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.

Is Melania's Jacket Important?

Is Melania’s jacket important?

In case you have been on a desert island, let me explain. Melania Trump, broke with protocol and left the White House yesterday. The rarely seen first lady apparently decided that she needed to get out. She needed some fresh air. But what does a reclusive former soft porn star do when she gets bored hanging out at The White House?  Well, she could go visit those poor immigrant kids that Donald keeps whining about. Donald has been sulking around saying that no one will pay attention to his great accomplishments because of those sobbing child actors down at the border. So, Melania decides that she will just hop on down to Texas and get this issue fixed, so that Donald can get back to complaining about Mueller and praising ruthless dictators. That’s the Donald she loves.

As a former (ahem…cough,cough) fashion model, Melania must make sure that she picks just the right outfit for the day’s outing. If only Michelle Obama had worn clothes with words emblazoned on them so that she could just plagiarize her wardrobe.  But alas, she can’t just keep stealing ideas from Michelle. At least that is what her awful staff keeps telling her. So, she must dig through her own closet to find just the right tacky attire for visiting a bunch of crying babies from some shithole countries. 

After sorting through her various “I’m with Stupid” t-shirts and her “Hillary and Monica both Suck” outfits, she settles on something from her apathy collection. She had many designs to choose from. Here are some examples:

It’s an easy choice though!  The army green jacket kind of makes her look like someone in the military. She puts it on and feels powerful. She above all others has the authority to decide whether this whole family being separated thing matters or not. After all, she had to endure being stuck in Trump Tower while her own little brat got to go to The White House. Donald, that is. She was held in that tower like some forgotten princess while her perfect son, Baron, finished the school year out. She wondered why these peasants were so needy. If she could stand what she went through, then just what is their problem?  She was getting all worked up thinking about it, but the words on the jacket soothed her. “I really don’t care, do you?”  It was perfect.  It said exactly what she felt. And she had every right to feel that way. 

Sadly, as hard as she tried by asking what she could do to help, these people just kept on complaining. Oh well, at least she tried to give a flip.

Now I ask again, is Melania’s jacket important? Does it say something about who we are as a society?  Does it further civil discourse? Does it even matter?

Well, I guess I really don’t care. Do you?

Remarkable Ordinary Moments

I loved watching my dad switch into photographer mode. He knew a great shot the instant he saw it. We could be anywhere when he might suddenly spot a scene that called out to him that it needed to be photographed. He would stomp on the brakes and cause lenses and film canisters to come rolling out from under the seat of the car. His camera was always close by. He might use his shirt to give the lens a quick dusting. In an instant, he would change from Dad to Spot News Tom. He would approach the subject with confidence. He somehow conveyed, without words, that he was supposed to be doing exactly what he was doing; taking pictures of a random stranger. He might snap a few quick shots before the subject stopped doing whatever it was that my father saw a great feature picture in.  Then he would put out his hand, smiling all the way, and say, “How ya’ doin’? Tom Franklin, The Charlotte Observer.” I loved that part. He said it with real authority, but in a warm voice.

Dad would quickly grab his reporter’s notepad out of his pocket and start asking questions. He would explain that he thought it was a great image that would most likely run in the paper. He would get their names and then just have a friendly chat with them about whatever activity they had been doing that caught his attention. He listened and was fascinated by everyone’s stories. He could see beauty in the smallest of everyday activities that most of us would just pass by. It was his job to notice, but he truly was a natural observer of life.

Dad getting details from fireman.

Meeting people and capturing a beautiful moment in their life was his favorite part of the job. He shot hurricanes, tragedies, and world leaders. But he was at his best when capturing scenes from everyday life. I recently found a print that demonstrates what we meant when we would say that Dad had an “eye for photography.” He had been driving around the city on a hot summer day. He needed a great shot that demonstrated that it was an especially hot summer. A heatwave. As he meandered around the city, he spotted a welder. What could be hotter than welding on a summer day? He stopped, took some shots of the welder in action. After the worker stopped and answered the obligatory questions for Dad to jot down in his notepad, the welder took a break. He sat down and fired up a cigarette. His goggles were pushed up on his forehead. He had beads of sweat covering his square-jawed handsome face. His fingers that held the cigarette were stained from welding and heavily calloused. This was the real hot weather shot and dad knew it. Most photographers would have already returned to their cars and headed to the darkroom with some sparkly welding pictures. But Dad recognized the pureness of the moment when the man, with a look of complete satisfaction on his face, relaxed with a smoke.

Often Dad would go into photographer mode with his own children. There is a picture of me that demonstrates that at times his eye for a great photo was sometimes his first instinct.  In the photo, I look to be about three years old. I am standing in knee deep water in the ocean. My hair is standing straight up, my clothes are soaking wet, and I am making the best cry face ever. It’s apparent that I had just been pounded by a wave and I did not like it one bit. I’m sure my mother came rushing to pick me up while my father snapped away. 

You might think that I would be upset that my father thought of the photo opportunity before coming to my rescue, but you would be mistaken. It’s one of my favorite photos that he took of me. It’s a real moment. A moment that I learned something about the nature of life. An instant when I was immersed in the inevitability that life is going to send waves crashing over your head from time to time. A genuine and spontaneous baptism by an unpredictable universe. This picture makes me smile. So maybe the most fatherly thing he could have done in that moment was to capture in black and white that there is beauty in even our most vulnerable moments. A reminder that life is a series of seemingly ordinary moments. Some are joyful and some are trying. But each frame is remarkable and worthy of our notice.