The Leadership Style of Duck the Media

Official portrait of Spiro Agnew.

In Des Moines Iowa almost 50 years ago (Jesus, I just made myself feel really old), Vice President Spiro Agnew famously decried the news media as the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Well, he didn’t call journalists “enemies” of the American people, but we’ve seen a thread of political vitriol from the right spreading over the decades. It turns out rejecting “coast” culture and decrying the media snobs who look down on the “real” America is a winning brand.

Agnew was a crook who worked for a crook, and both he and his boss Richard Nixon left office in disgrace. But Nixon was an evil political genius, and many of the strategies he unleashed during the turbulent late 1960s have become embedded in American political fabric. The GOP as a party of the White South? See Nixon. The “mainstream media” as a distrusted punching bag? See Nixon.

And now we are in the fragile election year of 2018, waiting to see how potent the poison in the well has become. We have an ignorant, misogynist, narcissistic president who is pumped up and rallying the boob troops. True, it’s too easy to underestimate Trump—he does have some entertainment instincts that seem to serve him eerily too well in American politics, where government seems to becoming show biz.

In the run up to the election, Trump is ratcheting up his delusional, politically charged lies. See this PBS interview with a media fact checker.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Gage Skidmore. Donald Trump in happier times--2011. He wasn't yet the liar-in-chief.

Trump says crazy stuff: Democrats are a liberal “mob.” A caravan of migrants is full of “bad people” were probably funded by Democrats. This self-described nationalist (the reason, sir, that you’re not supposed to use that word is because in politics it is the philosophy espoused by facists) lies, lies and lies some more. Because it works for him. His base doesn’t care—they just like the message.

And most of all they like to see those enemies in the media squirm.

The tragedy, to me, is not that it’s unfair to accuse the American media of bias. There are all kinds of bias built into our media system that should be recognized. But to term journalists as enemies of the people is breathtakingly ahistorical. We have a First Amendment that protects the press because our founding political philosophers understood that, perfect or not, independent purveyors of information were vital for democracy to maintain itself.

I don’t think Trump cares about democracy. He is way too chummy with authoritarians, and makes too many wild assertions to be taken seriously as a man who wants to lead or convince or persuade. He’s a bully with a bully’s worst instincts—and he loves leading a bully mob.

Anyway, the deterioration of respect for sellers of information has led Republicans down to the local level to shun media. I read a post on Facebook by a local state representative, Ashley Hinson, who was calling on this local newspaper to publish an op/ed written by her leader, the Republican speaker of the House of Iowa. But Representative Hinson herself is part of an awful trend. In 2012, running for the U.S. Senate, then candidate Joni Ernst eschewed meetings with major Iowa newspaper editorial boards.

Hinson herself did the same with the Gazette this year, and she is not alone. I’m sure she has an explanation for her decison, and I’m also sure I don’t want to hear it. Because whatever it is, as a former TV anchor she should know it's BS. Shame on her. Shame on Senator Ernst. Shame on Republicans who shun editorial boards in general. It’s fair to be critical of the media—but to refuse to sit down with working journalists and discuss issues with them is to disrespect the role that the press serves in our democracy.

The Gazette was right to complain about the trend. See their editorial.

Vice President Agnew had a bit of a point, even if he was a crook. In his time, print media were more conservative than today—his main complaints were about network television, which then was way more powerful than now in shaping public discourse. As a media professor, I think the spreading of outlets, the ability of anybody to publish anything (including this blog) can have positive impacts. Voices that were silent can be heard. Diverse points of view are readily available.

But the rallying cry of “fake news” that Agnew’s remarks eventually unleashed have reached a dangerous fever pitch.

And the right has won the war against news, in many ways. Mainstream media is in retreat.

But, what’s left in its place? Fox “News,” Russian trolls, Brietbart? It’s a vapid swamp of delusion and misinformation. Sort of like any political speech theses days by that national embarrassment, the liar-in-chief, Donald Trump.

The Darkness at our Door

Saw this today in a restroom at the university where I teach. It makes me think of what we are without journalism--earless, eyeless, brainless. And we're getting too close to that point.

The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Democracy is not dead in the U.S. yet, but I feel the fever is getting serious. Too much has happened recently that points to the rising darkness.

President Trump joked this week at a political rally in Montana about Rep. Greg Gianforte, who pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge for attacking a reporter for The Guardian during a previous election campaign. Trump has called journalists enemies, but making a joke of an assault in the same news cycles dominated by the murder of a Washington Post columnist is beyond being obnoxious or thoughtless, Trump’s usual base level of discourse.

It’s dangerous.

Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey, two weeks ago. President Trump has finally started to admit he is dead, although he has been full of inconsistent conspiracy theories to explain it away in some politically convenient fashion. As is so often the case, our addled president awaits enlightenment from the darkest corners of Fox News before he, standing at the levers of power of the American government, can make nonsense of events.

I was not familiar with Khashoggi’s work, but he was an American journalist. True, not a citizen, but a legal resident of the United States working for The Washington Post. And he was killed for it.

It’s not the only sign of journalism’s decline in what increasingly seems like a noisy Dark Age. This is fall break at the university where I teach, and my wife and I took a couple of days off to travel to central Missouri to ride on the Katy Trail. While there, I stopped in the town where I had been a newspaper editor 30 years ago, and purchased a copy of the paper.

A not-local paper. Sad.

I almost wish I had not. The “local” paper was hardly local at all.

The sorry state of local journalism is a tragedy in this country. We are slowly closing our minds to the role that a town conscious can fulfill. And we are becoming too frighteningly like those countries in other parts of the world where the press is dull, official, and irrelevant.

Jamal Khashoggi had his last column published by The Washington Post. In it, he wrote eloquently of the Arab world’s need for a free press:

“The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.”

Erase the word “Arab.” In this now great again country, we suffer from poverty of mind, mismanagement by our top leader and poor education in small towns where local events are no longer covered by local journalists.

Jamal thought he was writing about Saudi Arabia. His words come too close to describing America today.

President Trump makes jokes about assaulting journalists, who he terms as “enemies.” And his fans, betraying their ignorance, cheer.

The enemy is those who enjoy siloed lives, isolated form the world as it is. I hope darkness is not closing in too much, although I find myself more filled with dread as the mid-term election approaches and the Trump base is fired up for all the wrong reasons.

I hope voters decide to turn the lights on.

Hope to See You at A Sustainability Event

Mount Mercy University has announced its Fall Faculty Series for 2018, and posted its list of events on the MMU web site..

It’s a bit smaller than some past series, with just seven faculty or staff presentations listed. That may be a good thing—an issue in previous series (which I coordinated in 2014, 2015 and 2016) was the tendency for the list of events to grow and grow. Maybe having fewer events will make each stand out a bit more—I hope so, anyway.

The series begins soon, on Aug. 29, with an overview by Dr. Joy Ochs, an English professor who now coordinates the series, and who has been very active in environmental issues. She was important in MMU obtaining a large grant that funds a more robust sustainability effort on campus. For a full list of events in this fall’s series, click here.

“Sustainability” is a key issue—maybe more now then ever. Not only does the Earth continue to heat due to human emitted gasses, but our current political leadership seems determined to exacerbate environmental problems as much as possible.

Anyway, one aspect of the issue is that big environmental controversies are not always covered well by media. Partly that’s because it’s not easy for a non-scientific journalist to understand and translate science. Scientists themselves are not always good at stepping out of the lab and communicating with the public.

As for the news media: Big science involves long-term trends that don’t always translate into daily dramas the way an Omarosa book does. And scientific concepts are sometimes resisted by the public and journalists (the newspaper that the Franklins ran in Boston early in the 18th century, for example, campaigned against smallpox vaccinations—the first health advice given in early American media was totally against science).

I’ll be exploring the interesting and twisted history of media coverage of global warming on Oct. 11 in a presentation called “Hot Story: How the Media Struggles to Cover Climate Change.”

There are many other interesting presentations planned. The fall series is one of my favorite things at MMU—it’s a chance for faculty to engage with students they don’t normally see, as well as to bring in any members of the public who are interested in a topic. Each series leads, I hope, to big conversations on important topics.

And this year’s topic is about as big and important as it can get. I hope to see you at some of these faculty forums!

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.

What Is Missing in Trump’s Prayers

From Facebook, image on CNN posted by Dennis Stouse: Victims of Maryland shooting.

On Facebook, I saw a former student post a meme from “Occupy Democrats” that stated “President Trump has blood on his hands.” I reposted it, because I liked what the former student had written, but sadly just got the meme.

For the record, I think that meme goes too far. I don’t think President Trump is to blame for the tragedy in Maryland. But I don’t think he’s innocent, either.

Starting in his campaign, our current president has carried on a Republican tradition of using news media as a punching bag. It’s useful to note that was also the approach of President Nixon, who initiated so many political strategies that have both benefited the modern Republican party and hurt our democracy—the new southern strategy, the crude emphasis on “law and order,” the win-at-all-costs ethos that isn’t unique to Nixon among politicians, but that certainly in his case went a few evil and illegal steps too far.

And, just as global warming doesn’t cause every hurricane, President Trump doesn’t cause all acts of violence against journalists. Then again, hurricanes are more powerful and more numerous due to climate change—so it’s not an error to think that action to mitigate global warming might be a good idea in the aftermath of a hurricane (or, honestly, why wait—in the before math, too).

So it is with Trump. His hectoring of journalists at weird Trump campaign-style rallies, his penning them in and singling them out, his insistence on lies and calling media “fake” because they don’t accept his clearly non-factual statements—the drumbeat of “they are the enemies” is bound to have an impact.

That impact is not direct to the Maryland shootings, I’ll accept that. But I also just read Katy Tur’s book on the 2016 campaign. The level of hostility towards reporters encouraged by The Donald is horrifying to read about.

March 14, 2016 cartoon by Gary Varnel of The Indianapolis Star. From editorialcartoonists.com, the web site of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists Sadly, still true today.

The front page of the Capital Gazette today was tragic to see. Go to their web site for profiles of Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. They were members of a shrinking class in America—most were professional writers toiling to bring the best version of truth that they could obtain to their readers.

Image from Newseum.org.

They weren’t fake. They weren’t enemies of the American people. They should not have been targets of anybody’s wrath.

I do feel a heavy heart today. Talented, bright people who labored in service of others—that’s what most newspaper journalists do—were gunned down. The tribe has lost some talented souls.

No, President Trump is not directly to blame. But his responses have been tepid and timid. He tweeted “thoughts and prayers,” which seems like political code for “I don’t take any responsibility and wont’ take any action,” and thanked the first responders. Well, OK—thank you first responders. But there was no recognition of the victims as journalists. And he ignored reporters’ requests for comment during a walk-by photo op.

Of all people, Sarah Huckabee Sanders did better. She tweeted that a “violent attack on innocent journalists doing their job is an attack on every American.” Sarah, can you talk to your boss about that?

Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, also did better. His tweet about the shooting was: “Journalists tell the stories of our communities, protect democracy & often put their lives on the line to do their jobs.”

It would have been nice to have our president echo ideas like those. But his anti-media bias is too deep, and I can draw only one conclusion.

The great enemy of the American people and of democracy? His name is Donald.

The Unexpected Longevity of The Beatles

CBS image, downloaded from The Daily Mail, James Corden reacts to singing "Let it Be" with Sir Paul McCartney.

I don’t usually watch TV that late at night, but I was downloading and editing pictures last Thursday, and at 11:30 happened to have the TV tuned to “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”

As you probably know, he does an amusing segment called “Carpool Karaoke.” I happened to catch the 45th installment of that segment, which was his ride with Sir Paul McCartney.

Well, that segment generated a lot of buzz, and it was pretty delightful to watch. At one point, Corden choked up during the song “Let it Be,” which McCartney said was inspired by a dream visit from his dead mother.

Corden said his father and grandfather had played the song for him, telling him it was the best song ever recorded. “I wish my granddad were here now,” he said.

“He is,” McCartney replied.



The segment made me think of how enduring the Beatles music has become. McCartney himself said the band never expected their pop music to be popular for more than 10 years, and here we are, generations later, still choking up to sounds of “Let it Be.”

At some point, my own children discovered The Beatles. My youngest son blames “Yellow Submarine” because we had a VHS tape of the movie and it was one that they watched repeatedly when growing up. Songs like “Yellow Submarine” and others, such as “Octopus’s Garden,” have a particular appeal to young children, my son noted.

I suppose he has a point. But my own children, in their teen or young adult years, learned to appreciate other Beatles music, too.

The White Album endures.

Anyway, it’s not just my children’s generation. I have a 2-year-old grandson who is at the age where he is learning simple songs that he loves to have repeated. The alphabet song is a favorite, as is “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” We re-worked the lyrics to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” to feature his name, and on a car trips he often likes to hear that song.

But when he sings to himself, what comes out of his mouth are often Lennon-McCartney tunes. Three of his favorites are “Dear Prudence,” “Yellow Submarine” and “All Together Now.”

I graduated from high school in 1976, and I recall taking a fine arts class my senior year where one of the three teachers—it was taught by a trio including an English teacher, art teacher and music teacher—asserted that we were silly to be listening to an English band that had broken up a half decade before.

“Nobody will be studying The Beatles in 50 years,” he said. I had just purchased my first stereo and was starting to build a small record collection—featuring, among others, numerous albums by the fab four.

I very much disagreed with the teacher’s remarks and resented them. Although, in his defense, even Sir Paul didn’t think the music would endure beyond a decade.

It’s 2018 now. The 1960s and its music was long ago. Among the soundtrack that endures from that time, nothing matches The Beatles. It’s probably not the best music or most complex or most deeply meaningful. I think one reason that the sound of that band still resonates is that they came on the scene as popular music evolved from frothy pop rock and roll to other, deeper themes and sounds. And the Beatles catalog features such diverse songs as “She Loves You” to “In My Life.”

McCartney was wistful on the TV as he contemplated the long, strange journey the band its music has been on. I’m not a music expert, but I am pleased to have lived long enough to realize my high school music teacher was mistaken on this point--that five decades after they were first popular, plenty of people still care about and talk about The Beatles.

And it’s wonderful to hear “All Together Now” in the light, fun voice of a 2-year-old newly minted Beatles fan.

Videos of my grandson’s favorite Beatles songs, for your listening pleasure now and in future years:

MMU Student Publishes Story in The Gazette

Image from The Gazette's web site--taken by Madelyn Orton MMU student, who wrote a feature about women who coach college men and high school boys. Shown is Hudson boys’ soccer coach Sue Rink during a Friday night game.

It was especially nice to see the Sunday Gazette this morning, due to the sports section.

This feature story, the visual anchor of the front page of the sports section, was a project a Mount Mercy University student did in an MMU journalism class.

Madelyn Orton is identified as a junior by The Gazette, which is true since her sophomore year has just ended, but basically, she did this project as a sophomore.

For a class I was teaching, Madelyn came up with the idea of a feature story on women who teach men’s sports. She did a lot of research to identify such coaches in Iowa, including contacting the state’s high school athletic association and prowling college web sites. She also pitched the story idea off campus.

JR Ogden, sports editor of The Gazette, liked the idea and agreed to meet with Madelyn to help her plan the reporting.

Madelyn spoke with the coaches, tracked her contacts on a spreadsheet, asked for images and even drove to a high school soccer game to make her own image to go with the story.

And the results were on the front page of the sports section today. It was a nicely done story, and I’m thrilled that The Gazette was interested in it. Congratulations, Madelyn, and if you get The Gazette and can spare your copy of today's sports section, please let me know.