a pandemic has long been foreseen, and inevitably, like the next flood, will occur again because of human action and inaction.

So, it would be easy to despair at the state of humans. Indeed, in many personal essays, John Green deals with his own mental health struggles, living with the black force of meaninglessness.

However, he does not despair, and neither do I. His brother provides scant comfort for him in an essay about the pandemic by noting “the species will survive this.” Well, yes, but I would like to survive it, along with all who I love and even some who I don’t love, too. As Green notes, diseases that wipe out many humans are not unprecedented, they are very precedented, and what matters is our response.

Some of the essays concern nature, and how we are not separate from it, but part of it. “Sycamore Trees” are reviewed, and like Green, I am occasionally comforted by gardening and by nature. It’s good to gaze in awe at the trees.

As he puts it: “I’m just looking up at that tree, thinking about how it turned air and water and sunshine into wood and bark and leaves, and I realize that I am in the vast, dark shade of this immense tree. I feel the solace of that shade, the relief it provides. And that’s the point.”

It is.

Morning glory bud Monday in my backyard. It will be a pretty blue flower on Tuesday, gone on Wednesday. Life is temporary but beautiful. It's good to be in awe of it.

I don’t think it’s giving too much away, that it’s too much of a spoiler, to quote the end of this flawed but marvelous book, because it encapsulates John Green's message well, and also the words will resonate more when you experience the journey that brings to you to them. We are connected to each other as humans and to the planet that spawned us. We are not entities on Earth, but part of Earth that has become conscious of being part of Earth. We are Earth experiencing Earth.

“I won’t survive, of course. I will, sooner or later, be the everything that is part of everything else. But until then: What an astonishment to breath on this breathing planet. What a blessing to be Earth loving Earth.”

With a capital E.

I give “The Anthropocene Reviewed” five stars.

The Newest Attack on the Fourth Estate

Newsprint—it’s the news media’s Achilles heel.

President Trump has called mainstream news media “enemies of the American people,” a rather startling escalation from “fake news” by an irresponsible national leader. It’s language that echoes sentiments of dictators and totalitarians, rather than a responsible U.S. President.

But I don’t think many intelligent adults would consider Trump to be a “responsible U.S. President.”

Earlier this month, in the wake of another Trump attack on the media, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to say the press isn’t the enemy. “It’s ironic Jim, that you attack the President,” she shot back. And she listed a litany complains, noting she is the “first press secretary to require Secret Service protection.”

Well, that’s terrible. But Sanders doesn’t own any of her own part in creating the divisive discourse that tears at the fabric of our democracy and makes it seem impossible these days to have a civil discussion of real issues. And she never acknowledges the bedrock principle that Acosta asked her about: The press is listed as being free in our First Amendment because a free press is a necessary ingredient for a self-governing body politic to function well.

And we, that body politic, are growing less functional, partly due to the current horrible administration that keeps scooping sand into the grease of the gears of our government.

Still, it’s not news that Donald J. Trump, an immature narcissist, only likes sycophantic media attention. And Sanders is a spokesperson for Trump. Her job is to preach his message, no matter how bad or wrongheaded that message is.

And Trump’s message, on this point, is authoritarian. It steps over the line of endangering an already endangered species—the few journalists that remain active in this country, nowadays. Those reporters work with targets on their backs placed there by an unashamedly shameful President Trump.

Yeah, as a journalism professor, former reporter and media writer, I’m bitter about the horribleness of Donald J. Trump and his minions and his alternative media universe. But I think I have rational grounds for that bitterness.

Remember how President Trump as a candidate mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability? I’m sorry, Sarah Sanders, that you feel you’ve been personally attacked. But look at the conduct of your boss and tell me he’s not setting a low tone for public discourse.

Image of early press in Oregon from Wikimedia Commons.

And Trump’s war on the press includes an important recent jab. The free press in this country grew historically with loads of indirect government support. Newspapers used to be sidelines of print shops that sprang up in county seats as the country grew, partly to handle government printing. The U.S. Postal Service, the internet of the early Republic, offered very favorable rates that allowed newspapers to circulate and exchange information easily.

Of course, the press-government relationship can be too cozy, and a free press needs to guard its own independence. I recall once on the final day of the legislative session in Missouri, excitedly entering the tiny office of the newspaper Capitol bureau in Jefferson City and telling my editor that “they are offering free hot dogs in the halls.”

My editor fixed me with a dour stare. “I. Do. Not. Eat. With. Those. People,” he informed me.

Well, from his physical appearance, I’m not sure he ate anywhere—he was a wiry old codger who seemed to subsist on caffeine and nicotine (It was the ‘80s, a world that has long passed away). (Note that I'm attacking the physical appearance of a person who I respect and who I agree with—for effect, by the way. Sarah, if you are reading, that's an attack on physical appearance--you burning lies for a perfect smokey eye isn't the same.) But I mostly remember his point. He didn’t say I couldn’t have a hot dog if I wanted (and truth be told I’ve never let my sense of professional ethics stand in the way of free food), but I admired his spirit.

And his idea. Be independent of your sources. Don’t get too chummy. You are you and they are they and you both need to understand your often-adversarial roles. But I didn’t hate the Missouri politicians that I wrote about, and I don’t think they hated me.

I don’t trust politicians, yet I still have respect for them. Their motives aren’t pure and they bear watching (which is what a press is for), but they are also, most of them, motivated by a sense of mission and public service.

Government is messy, sometimes corrupt and often inefficient, but since we try to be governed by “we the people,” we can’t point our finger at “them” without some fingers pointing back at us. Or as Pogo put it: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Anyway, one of President Trumps recent initiatives is to instigate trade wars as a bargaining ploy for better trade deals. I am not an economist, and despite my trepidation at what seems to be a wrong-headed policy, I’ll conceded it’s possible he’s playing some international game of chess that may help equalized past inequities in trade. Frankly, I doubt it, but it’s something that I can strain to imagine.

However, his targets are often odd. Canada? We have an intertwined economy with our friendly frozen neighbors to the north, and we can’t hurt them without hurting us, too. And one product in particular that’s caught up in the this tariff tiff is newsprint, the price of which is expected to rise 30 percent due to Trump’s import tariffs.

This comes at a time when newspapers are already in a steep decline as a part of the overall news media system. Trump didn’t cause that decline, but he’s kicking a part of the historic media system when it’s down.

Making the Trump paper tariffs go away won’t revive the newspaper business. It’s likely the New York Daily News would be letting go of half its news staff anyway. But Trump's trade policies are yet another blow to an ailing free press, another hit on his “enemies.”

And democracy in American is less healthy as a result.

Sarah Sanders, if it were up to me, you would not need the Secret Service to protect you. But don’t blame the “enemy press” for your personal safety issues—you are caught up in a firestorm that your own boss keeps pouring gasoline on. As I’ve said before, the current biggest enemy of the American people isn’t the press that brings them the bad news of the day.

It’s the incompetent president who keeps generating more bad news—and is now making that news more expensive to print.