"THE PRESS WAS TO SERVE THE GOVERNED, NOT THE GOVERNORS"

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote that about the Pentagon Papers court case.  His statement was quoted in Steven Spielberg’s THE POST, which I saw a few days ago and quite enjoyed.  But while the film’s narrative (all the drama behind the publication of the Pentagon Papers) was compelling, I knew the good guys were going to win.  What really struck me was the attention to detail that Spielberg put into recreating the newspaper world of the early 70s. 

I was an adult, albeit a young one, during the Nixon Administration, but THE POST reminded me that there were aspects of life during that era that now seem practically medieval.  Everybody smoked.  Newspapers had to be typeset with chunks of metal that Gutenberg would have recognized immediately.  And it took a real effort to speak to someone on the phone, because people on both ends of the conversation were shackled to rotary phones on landlines.

The film ends (spoiler alert here) on an ironic note.  Spielberg fast forwards almost exactly one year after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the publication of the Pentagon Papers.  As we hear Richard Nixon plotting his revenge against the Washington Post, we see a night watchman in the Watergate office complex discover an apparent burglary. 

Nixon didn’t know how good he had it in 1971.  You can watch ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN for the rest of the story.

The period from 1971-1975 (the end of both the Nixon Administration and the war in Vietnam) was a golden age for American journalism, or at least for mainstream media.  But it didn’t last long, and Spielberg’s film shows us at least two reasons why.

The financial risks inherent in rocking the boat are front and center in the film.  Less obvious, but probably equally important, is the fact that inside the Beltway, bigshots in the press and bigshots in the government have a symbiotic relationship.  Whether or not they like each other (the film notes the cordial relationship that Ben Bradlee had with JFK, and that Katherine Graham had with Robert McNamara), they always need and use each other.  The press gets access to power and inside information, off the record or otherwise.  In return, they protect their sources in the government, which allows politicians and bureaucrats to shape the news (or further grudges) anonymously.

As most things do these days, THE POST got me to thinking about Donald Trump’s relationship with mainstream media, by which I mean the broadcast networks plus MSNBC and CNN; as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post.  MSM has been covering Donald Trump intensively for over two years as candidate and president, and they still struggle to talk about him honestly. 

They’re a lot better than they used to be, but they still can’t look their audience in the eye and say “the President lied again today.”  They watch clowns like Devin Nunes tout “memos” they know are bogus, and instead of ignoring him, or saying “here comes Devin Nunes with more bullshit,” they cover his nonsense with a straight face. 

Their reporters know better, but their editors and publishers instinctively defer to power, and the corruption of today’s Republican Party is alien to their worldview.  That has turned them into useful idiots in the ongoing Russo-Republican disinformation campaign.

I first wrote about this phenomenon back in September, 2016.  A year and a half later, we’re watching a showdown between Donald Trump and American democracy.  Since press coverage will have an impact on the outcome of the battle, I’m going to expand upon what I said back then. 

The Republican primaries revealed two of Donald Trump’s big strategic advantages.  First, he won by refusing to play fair.  He relied on insults and lies, and when he’s challenged, he either doubles down on his original statement or moves on to a new set of lies and insults.  And the press was completely flummoxed. 

They couldn’t even fall back on their old reliable theme of calling Trump’s lies and insults gaffes, because there are no gaffes in Trump’s world.  Trump is shameless; all publicity is good publicity.  All during the campaign, the press gave Trump a free ride while focusing their criticism on Hillary Clinton.  Clinton is not shameless, which was a huge strategic disadvantage in 2016.  You can talk all you want about Hillary’s deficiencies as a candidate, but the truth is that any conceivable Democratic nominee – Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren – would have been at a similar disadvantage.  Democrats care about the truth.  They keep bringing fact checkers to a barroom brawl.

Donald Trump’s second big advantage also defied conventional wisdom.  He is corrupt, ignorant, misogynistic, bigoted, and narcissistic.  And he won not in spite of those characteristics, but because of them.  That’s an uncomfortable truth, and journalists didn’t (and still don’t) know how to talk about the elephant in the room.  Their silence in 2016 turned many of them into Trump’s accomplices.

As Jay Rosen put it, “asymmetry between the major parties fries the circuits of the mainstream press.”  For veteran political reporters and commentators, whose worldview insists that both parties are comfortably within the American mainstream, people like Donald Trump and Devin Nunes just don’t compute.

And now Donald Trump is president.  Earlier this week, I was on a stationary bike at a gym, watching MSNBC while I pedaled.  A panel of talking heads were discussing one of Donald Trump’s transparently false tweets, and the host asked a panelist, “are you saying that the president is a liar?”  And the poor fellow began to sputter, and finally said something like “I’m not going to call the President of the United States a liar, but what he said wasn’t correct.”

Let me make it clear.  I’m not asking mainstream media to become a Democratic version of Fox News.  I just want them to tell the truth in plain English.  Their failure to use the L-word distorts the record.  Trump isn’t mistaken.  He’s lying.  So are his Republican enablers.  And they’re going to lie a lot more in 2018, about matters critical to the survival of the Republic. 

Those lies are part of a deliberate political strategy, and they’re killing people.  From ICE deportations to health care cuts to rescinding environmental regulations to ignoring climate change, people will die because Republicans lie. 

Once upon a time, the press cheered Hugo Black’s opinion.  Here’s more of it.  “In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

But freedom of the press is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition.  Back in the early 70s, a free and unrestrained press was instrumental in helping to end the war in Vietnam and send Watergate criminals to prison (well, all but one of them).  In 2018, a new generation of journalists is faced with a comparable challenge.  I hope they’re up to it.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-gop-and-big-lie-politics