On the Outside Looking in

By Hank Silverberg

     I confess. For 38 years I was a journalist. I got paid to write about politicians, government, criminals, crime fighters, corporations, celebrities, and just ordinary people who had an interesting story to tell. In many cases I was on the inside, getting information and facts that other people did not know until I reported it.   

 I admit I was also a conservative journalist. Notice the small “c.” I don’t mean Conservative as in politics. I mean conservative as in doing it cautiously, the right way, with good solid information that was confirmed and attributed to sources who were named and quoted.                                      

My close friends and relatives and some former colleagues know where I stand politically, but those who heard me on the radio or saw me on TV, did not know my politics.  It never got into my work. If there was the slightest question about that, I always ran it by an editor or two to root out any bias that might have slipped in. They rarely found any. (Since I am no longer a reporter, those restraints have been loosened)  

 In those 38 years I can only remember two stories with impact where I used anonymous sources. When I did, the information came from people I knew and trusted, and I am pleased to say both stories were totally accurate. There are some strict rules for that on which I could do another blog, but in this edition, I want to talk about the state of journalism in 2018.

Our founding fathers believed a free press was so vital to our Republic that they protected it in the Bill of Rights.  

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the Press, or the right of the people to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of their grievances.”  

There it is, right in the First Amendment, on the same level as freedom of religion and freedom of speech.  It means journalism is the only profession protected by the United States Constitution.

So, I am personally embarrassed when I see polls like the one conducted by the Media Insight Project in 2017 which found only 34 percent of the American public believed that the press protects our democracy. Thirty percent said it hurts.  There was more to this poll, breaking it down by party affiliation and news organizations, but the numbers really didn’t get that much better for journalists. 

Why has this happened?

It began with the distortion of just who is a journalist. That can be traced right to the advent of cable news in the 1980s. They must feed their beast 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. (Or 366 in  a leap year like 2020, an election year). Cable News operators soon discovered, with a 24 hour news cycle to fill,  it was much easier and less expensive, to put on a talking head or pundit to “analyze” the news, than to pay an experienced journalist to report it.

I don’t mean using political reporters on air to talk about the news they have covered. That is constructive, because it adds depth and background.  My focus is on “has-been” pols, former government officials, and partisan hacks. They come with an agenda and often with very little real information.  Sometimes that agenda is partisan. Sometimes it’s just to get face time and promote themselves or an organization. In some cases, and here I get even angrier, they get paid to do it.  This does not include academic types who come in with expressed knowledge and are good sources when they have an expertise on the subject matter.

This has become the norm now on CNN, Fox News and elsewhere, and it has blurred the difference between journalists and THE REST OF THE MEDIA.  

The man on the street will believe these folks, though they are not gullible enough to swallow it all. 

The pundits, of course, are not the worst of the “media.” The worst of the worst are the blowhards who have their own show on cable TV or Talk radio and then tout what they call  “breaking news,” and “an Exclusive Report.” They then use  sketchy information that they slant their way, so they can promote their own political agenda, build their ratings and increase their paycheck.  I don’t want to give them any more publicity. You know who they are. 

Even farther out are the conspiracy theorists with podcasts or midnight talk shows who talk pure garbage. Their take on the world is so far out, that book publishers would reject the plot because it’s so ridiculous. They used to focus on UFO’s, Area 51 and chlorinated water, but now they have invaded politics.   

 Now that you have thought about this, mix in the Internet where anybody can write a blog like this one, in their home office, make up everything, design a nice website, call themselves a news organization and post it. (I am not a news organization, just a former reporter).  A few thousand clicks later, that post goes viral. The mainstream media, those reporters who actually work for a living and check on real facts, are forced to spend hours upon hours chasing down some story that turns out to be a work of fiction so far-fetched that you couldn’t sell it at the supermarket checkout counter.  They do it because their viewers/listeners would accuse them of bias or conspiracy if they didn’t at least check and debunk the latest rumor.     

What’s the solution?

 Your average person out there in the real world is too busy making a living, paying the rent and picking their child up at day care that they don’t have time to think about it. They chalk up anything they don’t agree with right away to “fake news,” because they see no difference between a website created in a basement in eastern Europe and one created in the newsroom at the New York Times. (In a future blog I will provide some tips on how to detect fake news.)    

So, it is up to REAL journalists, who work at REAL news organizations to separate themselves from the refuse.

They need to return to good solid conservative (with a small c) journalism, using verified sources, mostly on the record with facts that can be confirmed. They need to get it right. And if that means asking some politician or spokesman to explain some absurd comment he made based on untrue information, and repeating that question to that politician or spokesman over and over until he does explain it, then do it. And yes, if that means proving him wrong with factual information and calling him or her out—so be it. That’s not bias, its holding our leaders responsible for their words and actions. That’s journalism and that is what the founding fathers had in mind when they protected the free press.

#1 (This is the first of what I hope will be a series of blogs on things that matter, large and small. Next up, “How to detect fake news.”) 

My latest book: you can order it here.  hanksilverbergbooks.com