My moratorium on the news, and commentators in general

The lifelong journalist goes celibate, avoiding opinions masquerading as reporting

Before I return to excerpts from my research into nineteenth-century Republican conventions, and the role played by early African American delegates during and after Reconstruction, I can’t resist a comment on the out-sized, distortive role being played by the news media on today’s political turmoil. I have recently decided to turn them off for the rest of the year. Not because I have lost interest in the news—far from it—but because so much of what passes for “news” these days is simply barely-disguised opinions.

In an era when some major networks have started a disturbing trend toward 24-hour “coverage” of what they almost laughingly label “breaking news,” and when they predictably run out of new facts to report, or the old facts are getting stale, they must fill the empty space with commentary. The old facts can be repeated only so often before people stop listening. So talking heads are routinely trotted out to offer their “take” on yesterday’s hot story, while everyone waits for some earthshaking new development. But this isn’t journalism. It isn’t even close.

Opinions are not news. Everyone has one. We are entitled to that much. Some opinions may be a little more informed than others, but almost all are based on guesswork—speculation about the outcome of events still unfolding—and frankly, I prefer listening to someone who is not being paid to produce an opinion made to order. And I suspect these news shows use some sort of algorithm to select commentators based on what they are most likely to say. No surprise there.

But a self-proclaimed expert’s monologue is not news, no matter how the anchors try to dress it up. These fine folks may well be experienced in their area, and more knowledgeable than average, but that does not magically transform them into expert oracles—I suspect many of them are being paid well to sit by the telephone and wait for their next opportunity, practicing their canned remarks—but in the end, their highly-speculative opinions are only minimally more important than that of the average man in the street.

So we go through the same spectacle, hour after hour. A circus of opinions, where former senators, former prosecutors, former generals, former judges—now little more than press flacks for one side or the other—are quizzed for their reactions and expert, instant analysis—as if they alone were blessed with a crystal ball to share with lucky viewers. Meanwhile, the interplay between anchors or round-table moderators is, well, sophomoric at best: “What do you think, based on your long experience …” After praising them to the skies. Or whining to uncooperative sitting politicians, “You’re not answering the (loaded) question I just asked. Why won’t you just answer my question?”

Okay, I admit it. I am a dinosaur. I long for the days when journalists used to report the news, including, when needed, a summary of an expert’s opinion for further context. And then wrote the next story, based on the latest facts … not the latest opinions offered by people who were not germane to the story but are willing, for pay, to ramble on for the cameras. Especially physicians who have not treated the person whose health is being examined—since most honest physicians would refuse to violate their patient’s confidentiality, but suddenly develop unimpeachable 20-20 hindsight when it is another doctor’s patient … and they want to display their unimpeachable expertise. Or my least favorite of all: unemployed lawyers who fall all over themselves to second-guess what other lawyers are doing in an ongoing case.

The world apparently has too many lawyers with nothing better to do, who jealously jockey for position on speed-dial lists to pick apart someone else’s arguments and strategies while waiting for their own next case. The newest wave of ambulance-chasers … passed over by prospective clients … if they were really any good at what they do, they would be working, too busy to talk to these talk-show ringmasters. Instead, there they are, waiting by the telephone …

A good friend of mine, a retired judge who still fills in when needed, was recently talking to me in a friendly conversation about “expert witnesses,” their qualifications, and how he dealt with them. He said he allowed almost anyone, after a few basic questions about their basic knowledge and area of expertise, were satisfied, to testify—if without anointing them—but did not generalize about what other judges did. He rarely refused to admit expert testimony in a trial, but admitted the bar was laughably low. “You could be an expert witness,” he told me, “if you declared yourself an expert.”

“Want to try?” Now that bar is awfully low; are experts really a dime a dozen? So I laughed. He may have been speaking partly in jest, but I took him at his word.

No thanks, Judge. Now any historian and published biographer claiming to be an expert on anything—even after years of patient research—is a sitting duck. I have the brutal book reviews to prove it … and an experienced cross-examining lawyer could humiliate me with a few well-chosen quotes from those reviews … without even breaking a sweat. I might get paid anyway, but what I would lose in self-esteem would not be worth it. I suppose if I made my living that way—pretending to be an expert, and not caring what people thought, as long as I could get paid for it … I might have taken him up on his offer.

But back to the news. I used to be a news junkie. It came naturally. Most journalists back then got into the profession because they either loved to write or had an insatiable curiosity about the world in general—and thus loved to ask relevant questions, sometimes embarrassingly personal ones—or both, as in my case. I began my career as a weekly newspaper reporter, when television news was still considered a poor step-cousin, and the longest evening news program on any network was still a half-hour long.

We spent our spare time reading every major newspaper we could find—not watching TV, from which we knew we could learn very little … even admired anchors like Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or Harry Reasoner, who had begun long ago as reporters and knew the rules … By the time it got on TV, it was often old news.

We newspaper reporters had no choice but to know our subjects inside and out, so we asked every question we could of the people involved in a story. We found the other basic facts we needed in our newspaper morgues, in encyclopedias, in almanacs, in books. We did not have the Internet back in the early 1970s, and on the rare occasion when we badly needed an expert’s interpretation, we called them on a land-line telephone and asked for their informed insight. We were careful to attribute that information, because in almost all cases, it was not a “fact” but an “opinion,” however well-informed. Useful, but not the real story.

Some of my colleagues swore by “confidential” sources. I refused to travel that route. If someone was unwilling to admit his or her opinion publicly—and establish credibility—I was skeptical of the motives involved. It just made me nervous. How could I verify what someone told me privately—and why—even when the source pointed me in the right direction? Most “Deep Throat” sources, I concluded, likely had an axe to grind—and by the time I figured that out, the story would have moved well past the news cycle. Maybe I was too cautious. I probably missed out on a Pulitzer Prize …

One cardinal rule: Never—NEVER—did we dare to offer our own opinions in a news story. That was poison, forbidden. It wasn’t why our names were printed in the bylines. We were there to present the facts, first and last, and sign our names to the account so readers could decide whether they trusted us to be fair and balanced. We observed the facts and we chronicled them. Our primary job was to let the readers decide what to make of those facts, and assist them by presenting as much helpful context as we had room for, after getting those basic facts out.

But what we thought of it all was simply irrelevant, and unalterably so. Even the occasional “news analysis” articles we got to write were carefully vetted; it had to be sound, balanced analysis, not a personal pet peeve …

Most of us were happily starving at little better than minimum-wage jobs—I started out at less than $3 an hour on my first job in 1971—because we thought our jobs were important, and we knew what our sole purpose was: to get the news out. We had editors who boxed our ears if we didn’t ask the right questions, and would not print our stories until we went back and fixed them. Amazingly, those jobs were still hard to get … and keep … not everyone who got one stayed around very long …

* * * * * *

I am a curmudgeon, irredeemably old-school, I know. My working years as a journalist were back when newspapers ruled the world of news. That ship has sailed, sadly. Nowadays the few well-known print reporters who are left standing scramble to spend as much of their time as possible as talking heads on TV news shows to promote their books and, I presume, are rewarded commensurately.

Last week I heard one very well-regarded reporter for the New York Times, who appears regularly on certain news programs as a commentator, desperately try to explain how and why his editorial board—which had just delivered an oracular dressing down of both major presidential candidates—was completely separate from his news division, and apparently did not even read his reporting, for fear it might color their sacred editorial opinions, which do not seem to require facts—delivered, as it were, from on high.

My journalistic Bible, after a fashion, in olden days. Courtesy www.newyorktimes.com

With all due respect, my friend, you write well, and report well—and contrary to what you seem to think, your editorial page bosses should read it. Because you know more than they do. But what you then go out and do on TV is no better … and no more helpful … just so much well-paid noise, filling the otherwise dead minutes of someone else’s predigested narrative.

The temptation is irresistible, I know. The producers and anchors have to create a false sense of relevance, of timeliness, by lining up as many experts as they can to reinforce and inflate the impact of a news story which might otherwise fade into well-deserved oblivion. MSNBC is my least favorite example of a news network gone completely bonkers, with a steady schedule of hour-long programs presented by self-styled “personalities” who “pick up the coverage,” as the outgoing anchor passes the baton at the hourly chime. They have to fill up those hours somehow …

These vaguely smarmy prima donas routinely ignore far more important international stories, which would require far more time to explain than they are deemed to be worth, in favor of thin rehashes of the latest domestic political brouhaha, in case you missed the last hour—or wasting valuable time agonizing in advance about the possible impact of an upcoming Supreme Court decision, or what could happen when the President holds that news conference and makes a gaffe—and then predictably misreading their own teleprompters, stumbling over unfamiliar words in their rush to blurt out the “breaking” news as fast as possible.

Their voices themselves have lately started to make me cringe: whining, cajoling, self-righteously unctuous … flatly droning on and on, pretending to be one’s best friend … trust me, they seem to say, and I will tell you what to think … carefully-constructed monologues bearing “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” as a far more original mind than mine once put it …

MSNBC is by no means alone in this, just the most egregious of those cable news channels—CNN, NewsNation, even Fox News—which my wife insists on keeping on as background noise in our small condo during the day and well into the night. I have tried to tune them out. Almost impossible. Now I am going to start closing my office door and wearing headphones 24/7.

They vet their experts with transparent agendas—hauling out the usual suspects who will reinforce the narrative here, not say something unexpected and interrupt the flow with heretical thoughts or unwanted new facts. They are what I call the well-oiled sphincter muscles of the new TV age … telegenic but not very bright, smooth but appallingly and disingenuously opinionated, with no real sense of fairness or balance, with no one to challenge them, and not worth the rolls of toilet paper it would take to clean them up.

I say, flush the whole lot of them. From now on, I will go back to watching the network evening news at suppertime, if that much—just to say I did—and no more. I do not need these artfully-disguised opinions, whether their own or presented by the chorus of well-paid shills who have nothing original to say, but say it loudly whenever a quarter gets deposited in their slots.

I crave only silence … blessed silence … and low blood pressure. If I miss any breaking news in the meantime, well, I know I will hear it again soon …

Next time: Back to the past, and old-style conventions