I was so Disappointed

As I listened to the Friday News Roundtable, which is hosted every week by OPB, one of the panelists said how “disappointed” they were that Republican nominee Donald Trump did not pick a more explosive and contentious vice-presidential running mate.

I thought to myself, “So, to be clear, you are disappointed that a potentially destructive candidate did not pick a more equally destructive running mate because that will make for a more boring story for you to report.”

This is another one of the long list of problems I believe permeate the news biz.

I loved the mid 2000’s TV show “Scrubs” because of its biting commentary on medicine, hospitals, doctors and culture.  One episode I remember was an argument between long time staff nurse Laverne and Chief of Interns, Perry Cox.  Laverne was asking about the tendency of surgeons to always choose exploratory surgery over other options and Cox said, “When was the last time you ever met a cutter who didn’t want to cut? Laverne! You have been here 40 years now, have you ever heard such a thing?”

Likewise, news people apparently don’t prefer a news story that is interesting but without the poisonous consequences over one filled with prurient and insane interest that also results in horrible consequences.  Part of the reason, I think, is because the more messy, complex, bigoted, disgusting story is guaranteed to have plenty of news babies; each of which can then be teased out ad nauseum and in gruesome detail.

They might say they don’t choose the stories they must report, and I expect that’s right.  One problem with the media is it is a competition.  Whoever can claim to be the fastest to report is seen as the best, the “news authority”.  That brings ad dollars.  And the worse, the better.  But there are a list of other “reasons” that I’m sure would be a counterpoint to each of the four points in the code of ethics for the Society of Professional Journalists.

But here’s the bigger problem.  Societies run by demagogues or plagued by fanned fires don’t suffer free media for long.   And I harken back to a Saturday Night Live bit for some support.  When Sarah Palin had appeared on the October 22, 2008 airing of SNL, with her Tina Fey doppelganger, there was a segment with Ms. Palin seated comfortably in an easy chair facing and talking to the camera directly.   And she essentially said that once she and John McCain become president, there would be some changes in how a TV show like Saturday Night Live could parody cultural figures.

I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.  After all, SNL is a program of humorous satire.  But there was no hint of humor, and her veiled threat of censorship sounded less like satire and more like a warning.  If Trump becomes president and if he had, instead of choosing Mike Pense, chosen Newt Gingrich or Chris Christie or even Sarah Palin, I wonder how long the sometimes, nose-high Fourth estate would continue feel invulnerable.  He has already threatened the media and the constitutional basis of a free press. A story that delights for its messiness, but raised to a sufficient temperature, can cook up some really nasty policy consequences.

So when I hear news people lament over how they wish a political story was more spectacularly shit-filled, or how they futz that a personal collapse is less compelling because the sufferer isn’t doing more to blow themselves up in front of cameras or microphones, I wonder if the American people (whoever that really is) might have a point when surveys show large swaths on both sides of the political spectrum say they don’t entirely trust the media.

I don’t mean the hard working journalists who report the facts and refuse to prognosticate or editorialize.  I mean what’s left.

Journalists Do Good Work Until They Don’t?

The flap with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is not unique to Brian Williams, to broadcasting or to the 4th Estate.  The halls of journalism are littered with pockmarks from shots taken at reporters for not upholding the standards to which they supposedly pledge themselves.  Cast your memory back a few short weeks and it was CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan and questions not only over her reporting of a 2013 story on the US Embassy attack in Benghazi but her return to on-air reporting at the network.

About Williams, he claimed more than 10 years ago that he was in the second of four helicopters that was attacked in Iraq.  That seems to be mostly true.  The question is how it was attacked.  When he first told the story, he said the lead chopper was hit by a Rocket Propelled Grenade but both were taking small arms fire.  Over the years (and masterfully explained by NPR Media Critic David Folkenflik – http://www.npr.org/2015/02/05/384119679/brian-williams-criticized-for-exaggerated-iraq-story) the story changed to William’s chopper being the one that was hit by the RPG.

Brian Williams has been sitting in the NBC anchor chair since 2004.  He began his career in 1981 at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Ks.  From there, he worked at WTTG in Washington, DC, then WCAU in Philadelphia.  In 1987, he began broadcasting from WCBS in New York where he remained until 1993 when he joined NBC News.  Wikipedia says he anchored the Weekend Nightly News and was chief White House correspondent before serving as anchor and managing editor of the News with Brian Williams, also broadcast on MSNBC and CNBC.  His career has been extensive and his climb up the network ladder has been long.

But this is in no way a defense of Mr. Williams, Ms. Logan or any journalist that has gotten sloppy.  And that seems to be what has really happened here.  Whether it’s a refusal to do the deep checking a complex story requires, or a subtle need to “be the story” rather than just report on the story, sloppiness is the result.  Back in the day, it was harder to fact check the details of blockbuster stories because those resources weren’t as available to the general public and there was no venue for the public to say a reporter had gotten it wrong. But in the 70s and 80s, the subjects started fighting back.

Remember ABC vs. “Food Lion”, NBC and the exploding gas tank of the General Motors pickup and CBS vs. General William Westmorland?  Since then, with the advent of social media and the taste of blood increasingly on everyones tongue, no iota of information goes free from scrutiny for reasons that range from payback to schadenfreude.

In some ways, Edward R. Murrow, Woodward and Bernstein, Uncle Walter and the untainted others hang like the Sword of Damocles over every modern journalist, as well they should and here’s why.  Former CBS Executive Sam Roberts told Folkenflik these incidents fuel a public already skeptical about media reporting. “Oh you guys just make it up,” Roberts said. [People will say] “See I told you.  Look at what Brian Williams did.  We’re going to hear that over and over from people who are skeptical about the media”.

All a reporter has is his or her ability to tell stories and his ability to convince people to believe them.  Once that is gone, they are no longer a reporter.  Society is quick to take that away.  But reporters tend to be harder on each other regarding this kind of thing than the general public, maybe because of what Mr. Roberts told Mr. Folkenflik.  These incidents only make it harder for us to do our jobs.  Thanks, Brah.

But I certainly appreciate forgiveness and I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t.  People make mistakes and, oddly, some of those same people aren’t very forgiving of the mistakes of others.  Journalism is human recipe of storytelling fact and fiction.  And journalists are a social construction of gumshoe and celebrity.  Absolutely every reporter is subject to getting a fact wrong or embellishing a story a little too much.  Because they have a mouthpiece most others don’t, they do have a special responsibility to do everything they can to tell the transparent truth.  When they make honest mistakes, they need to own up to them quickly.  And everybody, audience and reporters, need to remember their hard work over the years before we kick them to curb for not being perfect, as so few of us are.

It reminds me of an episode of the hit TV show, “Scrubs”.  Chief in Interns, Dr. Percy Cox is telling the residents, including J.D. Dorian “Each and every one of you is going to kill a patient. At some point during your residency you will screw up, they will die, and it will be burned into your conscience forever.”

The pep talk continues …

“The point is, the harder you study, the longer you just might be able to hold off that first kill. Other than that, I guess cross your fingers and hope that the guy you murder is a jackass with no family. Great to see you kids. All the best!”

Journalism can be like that.

Falling From Grace

I love Scrubs. But there is one episode that I particularly like. John McGinty plays Percival Cox, Dr. Perry Cox. He’s Resident Supervisor and all around asshole. He makes life miserable for new doctors Elliott Reed and John “JD” Dorian, as well as other staff, management and the general public at large. He good, very good. And that makes him arrogant, very arrogant.

So one day, a dying patient comes in. And doctor Cox sees an opportunity to save three patients with the organs of this one dying patient. So, he barks to his resident staff and the surgical teams to do three transplants. Problem is, Cox misdiagnoses the dying patient and puts organs infected with rabies into them. All three die.

Cox is demoralized and devastated. And because the hospital is a family deep down, all of the staff decide to set up a round the clock visitation at his home because he won’t leave his couch, he won’t shave, he won’t talk. He is a broken man.

Cox mentors JD. So, of course, he is constantly humiliating him because, in his own way, he sees it as making JD tough. JD loves it, like a puppy looking for the next belly rub. And because he idolizes Cox, it’s hard for him to admit the mistake Cox made. So he avoids his mentor while the rest of his friends cycle in and out of the big man’s apartment.

But finally, he shows up. He sits down, and you can see JD is the only one Cox really wanted to see. And JD tells him he was scared to see him fallen. The point of the visit was for JD to tell Cox how proud of him he was. He says, “after 20 years of being a doctor, when things go badly, you still take it this hard. That’s the kind of doctor I want to be.”

Sometimes, after doing years and years of something, you can forget what it took to get there. You can forget the ethical struggles and the technical hurtles and the learning curves. You can forget the stupid mistakes and the need for forgiveness. You may be an expert, yeah, but you didn’t come out of the clam shell that way. You start to take what you do for granted. And then, something happens. The Indigo Girls relate to this in their song, “Watermark”, when they sing that every five years or so, you circle back to something you think you conquered only to realize it’s just a more complicated version of the same problem.

Sometimes, you need to be hit with a cruise missile of a problem that comes out of nowhere to remind you that, no you aren’t God. You aren’t even a lesser God. And it is at that point, I think, that you get real all over again.