I have had enough of Donald Trump’s attacks on American
journalists. Labeling members of the
press as enemies of the people is simply unacceptable and false. Journalists
are heroes. I should know, my father was a photojournalist. Many of our friends
are journalists. Many of my relatives are journalists. For those of us close to people in the
business, the President’s claims of fake news regarding well-established
legitimate news organizations is head-scratchingly absurd. At first, I thought
that this would just pass. I thought that the American people would push back
against this crazy talk. I thought that people would not trust the words of a
man who states that The National Enquirer has credibility.
Donald Trump disparages real newspapers across this country
daily. He treats the reporters with contempt publicly. My father worked his
whole life as a news photographer. Our
city had two newspapers with large regional readerships. The Charlotte Observer was the morning
newspaper. The Charlotte News was the afternoon paper. Most people that I knew
growing up subscribed to both papers. Here is the important piece that I
believe confuses people about journalism these days. Each of these papers had a
news department. Both had an editorial department. The Charlotte Observer
tended to be editorially liberal. The Charlotte news tended to be editorially
conservative. However, both papers ran their newsrooms independent of the
editorial department. News coverage is not biased, unless you are the party
that the news reflects poorly on.
Here is how I know that the editorial bias of the opinion
pages did not influence other departments. My father shot pictures for the bulk
of his career for The Charlotte News.
About ten years before his retirement, afternoon newspapers across the country
started going out of business. They were losing subscriptions to people who
preferred to watch the evening news on television. It was very difficult for a
newspaper to scoop a live TV broadcast, so the news that they were putting out
seemed a step behind. As other afternoon papers across the
country shut down, so did The Charlotte News. Fortunately, for Dad, the
Charlotte Observer was hiring. Without missing a beat, he immediately continued
pursuing assignments for what had been, historically, the rival newspaper.
Here is the truth. Nothing changed in my father’s approach
to the job. He followed his assignments just as he had for the formerly “conservative”
paper. He “enterprised”, looking for great feature shots, just as he always
had. Many reporters made the switch to
The Observer newsroom as well. They did not suddenly start looking for the
liberal bent on a story. They covered the news. They investigated and exposed,
just as they always had. Journalists show us the truth. These papers won Pulitzers
for exposing the fraud being committed by The PTL club, a religious organization
that was building a theme park and overselling timeshares in its luxury condo
building. They exposed the terrible medical phenomena known
as “Black Lung” that was killing coal miners. They covered the organized crime
being committed by the local chapters of The Hells Angels and The Outlaws
motorcycle gangs. They did these things and exposed themselves to great risk.
Truth telling is a dangerous job.
As I think about it now, I can’t remember which paper was
responsible for the investigative work on these stories I mentioned above. They
were not liberal or conservative stories. They were factual. And facts are
important. I’m afraid that our current President does not believe in fact based
journalism. My guess is that the facts are not on his side.
Let us all be thankful for the men and women who dedicate
their lives to journalism. They are the protectors of our democracy.
