To President Trump from the Son of a Photojournalist

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.