RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/29/medias_nevertrump_voices_drown_out_republican_perspective.html

Over the weekend, Washington Post columnist Max Boot had a novel take on President Trump’s impeachment. According to Boot, what Trump said on the phone call with Ukraine’s president was in some ways worse than Andrew Jackson’s forced relocation of Native Americans or FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“Other presidents — from Andrew Jackson with the Trail of Tears during the 1830s, to Franklin D. Roosevelt with the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II — have trampled our values, but they always had a public purpose and usually had congressional support,” Boot wrote.

Either Boot or someone at the Post came to their senses, because the sentence was later amended (stealth-edited) to clarify that Native American genocide and racist imprisonment were “far worse things” than Donald Trump’s alleged misdeeds. But by then, Boot was already being roasted on social media.

There are many more examples of open mouth, insert Boot. Back in October, after the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump said the terrorist was “whimpering and crying” at the end of his life. Boot couldn’t let stand this defaming of the world’s most prominent practitioner of sex slavery and beheadings. He retorted in his column, “The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up.” (For what it’s worth, Baghdadi killed three children when he detonated his suicide vest, and once again, Boot’s column was edited ex Post facto.) Trump supporters scouring Boot’s Twitter feed will find a riches of embarrassment, e.g., his contentions that “The Steele Dossier is way more credible than the Nunes memo” and that Nixon was impeached.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/28/unfunny-cnn-panel-ridicules-trump-supporters-as-credulous-boomer-rubes/

A CNN panel from Saturday night has gone viral this week, showing two guests appearing on air with anchor Don Lemon, mocking Trump supporters during the network’s impeachment coverage.

The discussion features New York Times columnist and CNN contributor Wajahat Ali with ex-GOP strategist Never Trumper Rick Wilson making fun of those who might ever vote for President Donald Trump.

Wilson kicked things off by first insulting the president’s intelligence before characterizing Trump’s supporters as ignorant:

Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter “U” and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows that this is an administration defined by ignorance of the world, and so that’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience — the credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump.

Wilson and Ali then continued with a fake accents to mock those who put Trump into office as unsophisticated backwoods hicks.

“Donald Trump’s the smart one, and y’all — y’all elitists are dumb,” Wilson said.

“You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling!” Ali chimed in.

“Your math and your readin’!” Wilson responded as the three men laughed hysterically at the belittlement of those alienated by media elites such as themselves.

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/34531-A-personal-addition-to-Jim-Lehrers-standards-for-journalists.html

Back in the late ’60’s until the ’80’s I told friends that if they wanted to be really, although relatively quickly, informed about most sides of a complex issue, then they should be regular watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS. Unfortunately, his successors there have not kept to that high standard, devolving into just another partisan gab.

I had personal correspondence with Jim Lehrer back in the days when I wrote many times a day for posts and publications. One such sticks in my mind. I’d just visited the traveling Vietnam memorial wall, and commented that it brought up so many feelings and memories that I had nothing to say, I was dumbstruck. Until that time, I hadn’t known that Lehrer served as a Marine officer.  He wrote back to me that he had the same reactions and feelings as I.

In the linked obit, Jim Lehrer’s standards of journalism are listed. I would add one more: if you’ve nothing really worth saying, don’t say it.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2020/01/23/jim-lehrers-old-school-jo

By Dallas Morning News Editorial

When he signed off from his long and excellent broadcasting career, Jim Lehrer was still the same sort of journalist that he started as. He was, as he put it, a newspaperman.

The term is dated now, but Lehrer described in a common term then something important about the kind of journalism he did. It was a journalism that was sober and serious, more attached to reason than emotion, and in relentless pursuit of the facts.

His journalism was rooted in the way he did his job early in his career on the city desk of the Dallas Times-Herald and The Dallas Morning News, before he sat in front of a camera at KERA and launched himself in broadcast.

The camera’s lights never changed the man or the way he did his work, and the nation was better for it.

In his years alongside Robin MacNeil and alone, Lehrer, who died today at 85, presented the news fairly, fully and with genuine balance, standing as an example of how the work should be done of both presenting and consuming information about our world.

And it stands in such stark contrast to the nonstop nonsense of bias, noise and garbage that presents itself as television news today. That is entertainment created to hold eyeballs and sell ads. And that wasn’t Jim Lehrer’s journalism.

Lehrer was of the old school. In public broadcasting he perhaps did not have the same pressures that commercial television might have applied. But given his personal character and his strong sense of the ethics of journalism, we doubt any commercial calling would have fit him at all.

Every journalist practicing the craft today should listen to his words about how to do the job and do it well. Because that is exactly what he did.

Here is what he said.

People often ask me if there are guidelines in our practice of what I like to call MacNeil Lehrer journalism. Well, yes, there are, and here they are. Do nothing I cannot defend. Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me. Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and as good a person as I am. Assume the same about all people on whom I report. Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise. Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label everything. Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.

Rest in peace, Jim Lehrer. You were a great newspaperman.