Shhhhhhhhh. Whatever else you do, please don’t mention the “I word” between now and November. That’s the public message from Democratic leaders and most of their media friends this week after Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and his criminal allegations against President Trump. Between now and Election Day, “impeachment” is the forbidden word.
“If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see,” says once and perhaps future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward.”
Mr. Cohen’s charges are serious, says Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, but impeachment talk is “premature” because “more information has to come forward” and it’s “too early in the process to be using these words.”
Under the coy headline “Can Trump Survive?”—you already know his answer—Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne counsels Democrats that “the argument for impeaching Trump suddenly became very strong, but this does not mean that turning 2018 into an impeachment election is prudent.”
And if you believe this misdirection, you probably also believe that Donald Trump didn’t canoodle with Stormy Daniels.
The political reality is that Democrats are all but certain to impeach Mr. Trump if they take the House in November. After what they’ve said and the process they’ve set in motion, Democrats won’t have much choice. They simply don’t want to admit this now before the election lest they rile up too many deplorables and independents who thought they elected a President for four years.
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Let’s make the reasonable guess that Democrats retake the House with 228 seats, a narrow but solid 10-seat majority. They’ll have done so after two years of claiming that Mr. Trump is an illegitimate President who conspired with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election, that he is profiting from the Presidency for personal gain, that he obstructed justice by firing James Comey, and that after Michael Cohen’s plea the President is now “an unindicted co-conspirator” in campaign-finance fraud.
If Democrats finally gain the power to do something about this menace to mankind, do they suddenly say “never mind”?
No doubt Democrats would start slowly by revving up the investigative machinery: subpoenas, hearings, all covered to a fare-thee-well by the media. Michael Cohen will be a major witness, as will the others named in the plea-deal documents. The Trump tax returns will get a star turn.
Once this starts, it will be hard to stop even if Democratic leaders want to. It will be even harder to stop if special counsel Robert Mueller writes a report to his superiors (that will inevitably leak) saying he couldn’t indict a sitting President but here is the evidence that he may have obstructed justice or have shady finances. The evidence may not even matter much since impeachment is a political process and Congress defines what are “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Meanwhile, the battle for the 2020 Democratic nomination will be underway, with multiple candidates vying for the hearts and minds of liberal voters. They’ll compete to see who can be the loudest voice for impeachment. Even Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia Governor who wants to run for President and who defended Bill Clinton against impeachment, has said impeaching Donald Trump is “something we ought to look at.”
There will be more-in-sorrow-than-anger calls for sober judgment, but political momentum has a mind of its own. The party’s liberal base will demand that Democrats be counted on an impeachment vote, and so will its media elites, who want vindication for believing that Mr. Trump could never have legitimately defeated their heroine.
The smarter political play might be to wait until 2020 and ride a potential wave of national fatigue with Mr. Trump, but don’t underestimate the degree to which liberals want this President to be politically humiliated and legally punished. Read their Twitter feeds and columns if you don’t believe us.
We don’t know how impeachment would play out politically in 2019 and 2020. An impeachment based on acts that have nothing to do with Russian collusion would offend much of the public, but as the New York Times joyfully put it this week, “that may not matter.” While a conviction in the Senate may seem improbable at this point, Democrats might not care because they’ll have made Republicans defend Mr. Trump’s behavior.
The main point about this election year is that no one should believe Democrats when they say that impeaching Donald Trump isn’t on their agenda. It’s their only agenda.
The first two thoughts are that any dip in the market represents a buying opportunity, and people in the market should be long-term investors anyway. The Nixon market is a classic correlation vs. causation issue given that thanks to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries oil prices jumped substantially at a time when inflation had been an issue for most of the decade to that point, leading to such bad Nixon policies as wage and price controls.
Assigning credit or blame to the man in the White House for the stock market’s performance is an unwinnable argument. Guessing what would happen if he were to unexpectedly leave office is another matter.
President Trump in an interview on Fox News that aired Thursday said he thinks “the market would crash” and that “everybody would be very poor” if he were impeached. History says otherwise. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, for example, the S&P 500 fell 2.8% but recovered within a couple of days.
The near-impeachment of Richard Nixon and impeachment of Bill Clinton, meanwhile, happened during epic bear and bull markets, respectively, that continued after the events.
Or think back to January 1992, when President George H.W. Bushfainted while having dinner with Japan’s prime minister. Rumors during U.S. market hours that he had died sent stocks down less than 1%. If the prospect of “President Quayle” didn’t do the trick, then investors can breathe easy about Mr. Trump’s legal travails.
Democrats may think that impeachment is a no-lose issue for them. Republicans did terribly at the polls in 1974 following Nixon’s resignation, though Democrats already were in charge in Washington. Republicans took some losses in 1998 following Clinton’s impeachment, but retained control of both houses of Congress and everything they had in this state.
Whether you agreed with his positions (wrong on campaign finance deform and ObamaCare) or not, you must admit U.S. Sen. John McCain (R–Arizona) gave us all an example of how to exit this planet:
My fellow Americans, whom I have gratefully served for sixty years, and especially my fellow Arizonans,
Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead. I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.
I have often observed that I am the luckiest person on earth. I feel that way even now as I prepare for the end of my life. I have loved my life, all of it. I have had experiences, adventures and friendships enough for ten satisfying lives, and I am so thankful. Like most people, I have regrets. But I would not trade a day of my life, in good or bad times, for the best day of anyone else’s.
I owe that satisfaction to the love of my family. No man ever had a more loving wife or children he was prouder of than I am of mine. And I owe it to America. To be connected to America’s causes — liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people — brings happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures. Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.
‘Fellow Americans” — that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and power in the process.
We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.
We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.
Ten years ago, I had the privilege to concede defeat in the election for president. I want to end my farewell to you with the heartfelt faith in Americans that I felt so powerfully that evening.
I feel it powerfully still.
Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.
Farewell, fellow Americans. God bless you, and God bless America.
In retrospect there was probably no way McCain could have been elected president given how things were in the late 2000s. A poor campaign gave us Obama, who did serious damage to this country.
But to call McCain a traitor is beyond decency. The political parties — especially the Democrats, but also the Republicans — could stand more people who don’t necessarily sing for the hymnal, or who ask why they’re singing from that hymnal. And no one criticizing McCain after his death Saturday, I will bet, suffered in a North Vietnamese prison camp.
A new Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsin voters finds a tight race for governor following last week’s statewide primary elections. Among likely voters (that is, those who say they are certain to vote), incumbent Republican Scott Walker receives 46 percent, Democrat Tony Evers receives 46 percent and Libertarian Phil Anderson 6 percent. Only 2 percent say they lack a preference or do not lean to a candidate.
Among likely voters in the race for the Wisconsin U.S. Senate seat on the ballot in November, 49 percent support the incumbent, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, and 47 percent support Republican Leah Vukmir, while 3 percent say they lack a preference or do not lean toward a candidate.
Among all registered voters surveyed in the poll, the race for governor remains tight, with Walker at 46 percent, Evers at 44 percent and Anderson with 7 percent.
There is a wider margin among all registered voters in the Senate race, with Baldwin receiving 51 percent and Vukmir 43 percent.
Awareness of Evers and Vukmir has increased among registered voters since the last Marquette Law School Poll in July. Forty-six percent lack an opinion of Evers, down from 60 percent in July. For Vukmir, 48 percent lack an opinion now, compared to 66 percent in July.
Among likely voters only, 35 percent lack an opinion of Evers and 41 percent lack an opinion of Vukmir.
Evers is viewed favorably among 38 percent of likely voters and unfavorably by 27 percent. Among all registered voters 31 percent have a favorable view and 23 percent an unfavorable opinion.
Vukmir has a 30 percent favorable rating and a 29 percent unfavorable rating among likely voters while among registered voters 25 percent rate her favorably and 26 percent rate her unfavorably.
Few respondents lack opinions of the incumbents. Among all registered voters, 5 percent lack an opinion of Walker and 17 percent have no opinion of Baldwin. For likely voters, 4 percent have no opinion of Walker and 11 percent have no opinion of Baldwin.
Walker is viewed favorably among 49 percent of likely voters and unfavorably by 47 percent. Among all registered voters 49 percent have a favorable view and 45 percent an unfavorable opinion.
Baldwin has a 46 percent favorable rating and a 42 percent unfavorable rating among likely voters while among registered voters 43 percent rate her favorably and 40 percent rate her unfavorably.
The governor’s race results are similar to what the poll found at this point in the 2014 cycle. The August 2014 Marquette poll showed Democrat Mary Burke with a 2-point lead over Walker among likely voters, but Walker leading by about 3 points among registered voters.
All things considered, this is good news at least for Walker, and maybe for Vukmir too. Walker predicted last week he’d be behind in the first post-primary polls, but he’s not in the poll that is more credible than other polls.
That point about where Walker was four years ago is important as well. Four years ago voters didn’t know who Mary Burke was, but they came to discover her overstated involvement in her family business and other things that proved she wasn’t ready to be governor.
Four years later, Evers is going to have to explain a few things, such as what James Wigderson reports:
Americans for Prosperity is spending $1.8 million on an advertising campaign to remind voters Evers actually praised Governor Scott Walker’s last education budget before the schools superintendent decided to run for governor himself. Evers was for Walker’s budget before he was against it.
Thanks to his pro-growth policies, Governor Walker has invested millions in our schools and received a lot of praise: A “pro-kid budget …” “An important step forward …” “… Commitment for K-12 education is good news …” So who said those things? Tony Evers. But now that Evers if running for office, he’s trying to take back his praise. The truth? Governor Scott Walker is improving Wisconsin education … and Tony Evers knows it. Paid for by Americans for Prosperity. Not authorized by any candidate, candidate’s agent or committee.
Eric Bott, the state director of Americans for Prosperity in Wisconsin, commented on the flip-flop by Evers in a release announcing the ad buy.
“Tony Evers had it exactly right when he praised Governor Walker’s education budget as a ‘pro-kid budget,’ an ‘important step forward,’ and ‘good news,’” Bott said. “Now that he wants Scott Walker’s job, Evers is backpedaling so fast, I’m worried he’s going to end up in Minnesota before too long.”
There is concern over whether Walker could suck resources from other Republicans, specifically either Vukmir or Attorney General Brad Schimel, whose opponent should be elected if you believe in lawsuits for the sake of lawsuits instead of, you know, law and order.
More from the poll:
When asked the most important issue facing the state, 24 percent of registered voters pick jobs and the economy, 22 percent choose K-12 education and 19 percent say health coverage is their most important issue. No other issue reached double digits as “the most important,” although the condition of roads ranked fourth, with 9 percent of registered voters selecting it.
When voters were asked for their second-most-important issue, the condition of roads rose to the top three most-frequent answers, with K-12 education first at 18 percent, jobs and the economy at 17 percent, the condition of roads at 16 percent and health coverage at 15 percent.
I bet the economy number is actually bigger with voters. In fact, in my lifetime, every election has been decided by the economy, or more accurately voters’ perception of the economy. If voters think the economy is doing well, they vote for incumbents. If they don’t think the economy is doing well, they don’t vote for incumbents.
Fifty-three percent of Wisconsin registered voters see the state as headed in the right direction while 41 percent think the state is off on the wrong track. In July, 52 percent said right direction and 42 percent said wrong track.
Walker’s job approval among registered voters stands at 48 percent, with 45 disapproving. … Among likely voters, 50 percent approve and 47 percent disapprove.
All of this is generally in keeping with what was reported here last week — that among “swing” counties Walker is doing pretty well.
There is also this, though how it will affect this election is unclear, as pointed out by Facebook Friend Nathan Schacht:
More Dems than Republicans are against tariffs.
58% of Republicans think steel tariffs will help the economy, 9% of Dems think they will help.
On free trade, more Dems than Republicans think free trade agreements are a good thing:
45% of Republicans think they are good,
72% of Democrats think they are good.
So the Democrats are more conservative on trade issues now…good Lord.
I’m not sure “more conservative” is as correct as “more free-market,” except that Democrats are certainly not free-market on such other issues as education and health care. One wonders if Democrats have suddenly realized the virtues of free trade, or if Democrats are now free-trade because Trump isn’t. I think I know the answer by posing the question of whether Democrats have discovered the virtues of free markets in education and health care.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo opened his mouth, inserted his foot, and fell on his face when he informed an audience on Manhattan’s Lower East Side last Wednesday that “America was never that great.” An eruption of withering headlines and social-media jabs predictably ensued, and Cuomo quickly scuttled away from his comment, saying that his words had been “inartful.”
“Of course America is great and of course America has always been great,” Cuomo told reporters on Friday. “No one questions that.”
Actually, among progressive leftists, a lot of people question it. Anyone who’s ever read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States — a left-wing bestseller that for years was required reading in countless high school and college history courses — is familiar with the narrative of America as a nation of oppression, exploitation, genocide, racism, imperialism, and capitalist villainy. Cuomo’s “never that great” crack, made as he was winding up a speech that focused heavily on Donald Trump, was presumably an attempt to pander to the kind of voters who embrace the negative view of US history.
Clearly that was the way Cynthia Nixon, the left-wing actress who is challenging Cuomo for the gubernatorial nomination in the New York Democratic primary, took it. She mocked Cuomo’s gaffe as “just another example of Andrew Cuomo trying to figure out what a progressive sounds like and missing by a mile.”
In fairness to Cuomo, his “never that great” barb was inartful (“Adjective. Awkwardly expressed; impolitic; ill-phrased; inexpedient; clumsy”). He was caught up in criticizing Trump, he wanted to take a slap at the president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, and it came out as a maladroit denial of American greatness. Cuomo has no one to blame but himself for his phrasing, and he can expect to have it thrown in his face from now until Election Day. Still, as anyone with public speaking experience knows, the words don’t always land the way they were intended.
Had Cuomo said “America has never been as great as it should be” or “America was never perfect” or even “Donald Trump knows nothing about making America great,” there would have been no tumult over his speech. Better still, he could have celebrated American greatness and criticized Trump by doing what he has often done and what Trump never does: crediting America and its blessings for his success, not his own brilliance . That’s what he belatedly said in his mea culpa on Friday: “My family is evidence of American greatness,” Cuomo told reporters. “My grandparents came to this country as poor immigrants and their son became governor and his son became governor. That’s never been a question.”
Cuomo’s father, the late Governor Mario Cuomo, handled the theme much more — well, artfully. At the Democratic National Convention in 1984, the elder Cuomo delivered a keynote address in which he challenged Ronald Reagan’s upbeat description of the United States. He spoke to the delegates assembled in San Francisco:
Ten days ago, President Reagan . . . said, “Why, this country is a shining city on a hill.” And the president is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.
But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city’s splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there’s another city; there’s another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can’t pay their mortgages, and most young people can’t afford one; where students can’t afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.
In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can’t find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn’t show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don’t see, in the places that you don’t visit in your shining city.
In fact, Mr. President, you ought to know that this nation is more “A Tale of Two Cities” than it is just “A Shining City on a Hill.”
Overall, Mario Cuomo’s words were bleaker by far than his son’s 34 years later. But they weren’t regarded as a damaging gaffe because, before he began the critique, he made a point of agreeing with Reagan’s basic premise: “The president is right. In many ways, we are a shining city on a hill.”
Nor did Mario Cuomo wait two days to invoke his own family’s climb from poverty to power as an illustration of what American greatness makes possible. Unlike his son, he made it his keynote’s peroration:
I watched a small man with thick calluses on both his hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.
I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. And I learned about our obligation to each other from him and from my mother. They asked only for a chance to work and to make the world better for their children, and they asked to be protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves. This nation and this nation’s government did that for them.
And that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go from behind their little grocery store in South Jamaica on the other side of the tracks where he was born, to occupy the highest seat, in the greatest State, in the greatest nation, in the only world we would know, is an ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process.
Ineffably beautiful, indeed. When it comes to Democratic Party eloquence, Andrew Cuomo is not in his father’s league.
Just as, when it comes Republican Party eloquence, Trump is not in Reagan’s league.
To no one’s surprise, the president jumped last week on Cuomo’s blunder.
“How does a politician, Cuomo, known for pushing people and businesses out of his state, not to mention having the highest taxes in the U.S., survive making the statement, WE’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, IT WAS NEVER THAT GREAT?” he tweeted early Friday morning. A few hours later came another tweet: “Wow! Big pushback on Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York for his really dumb statement about America’s lack of greatness.”
Trump’s tiresome jibes are par for the course. They are also ironic, since he, more than anyone in American political life today, has been a fervent exponent of the America’s-not-that-great outlook.
For years, Trump has insisted that America is losing on all fronts — duped and ripped off by foreign governments, laughed at by the world, beset by incompetence, stripped of jobs and wealth and manufacturing capacity.
America’s lack of greatness was the theme of Trump’s announcement speech when he jumped into the 2016 presidential race (“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems” . . . “we as a country are getting weaker” . . . “Sadly, the American dream is dead”). It was the theme of his acceptance speech at the Republican convention (“Not only have our citizens endured domestic disaster, but they have lived through one international humiliation after another”). And it was the theme of his inaugural address (“Mothers and children trapped in poverty” . . . “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones” . . . “this American carnage”).
Nineteen months into his presidency, Trump claims that he has made America great again, the result of his own supposed genius and managerial skill. But it is silly to suggest that the greatness of the United States is a quality that can be flipped on, like current from a switch, as long as the right electrician — er, politician — occupies the White House. At no point has Trump ever shown the least understanding of the real nature of American greatness, or of its revolutionary roots, or of the singular American ideals that have enabled it repeatedly to surmount its flaws and failures.
Martin Luther King, like other American visionaries, understood that the key to American greatness lies not in its perfection, but in its quest to become more perfect.
America’s finest leaders have always recognized that the nation’s greatness is aspirational . The founders enshrined in the Declaration of Independence a standard that no people has ever fully lived up to — “all men are created equal” — not as a false boast about the imperfect society around them but as a commitment to strive toward a more perfect society in the future. Indeed, those words — “more perfect” — are in the opening line of the Constitution, which sets out America’s overarching goal as being “to form a more perfect Union.”
For nearly two and half centuries, the United States has tried to measure up to its founders’ principles — to make good, in Martin Luther King’s phrase, on the “promissory note” to which every American is an heir. Of course it has never achieved perfect success, or anything close to it. Yet when has any nation, bestriding the world as America does, cared so much about being better than it is? What great power has ever devoted so much emotional energy to holding itself accountable for falling short of its foundational values? Where besides America do ordinary citizens pour so much of their wealth into philanthropy? Which military titan has sacrificed so much blood to liberate captive peoples elsewhere? And why, of all nations on earth, has the United States been the one to which dreamers and strivers, refugees and the persecuted, have surged in such numbers?
Compared with a make-believe world in which all other countries are paradigms of virtue and decency, the United States is grievously flawed and always will be. Next to a fantasy portrait of universal prosperity, perfect safety, and unmarred joy, life in this country will always be a picture of “American carnage.”
In the universe as it really is, however, America is as great a nation as the world has ever seen. Trump, a geyser of braggadocio, has no sense of what American greatness really means. Neither does Cuomo, who confuses greatness with perfection and advances neither.
Fortunately, the key to making America great was never entrusted to American politicians. If it were, the United States could never have become what, despite its embarrassing present leadership, it indisputably is: the world’s greatest nation.
This month marks the two-year anniversary of one of the most important articles ever written on journalism. On Aug. 7, 2016, after Donald Trump formally secured the Republican nomination and the general election was underway, New York Times media columnist James Rutenberg began with a question:
“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”
Under the Times’ traditional standards, the right answer is that you wouldn’t be allowed to cover any candidate you were so biased against. But that’s not the answer Rutenberg gave.
Instead, quoting an editor who called Hillary Clinton “normal” and Trump “abnormal,” Rutenberg suggested “normal standards” didn’t apply. He admitted that “balance has been on vacation” since Trump began to campaign and ended by declaring that it is “journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment.”
I wrote then that the article was a failed attempt to justify the lopsided anti-Trump coverage in the Times and other news organizations. It was indeed that — and more, for it also served as a dog whistle for anti-Trump journalists, telling them it was acceptable to reveal their biases. After all, history would judge them.
Weeks later, Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor, told an interviewer the Rutenberg article “nailed” his thinking and convinced him that the struggle for fairness was over.
“I think that Trump has ended that struggle,” Baquet boasted. “I think we now say stuff. We fact-check him. We write it more powerfully that it’s false.”
Because the Times is the liberal media’s bell cow, the floodgates were flung open to routinely call Trump a liar, a racist and a traitor. Standards of fairness were trashed as nearly every prominent news organization demonized Trump and effectively endorsed Clinton. This open partisanship was a disgraceful chapter in the history of American journalism.
Yet the shocking failure of that effort produced no change in behavior. After the briefest of mea culpas for failing to see even the possibility of a Trump victory, the warped coverage continued and became the media wing of the resistance movement.
Which is how we arrived at the latest low moment in journalism. This one involved the more than 300 newspapers (including The Post) that followed The Boston Globe and, especially his accusation that they are “the enemy of the people.”
The high-minded among the media mob insisted they were joining together to protect the First Amendment and freedom of the press. In fact, the effort looked, smelled and felt like self-interest and rank partisanship masquerading as principle.
True to their habit, most of the papers expressed contempt for the president and some extended that contempt to his supporters.
Nancy Ancrum, the editorial-page editor of The Miami Herald, told Fox News her paper joined the effort without any hope of changing the minds of Trump supporters because “they are just too far gone.”
Imagine that — 63 million Americans are written off because they disagree with the media elite’s politics. Echoes of Clinton’s “deplorables” comment ring loud and clear.
I agree that Trump is wrong to call the media the “enemy of the people” and wish he would stick to less inflammatory words. His favorite charge of “fake news” makes his point well enough without any hint that he favors retribution on individual journalists.
But I am also concerned that media leaders refuse to see their destructive role in the war with the president. Few show any remorse over how the relentlessly hostile coverage of Trump is damaging the nation and changing journalism for the worse.
One obvious consequence is increased political polarization, with many media outlets making it their mission to denounce Trump from first page to last, day in and day out. Studies show 90 percent of TV news coverage is negative and the Times, Washington Post and CNN, among others, appear addicted to Trump hatred as if it is a narcotic.
This lack of balance permits little or no coverage of any of his achievements. How many people, for example, know about the employment records shattered by the jobs boom unleashed by Trump’s policies?
Black unemployment stands at 5.9 percent, the lowest rate on record. For Latinos, it is 4.5 percent, also the lowest on record. For women, it’s the lowest rate in 65 years and for young people, it’s the lowest since 1966.
Those statistics mean millions of people are getting their shot at the American dream. How can that not be newsworthy?
Rest assured that if Barack Obama had achieved those milestones, they and he would have been celebrated to the high heavens.
Yet when it comes to Trump, nothing is ever good. Having decided he is unfit to be president, most news groups act as propagandists, ignoring or distorting facts that contradict their view of him.
While media manipulation hurts Trump’s popularity, there is a second, ironic impact: The skewed coverage is doing even more damage to public trust in the media itself.
A Gallup/Knight Foundation survey of 1,440 panelists earlier this year found adults estimating that “62 percent of the news they read in newspapers, see on television or hear on the radio is biased” and that 44 percent of “news” is inaccurate.
Separately, Axios and SurveyMonkey polled nearly 4,000 adults in June and found that 70 percent believe mainline news organizations report as news things “they know to be fake, false or purposely misleading.”
Among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, an astonishing 92 percent harbor that distrust, as do 53 percent of Democrats.
And get this: Two-thirds of those who believe there is rampant false news say it usually happens because journalists “have an agenda.” Clearly, the distrust is not limited to Trump supporters.
These numbers reflect an urgent crisis of confidence in the press. And it’s getting worse.
A Gallup survey three years ago found that 40 percent trusted the media; two years ago, the trust meter declined by 8 points, to 32 percent. Now even that low bar looks like the good old days.
Yet instead of soberly examining their conduct, most in the media ratchet up the vitriol, apparently believing that screaming louder and longer will lead the public to hate Trump as much as they do.
But as the surveys show, their bias is a boomerang. With media behavior undermining public trust more than anything Trump says or does, a return to traditional standards of fairness and a separation of news from opinion are essential.
Last week more than 400 newspapers nationwide responded to a call by The Boston Globe to publish editorials in defense of freedom of the press, and to explain why the news media, far from being, in President Trump’s malicious phrase, the “enemy of the people,” is one of the foremost guarantors of the people’s liberty.
I’ve written about Trump and the press before, both to caution against an anti-Trump feeding frenzy and to warn of the danger in a presidential war against the press . Here I want to focus on something else — the notion, especially widespread on the right these days, that freedom of the press is for “unbiased” news coverage, not for journalism that is unfair or hostile to the president.
An Ipsos poll taken earlier this month found that 26% of Americans — and 43% of Republicans — believe that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” In a Quinnipiac poll , also released this month, 26% of voters agreed that “the news media is the enemy of the people.” Among Republicans, an actual majority, 51%, agreed with that statement.
It is hard to overstate how radically un-American such views are. Public disenchantment with the press, and complaints by officials that the press treats them unfairly, are as old as the press itself. But whatever people think of the media, the question of their right to publish what they please was settled when the First Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1791: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .”
Nothing in the language of the Amendment makes freedom of the press contingent on objectivity, or popularity, or public approval. Such a condition would never have occurred to the Constitution’s framers, because the press in their day was anything but (to coin a phrase) fair and balanced. Newspapers made no pretense of detachment — quite the opposite.
In 1800, for example, Samuel Morse of Danbury, Conn., publisher of the Sun of Liberty newspaper, readily flaunted his support for Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. He was opposed to the Federalists led by John Adams, and saw no need to hide the fact. “A despicable impartiality I disclaim,” he wrote. “I have a heart and I have a country — to the last I shall ever dedicate the first.”
By that point, the tradition of a freewheeling, no-holds-barred, decidedly partisan press was well-established. On my way to the Globe’s office each day, I pass the spot on Court Street in downtown Boston where James Franklin, the publisher of the New England Courant (and the older brother of Benjamin Franklin), had his printing presses. Franklin’s Courant got into a famous battle in 1721 with the Massachusetts Puritan leader Cotton Mather over the best way to treat smallpox, which was then ravaging the colony.
As Matthew Price wrote in a Globe essay in 2006, “Franklin made hell for Mather with a potent combination of slander and innuendo. Mather shot back that the Courant was a ‘Flagitious and Wicked Paper.’” (That was Puritan-speak for “fake news.”)
My point isn’t that the openly, even brutally, partisan press culture of the 18th and 19th centuries is better or worse than the ideal of journalistic impartiality that began to take hold during the Progressive Era early in the 20th century. It is that when the First Congress and the states enshrined in the First Amendment an adamantine prohibition on “abridging the freedom of . . . the press,” they were protecting the raucous, argumentative, ideological, often vicious journalism of their day. Freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, is meaningless if it only protects decorous messages and inoffensive expression that ruffle nobody’s feathers.
News organizations — and their customers — don’t need the Constitution to shield anodyne, noncontroversial journalism. If newspapers restricted themselves to printing stories that the president liked, what would be the point of newspapers? If Fox News or MSNBC broadcast commentary that challenged no one’s partisan preferences, what would be the point of watching?
“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in 1929. “Not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Only people profoundly and alarmingly ignorant of Americans’ constitutional liberties could believe that presidents should have the right to shut down publications “engaged in bad behavior.” The proper term for such “bad behavior” is a free press, and it is among the shining glories of America’s constitutional democracy.
Science fiction novelist Travis Corcoran won the Libertarian Futurist Society‘s Corcoran Award for his novel The Powers of the Earth. His acceptance speech included:
Eric S Raymond said it best: “Hard SF is the vital heart of the field”. The core of hard science fiction is libertarianism: “ornery and insistent individualism, veneration of the competent man, instinctive distrust of coercive social engineering”.
I agree; science fiction is best when it tells stories about free people using intelligence, skills and hard work to overcome challenges.
This vision of science fiction is under attack by collectivists, and hard SF and libertarian SF are being pushed out of publisher lineups and off of bookstore shelves.
Very well. We have intelligence, we have skills and we’re not afraid of hard work. Let’s rise to this challenge!
The Powers of the Earth is a novel about many things.
It’s a war story about ancaps, uplifted dogs, and AI fighting against government using combat robots, large guns, and kinetic energy weapons.
It’s an engineering story about space travel, open source software, tunnel boring machines, and fintech.
It’s a cyberpunk story about prediction markets, CNC guns, and illegal ROMs.
It’s a story about competent men who build machines, competent women who pilot spaceships, and competent dogs who write code.
It’s a novel that pays homage to Heinlein’s The Moon is a HarshMistress, which in turn pays homage to the American Revolution.
. . . But the historical inspiration for the novel was not, actually, the American Revolution. It’s the founding of the Icelandic Free State almost a thousand years earlier. The difference is subtle, but important.
The American Revolution was an act of secession: one part of a government declaring itself independent and co-equal, and continuing to act as a government. The establishment of the Icelandic Free State is different in two important particulars. First, it did not consist of people challenging an existing government, but of people physically leaving a region governed by a tyrant. And second, the men and women who expatriated themselves from the reign of Harald Fairhair did not create a government – they wanted to flee authoritarianism, not establish their own branch of it!
Thus we get to one of the most important themes of The Powers of theEarth and its sequel, Causes of Separation: the concepts of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. The tri-chotomy was first codified in an essay—titled “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States”—by economist Albert Hirschman in 1970.
An aside: I love that this essay was penned while Americans walked on the moon.
Hirschman argued that when a vendor or government fails to deliver, people can either remain loyal, can speak out within the system, or can exit the system.
The problem we Americans have in 2018 is that there is no more frontier. Like the engineers in Christopher Priest’s “The Inverted World”, we moved west until we hit an ocean, and that has been our doom.
When there is a frontier, it is impossible to deny that the pie is growing. Want a farm? Go hack one out of the forest. Want a house? Go build one.
Once the frontier is gone, value can still be created ab initio. The pie is not fixed. For the price of a cheap computer you can create a novel or a software package. With a $100 video camera you can be a garage Kubrick. With a free Craigslist ad you can be a dog-walking entrepreneur.
. . . But the closing of the frontier made it easier for the collectivists to argue that the pie is fixed. And—worse yet—it made it impossible for the rest of us to get away.
We’d all love to live in David Friedman’s polycentric legal system, Robert Nozick’s meta-utopia, Moldbug’s patchwork, or Scott Alexander’s archipelago – a place where each of us could live by rules we choose, and people who preferred another set could live by those… but we can’t, and that’s for one reason and one reason alone: the collectivists who can’t bear to let anyone, anywhere, be ungoverned.
Totalitarian ideologies – Nazism, Communism, Islamofascism, Progressivism – all subscribe to the Mussolini quote “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
The Nazi sees any area not under Nazi control as a threat.
The communist sees any area not under communist control as a threat.
The Islamofascist sees any area outside of Dar al Islam as Dar al-Harb—a populace to be subjugated.
Collectivists sees anything not under collectivist control as a threat—and as an opportunity.
A threat, because areas not under collectivist control always work better. It is no accident that just as the Soviets jammed broadcasts from the west, Nazis outlawed American music, Chinese built a Great Firewall, so too do progressives shadow-ban free voices on Twitter and Facebook and expel people from conventions.
An opportunity, because of what totalitarians do when they see a patch of freedom: they try to take it over. “All within, nothing outside”.
When the patch of freedom is a state, we get the long march through the institutions, as outlined by communist Antonio Gramsci and refined by communist Rudi Dutschke. First they become teachers, then they influence the students, then they take over the courts . . . and then it’s not too long until some O’Brien is holding up four fingers to some Winston Smith, crushing out the last of the wrongthink.
When the patch of freedom is a subculture the mechanism is different—it’s discussed in the brilliant essay “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution” by David Chapman.
One core attribute of totalitarians is that they don’t create, they steal. And because they steal, they are both confused by and hate those who do create. As Barrack Obama said “You didn’t build that.” As the internet meme says: “You made this? <pause> I made this.”
Since the first Worldcon in 1939 science fiction has been a libertarian territory under attack from authoritarians. Futurian Donald Wollheim was a communist, and argued that all of science fiction “should actively work for the realization of the . . . world-state as the only . . . justification for their activities”.
Wollheim failed with his takeover in 1939—he was physically removed from Worldcon—but he started a Gramscian long march through the institutions, and it worked. In the current year conventions, editors, and publishing houses are all cordy-cepted. The sociopaths have pushed the geeks out and have taken over the cultural territory.
“You made this? <pause> I made this.”
When the state tries to take your home, they come with guns, and you have to fight them with guns, if at all.
When a subculture tries to take your home, they come with snark and shame and entryism . . . and you fight them by making better art.
The bad news for us libertarians is that the cities we built have fallen. The publishers? Gone. The bookstore shelves? Gone.
But what of it? We have Amazon, we have print on demand, we have Kickstarter.
And, most importantly of all, we have the vital heart, the radiant core of science fiction: we can tell great stories about ornery individualism, about competent men and women using skills and hard work to overcome challenges. This is the one thing the collectivists can never steal from us, because it is antithetical to their nature.
There is not an ocean in front of us, dooming us to captivity—there is only sky. The frontier is still open.
You know why Ripon claims to be the actual birthsite of the Republican Party?
The name.
The “Republican” label was suggested to Alvan Bovay by a newspaper editor.
In 1850 Bovay moved with his family from Utica, N.Y., to Ripon, Wis., a community comprised of 13 houses. Under his leadership, “Bovay’s addition” grew as he practiced law, co-founded a college and transformed his tiny town into a major bulwark against the spread of slavery.
In 1852 he returned to New York, where he informed New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley of his plans to start a new party. Excited by his pal’s plans, Greeley recommended Ripon’s movement be dubbed the “Republican” party.
So there you go.
An ink-stained wretch gave a name to the abolitionist party rooted in that little white schoolhouse off Blackburn Street.
Greeley’s role is but a thread in an American tapestry whose fabric is bound by journalists sharing facts and shining lights to make the powerful accountable to the people.
This is as well publicized as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein going door-to-door to ask close-lipped Committee to Re-Elect the President staffers how campaign contributions were ending up in a White House-controlled slush fund.
It’s also as local as our editor Ian Stepleton creating three-ring binders to organize invoices and escrow account disbursement requests he collected to show Ripon taxpayers how their $6 million were frittered away by a Milwaukee attorney to pay his own law firm; analyze Midwest pizza/pasta bars; research Ripon traffic patterns; make a down payment on brew-pub equipment; hire someone to visit the nation’s top spas; and pay two consultants to read books about women’s shopping habits.
Because we have elected an egotist-in-chief who surrounds himself with sycophants reinforcing his belief that rules don’t apply to him personally, professionally or legally, he brands journalists of all stripes who report on his actions as the “enemies of the American people” who are “dangerous and sick” purveyors of “fake news.”
Attacking reporters is a bipartisan sport. Bernie Sanders calls them “corporate media.” Hillary Clinton decries their “shoddy reporting.” And who said, “My instinct is everybody hates [the] media right now?”
Barack Obama.
People who buy ink by the barrel have thick skin.
Many realize that some of their wounds are self inflicted, given the shortened news cycle, the blurring of news reporting and analysis, and their bull-headed inability to admit that bias and error infect their reporting because they are human.
But news consumers?
The day 50+1 percent believe that the press is their adversary is the day a pillar of democracy will topple, flattening the governed under the unchecked weight of those who govern with impunity and immunity.
Washington Post Publisher Ben Bradlee was called names we can’t print when he dared publish the truth about Watergate and later, the U.S. role in expanding the Vietnam War.
I was honored a few years ago to meet this tenacious newspaperman, who history and Hollywood have long since vindicated.
Power corrupts even the best leaders.
That’s why James Madison realized government needed independent voices to check its worst instincts.
If America is at war with that concept, then we deserve whatever authoritarian we elect to unilaterally destroy our Republican party, our nation and our world order.
The press can be fallible, ignorant, sloppy, sensationalistic, exploitative, rude, profane, irresponsible.
And when it falls short, readers and viewers can take it to task by changing channels or letting their subscription lapse.
But when the government falls short, the public may never know it if the press are silenced by a president who divides the nation by stomping on those who refuse to kiss his feet.
Then the new slaves will be the American people.
Where is the next Alvan Bovay who will rise up to free people being enslaved by lies, insults and ignorance?
Non-conservative Jack Shafer wrote before yesterday’s coordinated media attack on Donald Trump — I mean defense of the free press:
Nothing flatters an independent journalist less than the sight of him forming a line to drink from the same fountain as his colleagues. Such a spectacle will unfold on Thursday, August 16, as 200 or more editorial pages will heed the call sounded by Boston Globe op-ed page editor Marjorie Pritchard to run editorials opposing President Donald Trump’s unrelieved press-bashing. Participating dailies include the Houston Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Miami Herald and the Denver Post, as well as the Globe. Joining the movement are the American Society of News Editors and the New England Newspaper and Press Association. Dan Rather is on board, as is the Radio Television Digital News Association.
“Our words will differ. But at least we can agree that such attacks are alarming,” Pritchard’s appeal declared.
It goes without saying that press bashing, Trump-style, is alarming. His critiques rarely point to genuine inaccuracies in the press. Instead, his method is to dismiss any news that impedes his agenda or disparages him as fake and dishonest. With demagogic bluster, he routinely deploys “enemies of the people” rhetoric against journalists, which some say has inspired physical threats against journalists. Early this month, he tweeted that reporters are “dangerous & sick” and accused them of causing war (!) and purposely causing “great division & distrust.” Early in his presidency, Trump said, “I’ve never seen more dishonest media than, frankly, the political media.”
Most journalists agree that there’s a great need for Trump rebuttals. I’ve written my share. But this Globe-sponsored coordinated editorial response is sure to backfire: It will provide Trump with circumstantial evidence of the existence of a national press cabal that has been convened solely to oppose him. When the editorials roll off the press on Thursday, all singing from the same script, Trump will reap enough fresh material to whale on the media for at least a month. His forthcoming speeches almost write themselves: By colluding against me, the fake media proved once and for all, that they are in cahoots with the Democrats and have declared themselves to be my true political opposition …
The Globe’s anti-Trump project is also an exercise in redundancy, not to mention self-stroking. Most newspapers have already published a multitude of editorials and columns rebuking the president for his trash-talking of the press. Most major editorial boards opposed Trump’s election, according to this tally by Business Insider. The largest of the 19 newspapers to endorse Trump was the Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by one of his faithful donors, Sheldon Adelson. More than 240 endorsed Hillary Clinton. Editorial-page sentiment against Trump remains largely unchanged since the election, making the call for a collective reprimand all the more pointless.
Another problem with a nationally coordinated pro-press catechism is that the audience likely to reap the greatest benefit from the haranguing—Trump and many in his base—tends not to read newspapers in the first place. While there’s always value in preaching to the choir—that’s why churches hold services every Sunday—the combined weight of 200 pro-press editorials is not likely to move the opinion needle or deter Trump from defaming and threatening reporters.
Most newspaper editorials are already a watered-down product of groupthink. It’s unlikely that expanding the size of the group and encouraging everybody to bake and serve a tuna-fish casserole on the same day will produce editorials that are more interesting and persuasive than the normal fare.
But maybe I’m wrong. If a single day of pro-press editorials is a good idea for a collective assignment, then maybe newspapers should set aside next Saturday for 200 editorials on tariffs and next Sunday for 200 editorials on global warming and next Monday for 200 editorials on Afghanistan. Surely these issues are as compelling and urgent as press freedom.
For all its faults, the American press refuses the commands from critics who would have it operate like some monolithic entity. Almost daily, our best newspapers express their independence by rejecting the marching orders issued by corporations, politicians and governments. Editorial pages of America, don’t unite! Think for yourselves! Reject this stupid pro-press assignment!
More than 300 newspapers around the country will participate today in a group protest of President Trump’s frequent attacks on the news media. Each of the papers will publish editorials — their own separate editorials, in their own words — defending freedom of the press.
The Los Angeles Times, however, has decided not to participate. There will be no free press editorial on our page today.
This is not because we don’t believe that President Trump has been engaged in a cynical, demagogic and unfair assault on our industry. He has, and we have written about it on numerous occasions. As early as April 2017, we wrote this as part of a full-page editorial on “Trump’s War on Journalism”:
“Trump’s strategy is pretty clear: By branding reporters as liars, he apparently hopes to discredit, disrupt or bully into silence anyone who challenges his version of reality. By undermining trust in news organizations and delegitimizing journalism and muddling the facts so that Americans no longer know who to believe, he can deny and distract and help push his administration’s far-fetched storyline.”
We still believe that. Nevertheless, the editorial board decided not to write about the subject on this particular Thursday because we cherish our independence.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board does not speak for the New York Times or for the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune or the Denver Post. We share certain opinions with those newspapers; we disagree on other things. Even when we do agree with another editorial page — on the death penalty or climate change or war in Afghanistan, say — we reach our own decisions and positions after careful consultation and deliberation among ourselves, and then we write our own editorials. We would not want to leave the impression that we take our lead from others, or that we engage in groupthink.
The president himself already treats the media as a cabal — “enemies of the people,” he has called us, suggesting over and over that we’re in cahoots to do damage to the country. The idea of joining together to protest him seems almost to encourage that kind of conspiracy thinking by the president and his loyalists. Why give them ammunition to scream about “collusion”?
We mean no disrespect to those who have decided to write on this important subject today. But we will continue to write about the issue on our own schedule.
One of our most essential values is independence. The Globe’s argument is that having a united front on the issue — with voices from Boise to Boston taking a stand for the First Amendment, each in a newspaper’s own words — makes a powerful statement. However, I would counter that answering a call to join the crowd, no matter how worthy the cause, is not the same as an institution deciding on its own to raise a matter.
Our decision might have been different had we not weighed in so often on Trump’s myriad moves to undermine journalism: from calling us “enemies of the American people” to invoking the term “fake news” against real news to denying access to reporters who dare do their jobs to slapping tariffs on newsprint to requesting the prosecution of reporters who reveal classified information to threatening punitive actions against the business interest of owners of CNN and the Washington Post.
The list goes on.
It’s worth pausing to note the role of the editorial board. At The Chronicle, as with most American newspapers, the position on the unsigned pieces on the editorial page reflect the consensus of a board that includes the publisher and the editors and writers in the opinion department. That operation is kept separate from the news side, where editors and reporters make their judgments without regard to the newspaper’s editorial positions. This includes the endorsements we make in elections.
I am well aware that this “separation of church and state” — as we call it — is well understood and enforced within the building, but is not universally known or accepted by Americans, especially on the far left and right, who might be skeptical of mainstream media.
This brings me to my other concern of the Globe-led campaign: It plays into Trump’s narrative that the media are aligned against him. I can just anticipate his Thursday morning tweets accusing the “FAKE NEWS MEDIA” of “COLLUSION!” and “BIAS!” He surely will attempt to cite this day of editorials to discredit critical and factual news stories in the future, even though no one involved in those pieces had anything to do with this campaign.
Yes, those of us in the journalism profession dohave a bias that the health of our democracy depends on vigorous reporting that can keep the people in power accountable. That is no less essential whether an elected official is Republican or Democrat, hostile or friendly to the press.
Our editorial page will continue to speak out against this president’s war on the free press. Our silence on Thursday is testament to our commitment to do it in our own way, on our own timetable.
The New York Post managed to not make it just about Trump:
Who are we to disagree? We support a free and vibrant press, a nation where the powerful are held to account by the Fourth Estate. Journalists are not the enemy of the people; we’re advocating for the people. We stand with our colleagues.
Will this make a difference? Not one whit.
Nor will it stop Nancy Pelosi from claiming that NBC is trying to undermine her because it quoted elected officials, or Gov. Andrew Cuomo from accusing a NY1 reporter of bias because he asked a question.
And it certainly won’t deter Mayor Bill de Blasio, who despises a free press as vehemently as does our president. De Blasio has bashed the Times and Crain’s, accused Bloomberg News of being biased, wished for the death of the Daily News and, oh, said the world would be a better place without The Post.
It may be frustrating to argue that just because we print inconvenient truths doesn’t mean that we’re fake news, but being a journalist isn’t a popularity contest. All we can do is to keep reporting.
Trump and de Blasio will continue to bash the press because it riles up their bases. When you can’t argue the merits, you blame the messenger.
We have faith. As the Bard put it, “At the length truth will out.”
Facebook Friend Michael Smith adds:
I know the press thought unifying 300+ newspapers behind a single theme was a great idea but it also revealed the very reason President Trump called them “the enemy of the people”. I noted in an earlier post (from my blog post of 6 years ago) that even Democrat pollster Pat Caddell called the press the same during the Benghazi scandal.
What this little stunt revealed is how much power the press has to spread lies of commission and omission, half-truths and rumors. Today, a lot of the reporting amounts to outlets reporting on what another news outlet reported – reporters reporting on other reporters, so a single voice gets pushed through the biggest megaphone in America.
When you have that big a megaphone, one would think the press would feel an overwhelming responsibility to get it right – but they don’t. They report based on preconception and an agenda, one designed to bring this administration down. Printing and reporting incomplete and in some cases, false information, not only makes them the enemy of the people (who count on them for accurate and factual information) but it disgraces their profession.
Can you imagine how long a broadcast meteorologist would last if they only reported the weather based on what they wanted it to be rather than what the science told them? If that person was consistently wrong, it wouldn’t be long before nobody would watch or trust that person’s forecasts.
The press is reporting the weather they way they want it to be rather than what it is and rather than recognizing their error and correcting it, they are choosing to tell America why we should just believe them when they tell us it is sunny and the rain is pouring down. It doesn’t matter if 300 weather “experts” are telling you the sun is out and you are getting wet. Quantity of opinion doesn’t make something real.
Once again, the press sent a strong message to the public – but as is becoming all too common these days, it wasn’t the message they thought they were sending.
Around 200 news publications across the United States have committed to a Boston Globe-coordinated effort to run editorials Thursday promoting the freedom of the press, in light of President Trump’s frequent attacks on the media.
Some of the most respected and widely circulated newspapers in the country have committed to taking a stand in their editorial pages, including The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Chicago Sun-Times. The list ranges from large metropolitan dailies to small weekly papers with circulations as low as 4,000.
The Globe initiative comes amid the president’s repeated verbal attacks on journalists, calling mainstream press organizations “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” Tensions came to a boil in early August when CNN reporter Jim Acosta walked out of a press briefing after White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders refused to refute Trump’s “enemy of the people” comments.
‘‘We are not the enemy of the people,’’ Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor of the Globe’s opinion page, told the AP last week.
The Globe’s request to denounce the “dirty war against the free press” has been promoted by industry groups such as the American Society of News Editors, as well as regional groups like the New England Newspaper and Press Association. The request also suggested editorial boards take a stand against Trump’s words regardless of their politics, or whether they generally editorialized in support of or in opposition to the president’s policies.
‘‘Our words will differ. But at least we can agree that such attacks are alarming,’’ the Globe appeal said. …
Pritchard previously said the decision to reach out to newspapers was reached after Trump appeared to step up his rhetoric in recent weeks. He called the media “fake, fake disgusting news” at an Aug. 2 rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
‘‘Whatever happened to the free press? Whatever happened to honest reporting?’’ he asked at the rally, pointing to journalists covering the event. ‘‘They don’t report it. They only make up stories.’’
Pritchard said she hoped the editorials would make an impression on Americans.
‘‘I hope it would educate readers to realize that an attack on the First Amendment is unacceptable,’’ she said. ‘‘We are a free and independent press; it is one of the most sacred principles enshrined in the Constitution.’’
If you are a supporter of the free press specifically and the First Amendment generally, then you should accept the existence of, if not agree with, opposing points of view — in this case, Patricia McCarthy:
[Pritchard’s] big idea is her response to President Trump’s relentless attack on those among the media who relentlessly publish fake news. Trump has never said all of the media are disingenuous, or that all of the media publish and promote fake news. He clearly goes after the news outlets who do: CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NPR, CBS, NBC, NYT, WaPo, L.A. Times, and too many others.
The president is targeting what has become known as the mainstream media, the MSM, or the “drive-bys,” as Rush Limbaugh rightfully calls them. They are clones of one another. There is not an original thought or idea among their “reporters.” Their reporters are not journalists in any sense of the word. They all take their marching orders from the leftists who head up each of these organizations. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, not one of them deviated from the Clinton campaign party line.
Ms. Pritchard, then, is working hard to prove Trump’s point. He rages against the leftist machine that is the MSM, and she is bound and determined to prove him right for all to see. She, and all those editors who are jumping onto her bandwagon, is playing right into his hands. How clueless can these anti-Trumpers be? They are mind-numbed idiots, so easily trolled by the master. They see themselves as defenders of the free press!
The only free press today is vast, available to all of us, and thoroughly outside their realm of conformity. They think they matter; they have yet to grasp the fact that they are largely irrelevant. Jim Acosta thinks he is a reporter; he is a rude clown, subservient to tyrants, disrespectful to Trump and Sarah Sanders. He actually thinks people care what he says, does, or thinks. They do not. He is a joke.
Since interest has dimmed in Stormy Daniels and her “creepy porn lawyer,” as Tucker Carlson has dubbed him, the new star the MSM are celebrating is the pathetic Omarosa Manigault Newman, with her book of lies and accusations that everyone knows are fabricated. The anchors on all the MSM outlets know exactly who and what she is but are wooing her in the hope that she will be the one to take Trump down. They never give up. They never learn. From the Access Hollywood tape to Omarosa, they are confident that each new lowlife with a story to tell will be the one to overturn the election. They are like Energizer bunnies; they have motors but no brains. They never give up, no matter how ridiculous the attacks on Trump become. In short, they are utter fools.
Ms. Pritchard says newspapers use “differing words.” Uh, no, they don’t. They use the same words. Just as that JournoList functioned under Obama, talking points went out, and they all repeated them verbatim. These people do not think for themselves. Throw a differing, conservative opinion at them, and they cry racism. That is their only defense, no matter how specious.
Conservatives are looking forward to Thursday’s coordinated anti-Trump editorials. We will have a definitive list of news outlets to never trust again because they will have revealed themselves to be unthinking soldiers in a nasty war against a man for whom over sixty million Americans voted to be their president. So far, he has been a truly terrific president. He has accomplished more good for the nation than either Bush or Obama did in sixteen years.
Economy great thanks to tax cuts and de-regulation.
Unemployment at lowest point ever, for blacks and Hispanics, too.
Food stamp use down by a few million.
The man who has accomplished all this in nineteen months is whom they want to destroy. What does that tell us about who the left is today? Leftists do not have the country’s best interest at heart. Their hatred of this man motivates them in a most destructive way. Let those hundred or so newspapers follow Pritchard’s orders and publish their anti-Trump op-eds on Thursday. They will be demonstrating for all to see just how right Trump is when he calls out the perpetrators of fake news.
McCarthy’s piece is an opinion. So is whatever those 200 newspapers write today and this week.
One of Wisconsin’s best weekly newspapers wrote this piece this week on its opinion page, patriotically called The First Amendment, that its veteran award-winning editor doubts fits into what the Globe has in mind.
As someone who has been doing this crap — I mean, has been a journalist — for three decades, I have trouble fitting in on this subject, which I will attempt to explain here.
Is the free press vital to this democratic republic? There is absolutely no question that it is. Trump specifically and whichever party and politicians in power conveniently forget that, or don’t want that to be the case, far too often. But Trump isn’t the first president to try to prevent the press from doing its job, though he probably has been the most verbal about it. (Other than Harry S. Truman, who once threatened to punch out Washington Post music critic Paul Hume for the latter’s uncomplimentary review of Truman’s daughter’s performance. Trump hasn’t gone that far. Yet.)
Should Trump not say bad things about the news media? Well … I don’t care what Trump or any other politician says about the media generally or myself specifically. I really don’t. Once upon a time when journalists had more backbone than today, nasty comments from politicians were something a journalist should put on his or her résumé.
Our job as journalists is to hold the powerful accountable, regardless of party or lack of party. Politicians, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, the educational system and every other level and function of government everywhere do their work with our tax dollars, and for that reason alone the free press is necessary to make sure they’re doing what they should be doing, and not doing what they should not be doing.
Freedom of the press is part of the First Amendment. The First Amendment does not belong just to the press. It belongs to all Americans, and if it doesn’t, then it’s just almost-illegible words on old paper. The Wisconsin Constitution’s free-expression protections also belong to all Wisconsinites, as do the state Open Meetings Law and Open Records Law.
There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding today about the media and its history on the subject of reporter bias. The period where the media was seen as impartial is not that old in American history.
To too many people “unbiased” actually means “biased in favor of my point of view.” Does this strike you as unbiased?
How about this?
In the middle of ABC-TV’s coverage of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, Howard K. Smith and Frank Reynolds practically demanded Congress pass gun control. So did Cronkite on CBS even though, of all people, Dan Rather correctly pointed out that the gun control measures then in Congress wouldn’t have prevented either Kennedy assassination.
All you need see for evidence of previous institutional press bias is see the number of newspapers with the words “Democrat,” “Republican,” “Progressive” or similar words. And even when those words weren’t in the names of the newspapers, there have usually been conservative newspapers (the Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Sentinel, Wisconsin State Journal, and once upon a time the Los Angeles Times) and liberal newspapers (the New York Times, Milwaukee Journal and The Capital Times) in multiple-newspaper markets. The State Journal is unquestionably more liberal than it was now that it’s the only daily newspaper in Madison, while The C(r)apital Times is still as lefty as always, including in its news coverage. (One associate editor wrote in a news story “the so-called Moral Majority,” which is an error because that was the group’s name, and the writer’s opinion of it didn’t belong in a news story.)
Remember these good old days?
My suspicion is that what’s written today and this week is going to be read as nothing more than ripping on Trump (particularly in the opinion of those sympathetic to views like McCarthy’s), and will give an unrealistically gauzy view of the news media, with related offended whining that people fail to worship the media’s work (this, for instance), accompanied by hand-wringing that Trump and his supporters are destroying democracy. (They aren’t and won’t.)
Truth be told, the media has a lot of flaws today, and this campaign might be one of them. For one thing, it’s practically impossible for me, someone who has worked for low pay but long and irregular hours in the First Amendment Wars, to think I have very much in common with Acosta, Pritchard or people who get their paychecks from big media, even though I used to work for one of this country’s biggest (at the time) media companies. They get paid an order of magnitude more than I do in much better conditions with much better benefits, including being wrongly famous.
Is Trump trying to control the media? Of course he is. So did his predecessor, and every president in this media age, and probably every president before that. So do most politicians. They have media relations people to feed quotes and pass on good things about their guy and bad things about the other side. They all answer questions posed by the media with answers to the questions they want to be asked, instead of what they were asked.
That, however, is part of the job, and always has been. A reporter who expects to be fed information and not have to do actual asking of questions is either lazy or a toady for whoever is in power. (Too many journalists worship at the altar of government because they cover government.)
A few things have certainly gotten worse in my professional lifetime. There have been far too many stories labeled “Analysis” that are in fact the writer’s opinion not on the opinion pages. There are far too many expressions of reporter opinion on social media, particularly on Twitter reporter accounts, when the correct number of opinions that are not labeled opinions is zero. (News-media social media should report and only report, not give the reporter’s opinion.)
Too much of this “analysis” since approximately the Clinton administration has been inside baseball — some political staffer feeds their view about the brilliant politics of (insert politician’s name here). That violates the sentence I have had printed on top of every computer I’ve had for more than 25 years — “What does this story mean to the reader?” And unless you’re a political junkie, the political fortunes of a politician are and should be about 367th in your list of important things.
There are also far too many journalists who seek to curry favor among the politically powerful. In fact, I have to wonder how much news media bitching is taking place due to failures to curry favor among the Trump administration. The Washington phrase, “If you want a friend, get a dog,” applies to journalists in state capitals, county seats and basically anywhere else.
There is a large and growing disconnect between the news media and the people we are supposed to be serving. Yes, news media people are considerably more politically liberal on average, and because of that many seem to not grasp conservative views. (Conservatives working in the mainstream media often keep their political views secret because they think those views will hurt their career among their liberal colleagues and bosses.) The media utterly failed in not seeing the possibility of Trump’s election, and they compound that error by refusing to see why people might have voted for Trump, and that a huge number of Americans believe that government failed them under the previous administration.
But the political divide isn’t the only divide. Those readers who live in communities with newspapers or radio stations with news departments might get an education by finding out how many reporters (1) live in the community they work in, (2) have or had children, and (3) go to church regularly. That was me once upon a time, when the only thing I did among those three was live where the job was. Your view of life and what’s important, and therefore what is important news and what isn’t, changes when you have ties to a community, particularly children. And as has been pointed out on this blog, the media gets more things wrongabout guns and gun control than can be listed here.
Here is a dirty little secret about Trump and the media: Trump is president today not just because he was running against Hillary Clinton and as an anti-Barack Obama vote; he is president today in large part due to the news media. Trump has been providing quotable copy and video for the media since he was a New York City developer who showed up on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” The media focused on Trump in 2015 because Trump was so much more interesting than any of the other presidential candidates. Trump and the media have a symbiotic–parasitic relationship regardless of what Trump or the media say about eachother.
I sort of feel like an orphan in today’s argument, not on Trump’s side but not on the media’s side.(I can generally pick apart most publications and see their flaws.) I have, I think, more respect for the First Amendment than most journalists do anymore. I believe in giving the opposing side a voice. It’s hard to see that from the national media today.
Individual thinking is not in very much evidence today on any side of the political divide. I have always wanted to be judged on my own work, not lumped in with everyone else in the news media.
But as I wrote before, I really do not care what politicians think of the media or of me, and I have to wonder why media people care what Trump or any other politician thinks of them. I would have thought that journalists would have thick skins and not be snowflakes, but apparently I was mistaken.
In my professional life, I’ve gotten threats of various kinds, including threats to my health. I got invited by a school board president to stand in front of their table and listen to what they were saying while they were trying to skirt the Open Meetings Law. (I did.) I got publicly asked to leave a speech given by Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino. (I didn’t. He did.) They didn’t, don’t and won’t faze me from doing my work. Nor will anything any politician says about the news media. We always get the last word when we want it.
A few years ago, I spoke at my son’s fifth-grade class about all the wonderful things that we have today in our great country that weren’t around 100 years ago, including cars. A ponytailed girl in the front of the room raised her hand and, with a solemn look on her face, scolded me: “Cars are bad. They cause pollution.”
Wow. These were 11-year-olds! It was one of my first encounters with the green indoctrination that goes on in public schools starting in the first grade.
There wasn’t time to explain to her that when Henry Ford started rolling his black Model T’s off the assembly lines in Michigan, the mass production of automobiles was heralded as one of the greatest environmental and health advances in history. It replaced one of the prodigious polluters: the horse. The average 1,000-pound horse dumps 30 pounds of feces and 2 gallons of urine a day. Can anyone imagine what Washington, D.C., or Pittsburgh or New Orleans smelled like on a hot, sweltering summer day or what all that feces did to our water supply? Oh, and watch your step!
Yet, many liberals still seem to agree with Al Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, who says that the combustible engine is one of the worst inventions of all time.
This explains why the ascendant green movement in America has for decades been trying to force Americans out of their cars. They think like that fifth-grader despite being supposedly rational adults.
The war on driving includes calls for carbon and gas taxes, tens of billions of gas tax money diverted to inefficient and little-used mass transit projects, and opposition to building new roads and highways. One of the most nefarious initiatives has been the Obama administration’s draconian increases to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards — a giant and hidden tax on American drivers.
Donald Trump announced last week he wants to ease those regulations. Under the Obama mandates, CAFE requirements would rise from about 35 mpg today to 54 mpg by 2025. This would raise the cost of many new cars by almost $3,000, and the hit to the economy from these rules is expected to reach a cool $500 billion over the next 50 years.
Under Trump’s proposed changes, mileage requirements would still rise every year to 42 mpg by 2025 (way too high for my liking). And yet the left is seething in protest, complaining this means the end of our planet. The difference between the Trump and the Obama standards will mean a 31-hundredth degree higher global temperature in 80 years.
The Department of Transportation has found that the best way to get cleaner air is to incentivize families to buy new cars and get the older and higher polluting gas-guzzlers off the road. But CAFE standards raise car prices. So families delay the purchase of new cars, which increases pollution levels.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of the new Trump standards is that they are expected to save about 1,000 lives a year due to lower highway deaths. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has found that CAFE standards kill people for two reasons: first, they induce the car companies to build lighter cars in order to meet the fuel standards. Second, because the regulations keep old cars on the road longer, Americans are more likely to be driving in less safe vehicles. The Trump administration has science firmly on its side here.
Not so long ago liberals opposed military intervention in the Middle East by chanting “no blood for oil.” But with higher CAFE standards, they willingly tolerate more blood on the highways to save on oil.
Hearty congratulations to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler for a new rule that can save lives, reduce pollution, grow the economy, and let people buy the cars they want — including SUVs, minivans and sports cars. This is a great victory for common sense and a windshield against the left’s war on cars. As for those misguided fifth-graders, they will figure out the virtues of cars once they are old enough to get their driver’s licenses. But when will liberals grow up?
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 