The profession of journalism is dying – slowly, but certainly. Gone – being fired, retired, and laid off – are hundreds of “old fashioned” reporters, the sort who dug for facts, interviewed people, sought truth, worked to keep government honest. In their place is a new generation, a “sit on your butt, parrot politics, dress up activism with googled facts” sort – and it stinks.
Never did the nation’s founders, or any journalist worth their salt, from Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Bill Buckley to Walter Lipman, Walter Cronkite, and Bob Woodward, think the “free press” – and protection given the Fourth Estate by our First Amendment – was meant to become part of government, lazy, uncurious, captured, or filled with largely ignorant apparatchiks.
But that is where we are. Talking with seasoned journalists – conservatives and liberals – who have been laid off, including top-flight thinkers and feature writers at the Washington Post and other traditionally liberal-but-inquiring media outlets, the reality is overwhelming, frightening.
Gone is the fresh story, deep dive that takes time, assembles pieces of a complex puzzle, is based on patient, dangerous sleuthing, that frustrating, difficult story which unearths genuine public corruption, shines a bright light on powerful people– regardless of party – who are dishonest.
Gone too are the democracy-preserving stories that quietly draw out honest public servants, assuring them that truth matters, that they are serving the public interest – a higher interest – by being courageous, and are being courageous by being honest.
Instead, we have the rise of the “new journalist,” who cares little for truth, mightily for personal credit and “having an impact” on politics, pushing prejudice as fact. In place of letting chips fall where they may, this species gathers what justifies their political agenda, and ignores the rest.
On the numbers, the shift in quality and quantity of newsroom personnel is big and affects public understandings of truth – especially when key facts are omitted, and reporting is increasingly one-sided, supporting dishonest actors in the government, rather than holding them accountable.
By way of example, the Washington Post laid off dozens of their best earlier this year, along with Vox Media, which owns New York Magazine, while dozens more were let go from the New York Times, LA Times, Warner Brothers, and even some conservative outlets.
Being swept out are the “old school” reporters and editors, not traditionally conservative but conservative in the way they viewed their job, imagining they were pursuing truth not politics, offering credible, tangible service to the Republic, not to a political party, passion, or movement.
George Orwell, famous for social critiques and hard truths, including in those in Animal Farm and 1984, where he predicted the rise of government-aligned, consciously communist reporters – was also a cutting wit in the non-fiction world.
Born 120 years ago this month, Orwell noted that “intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.” He opened that can of worms – one the new brand of reporter wants closed.
The implications of this shift are profound, and worth laying out.
First, as we watch a sitting president, attorney general, heads of the FBI, IRS, and other agencies dissembling, openly lying and denying acts with no plausible defense – a pay-to-play scheme that involved sale of access to foreign governments for tens of millions of dollars, the modern newsroom ignores incontrovertible facts, documents, testimony, to protect criminality for party.
Americans watch open-jawed as a boldly unethical president, his son, family, and friends, profit from criminal actions, yet get a pass from the current attorney general, Justice, FBI, and IRS.
In the Watergate era, Republicans believed the nation mattered more than their party; reporters had their own fame in mind, but also knew that the Republic required integrity to survive. Today, we watch Democrats fawn, resurrect distractions, and mostly go silent in the face of criminality.
Moreover, we watch the new nomenklatura, a left-leaning brand of non-journalist who poses as a traditional journalist, reciting exact talking points of corrupt political actors in what is transparently their party, ignoring whistleblowers, black-and-white documents, tapes and facts.
The spectacle is one that sobers the soul, worries patriotic, truth-loving, honest and constitutionally inclined Americans, many of whom feel they have no recourse, since the media is so powerful – and by non-reporting, misreporting, and covering corruption, is complicit.
A second implication should sober the media. The First Amendment does not justify complicity in federal crimes; when media organs justify criminal acts, cover them, align with criminal actors by presenting false facts and omitting material ones, watch the law of libel begin to change.
Mostly however, the impact of this tectonic shift in the media – from real and honest reporting to false and politically-motivated non-reporting – is simple: The public no longer trusts those who pretend to be journalists, instead seeing them as betrayers of the public trust.
That – and government dishonesty excused, or actively hidden by the media – represents a merging of government and media, which translates directly to the threat Orwell predicted, a threat to the integrity of the Republic.
On the positive side, good journalism remains possible. As Walter Cronkite once noted, “Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.” But the reality is that we are slipping, the nation is becoming acculturated to activism as journalism – and that spells the death of journalism.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
