Then We Can Talk

 

It's not too late to learn to love the smell of newsprint in the morning.

Being in quarantine leaves people way too much time on their hands.
     Unfortunately, some of them spend that time on social media.
     That is a very bad idea. Do jigsaw puzzles (You can get Wysocki puzzles with 2,000 pieces. That should take your mind off Facebook.), take up the bassoon, clean out your closets, write letters to your relatives (even the ones you hate). Anything but social media.
      Of course you want to know what's going on. Here's a suggestion, get a subscription to a newspaper. That way, you'll find out the FACTS about what is happening.
      This bizarre attitude some people have that those of us who have devoted our lives to ferreting out the truth about how government works (or doesn't) and about all of the important things that have an impact on people's lives are somehow not doing that is just incomprehensible. Some people even seem to believe there is a concerted effort by the press to undermine good people who are running the government. Trust me, we aren't. As a rule, reporters are not that organized. And we wouldn't want to.
      The editorial pages of newspapers hold opinions that my run counter to yours. So, ignore them. They have nothing to do with the news pages.
      The press is dedicated to truth and ethics. Sometimes it doesn't look that way, especially on television where it seems the electronic media is always fixated on a single story. But, the working press, the few newspaper reporters who are left, the radio reporters, the public media producers are dedicated to digging for the truth.
      Yes, there are fewer of us. Gone are the days when the tabloids of  New York City flew reporters to Belgrade to interview the parents of a college athlete or sent 40 reporters to tail Eliot Spitzer as his governorship imploded. But those of us who are left care about nothing more than providing our readers and listeners with the facts.
      There was a time when the Fourth Estate was well-respected. Remember, we were instrumental in ending a foolish war based on "A Bright and Shining Lie." We were instrumental in ending a Presidency after a two-bit break-in proved to be an overarching criminal enterprise.
     We had enemies then. Spiro Agnew (ok, William Safire wrote it for him) called us "nattering nabobs of negativism." But we were respected by most of the powers that be.  Often disliked, but respected.
      We haven't changed. The industry has. And not for the better. But the practitioners have not. We still care about what we always cared about.
      I'm not looking for accolades. I'm not looking for people to like me. But I do hope people return to respecting the professional press. Not for us. For them.
       The moment we were tagged by a Stalinist line, "enemy of the people," you would have thought any intelligent person would have said, "That's a scary, Stalinist accusation and we can't listen to that kind of thing." Only someone who traffics in lies uses rhetoric like that. It has always been thus.
       Democracy requires an informed public. It's never been a spectator sport. Citizens of a democracy have an obligation to educate themselves. Not to read every random social media post that falls in their Facebook feed, but to search for the media that is produced by professionals, people who have spent their working lives digging for the facts.
       As the sainted Daniel Patrick Moynahan said, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but your are not entitled to your own facts." I can't even imagine what that brilliant, erudite man would make of the world today when people who work for the administration of the country he loved so much use obscene terms like "alternative facts."
     There are no "alternative facts." Thore are called lies. There are people who traffic in disinformation. The press is the front line against liars.

A pile of print material, mostly about farming.

            We have always been in the frontline against lying and dissembling. The difference now is the lies can be shared universally. And are.
             Posting and reposting information that is not properly sourced or is from a spurious source is not doing anybody any favors. My theory on Facebook is that it is for photos of grandchildren, cats, dogs, horses and wildlife. Cute things only. LinkedIn is for job hunting. Twitter is for professionals to share with each other. Is that so hard?
             Political discourse is great. Discourse. Discussion. Not yelling at each other. But it has to be based on facts, not the invention of bloviating AM radio ranters who are trying to sell snake oil to the masses. And not the hallucinations of conspiracy-theorists wearing tin-foil hats as they sit in their mothers' basements eating Cheetos on the davenport.
            Read the facts. Then we can talk.