The Four Recent Losses in Journalism and Why It Matters

If there were ever a time to write about journalism, this is it. Four of the most respected journalists in the biz are either gone or in the process of leaving-- and all are exiting on top or while falling down.
The recent losses of journalistic leaders has caused me to look back at the steps that led me to become fascinated with the adventure, the curiosity, the writing, and the intellectual challenges of both the people and ideology that make up the journalism profession.

When I was a kid I looked up to two types of people who I thought were the apotheoses of human achievement: astronauts and professional athletes. This made sense to me, since both were easily understandable to a kid who might not have full reasoning powers, but can comprehend both adventure and the easily graspable idea of winning and losing.

Beginning in in my late teenage years throughout my 20s, that focus shifted a with a sharp sense of urgency to musicians. I began asking myself, "What's the use of working towards self-realization if you aren't able to actively participate in the beauty of the creative process--such as music?" And with that I just fell head over heels in love with bluegrass and was determined to become an active member of that art form.

But now, as I get through my 30s, there's been another question that has replaced that one: "How do you fully participate in human creativity if you don't actively try to understand the complexities of the world and people around you?" The great writers, thinkers, and creative class who have had such a major impact on our culture typically have a knack for understanding the complex layers of the individual, society, and culture. Dylan, Guthrie, Twain, and currently even Jon Stewart all immersed themselves into American culture and the plight of the lower and middle class working people. All of these men were dedicated to using both experience and interactions to tell the beautiful and heartbreaking stories of the American people.

Written word, spoken word, satire, and music all have the power to bring change. Journalists might not have the same enduring legacy as authors and musicians, but they still play a significant part in all the major cultural shifts; many have been killed as testimony to that.




Musicians, writers, and journalists all tell existential stories about human nature, just in different formats. Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, investigative reporters such as Taibbi, Hersh and Woodward, and satirists such as Twain and Stewart have all effectively brought more cultural and social shift to this country for the under-represented than most politicians.


Of all the hits that we've seen, Brian Williams is the messiest and most complicated. We've seen the most-watched news anchor of our current time possibly lose his job over a story that had nothing to do with the news. What it does concern are the ethical implications of a public who wants our public figures, politicians, and news anchors to also be entertainment celebrities. Williams walked that line better than anyone, but when it came time to creatively embellish stories, as every one of us does, the online punditry and twittersphere smelled blood and came in for the kill.

There was something that bothered me about this whole deal. Mostly because it was not necessarily about some newfound national desire for absolute "truth" in the media. Not when Fox News tells the truth a reported 18% of the time and is the #1 cable news outlet. No, there was something else going on and I think it was our bloodthirsty appetite to see a good man get torn down.

I saw very few people concerned about the trust that Williams had broken as the "Lyin' Brian" memes caught fire. There was much more of an engaged bloodsport spectacle of people feeling like they get to be a part of this action, like a crowd gathering at the gallows all clamoring to help pull the lever. If bringing a bad person down feels good, bringing a good one down is even better.

Jon Ronson wrote about the spectacle of public shaming in the New York Times:

"As time passed, though, I watched these shame campaigns multiply, to the point that they targeted not just powerful institutions and public figures but really anyone perceived to have done something offensive. I also began to marvel at the disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment. It almost felt as if shamings were now happening for their own sake, as if they were following a script."

Ronson followed several people who had been publicly torn down over offensive tweets, one of which was a young PR girl, Justine Sacco, where he describes the snowballing energy that drives our desire to participate as a virtual group in actions we would not do alone.

"But perhaps she had now come to understand that her shaming wasn’t really about her at all. Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval, and that is what led to her undoing. Her tormentors were instantly congratulated as they took Sacco down, bit by bit, and so they continued to do so. Their motivation was much the same as Sacco’s own — a bid for the attention of strangers."

While that level of accountability is required for investigative journalists to keep massive institutions in check, it is not required by the public for our news sources-- remember that Fox News is the #1 cable news program--and that is ultimately why the national outrage over the Williams story did not feel either genuine or equal to the crime.

Just a few shades over in the industry, where a single embellishment or mistake can ruin a career, we have the great investigative journalists of our time, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. In a testament to fastidiousness, he had trouble getting the RS fact checkers to sign off on one of his most famous lines, where he described the investment bank Goldman Sachs and its role in the financial crisis:

“The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”



Taibbi: "I remember is the fact checkers coming to me at one point and they almost killed the line because squids don’t have blood funnels. I was trying to explain that was part of what made it funny, but they were very insistent. I had to go over their heads on that one."

Such scrutiny is required for investigative pieces because one factual error can wreck the entire work. If Goldman Sachs can find one substantiated error, falsehood, or lie then that's all they need to cast doubt on the entire article. Taibbi and RS know this (which makes the UVA rape article both out of character and somewhat unforgivable) so they task their fact checkers to go over every single sentence. That is why one writer is able to take on what is arguably the most powerful corporation in the world with both truth and substance.

On the other side, we have two of the most respected journalists of our time, Bob Simon and David Carr, suddenly pass away; while it might not feel like much to most people, these two were giants in the industry.

Much like with Stewart, you did not want to be caught in David Carr's crosshairs. While one was based around comedy and satire, the other was soberingly serious; but both raised the bar for media practices through their hard work and most importantly, intellectual honesty. The ire of either of these two meant you were caught either being lazy, or worse, dishonest, and in today's profit driven twitter speed news cycles we need more of these watchdogs, not less. Here's a great interview Carr did with Terry Gross on her show "Fresh Air".

Jon Stewart has had such an effect on news media that just his announcement of his impending departure sent the internet into such a frenzy of remorse posts that he opened the following day's show by asking, "Ummm....did I die yesterday?" Satirist, comedian, watchdog, voted "most trusted news-person"--I don't think anyone has been able to properly describe the impact Stewart has had on our current media landscape. Many have tried, and you can pull up countless posts that all do a great job of discussing various effects.

We love the arts for so many reasons, one of which is they give us a deeper insight into the human condition and experience. But strip away the smoke and mirrors of entertainment and we have a class of people who overflow with curiosity and bravery, and are able to understand the hugeness of the world and bring it to our doorstep. The older I get, the more I've begun to appreciate both the ability to do this as well as the western philosophy of freedom of speech that allows it. Criticism and cynicism aside, David Carr was adamant that the golden age of journalism is not necessarily behind us.

--Brian Paul Swenk

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Confused about the NSA collecting our phone records? This might help...

The NSA phone records whistle-blower issue is an intellectual buffet of ideas that we haven't seen in a long time.  The reason this one issue is so different than everything else we get bombarded with is it doesn't allow us to follow our normal pattern of opinion forming, which is to land on the side of people that we've already decided we trust.  For example, if you trust Obama then you are for healthcare reform; if you don't trust him, then you're against it--pretty simple.  We all function this way, no matter how actively engaged in current debate issues we are.  I trust the journalists Matt Taibbi and Chris Hayes, and when they present an opinion on an issue that I don't know anything about, it is easy for me to adopt their views on the issue.  I don't blindly go about this, and I'm not afraid to disagree with them, but they are two people with whom I have developed a deep sense of trust in how they approach complicated issues.

So here we have this issue that nobody really knows how to feel about.  I've seen very few opinions from my conservative friends and relatively few from my liberal friends--most of which are just along the lines of "Snowden did a good thing." This says nothing about the deeper issue at hand, but even more fascinating is where the political superstars are falling on this issue.

Snowden is a criminal and should be punished, and this spying program is what we need.
President Obama
Lindsey Graham
Al Franken
Peter King


Snowden is a hero and should be celebrated, and this spying program goes against who we are. 
Al Gore
Rand Paul
Glen Beck
Michael Moore

When will we ever see these guys agree on anything again? There is no other issue that will divide these players into these group, and that is just one of the things that makes this so fascinating.   On social and environmental issues I'm very liberal, so I do have varying degrees of trust in both Obama and Al Gore.  But I can easily place Lindsey Graham and Glen Beck in the "I do not trust at all" category.  So I, and most all of us, are in brand new, uncharted territory of having no guiding lights with this issue, and we haven't even gotten into the particulars of the main issue at hand.  I love this!  This is the intellectual equivalent of our own version of "Survivorman:" being thrust into the wilderness and having to make every decision with only a modicum of information.  If you like intellectual adventure, this is it.

Edward Snowden

One thing I do know is that this is not about Edward Snowden, in the same way that the WikiLeaks case is not--and should never be--about Bradley Manning.  Fox news and other so called news outlets go straight for the dirt and try to drudge up these guys' personal lives and cast them as fractured and deceptive beasts.  If you see this in the news don't fall for it.  It is the laziest and ugliest form of journalism and embarrasses the entire industry. Manning and Snowden knowingly and willingly broke their employer agreements, believing the consequences were worth the risk, and they will face those consequences.  But demonizing whistle-blowers and allowing the bigger issues to take a back-page into the nebulous unresolved ether is not how we should deal with these situations. 

The lens that this issue should be viewed through is how we want our government to function in today's information age, and there is no easy black and white answers here.  Most Americans don't want the NSA compiling all of their personal information in a huge database, but then most Americans are ok with the NSA using phone records to track terrorists.  So it isn't an easy issue, and I have a hunch that this is only the beginning of revalations about secret NSA tactics.

The NSA headquaters even looks ominous.

But I think I can give you a few specks of light for your lens.  It may seem like this is a brand new information age issue, but it really isn't, and we do have some historical perspective to help us.  Our massive intelligence-gathering industry was developed during the Cold War, for good reasons.  We were in a nuclear standoff with Russia, and there was really other no option to protect ourselves.  But after the Cold War wound down, we were stuck with this massive bored but aggressive gorilla in the room, and this is what we have to be cautious of.  What started as a positive thing for our country quickly turned onto our own citizens--most importantly the leaders of the civil rights movement.  This is the most perfect example of how something that can be seen as useful and positive one second can be turned against us the next.  As the civil rights movement heated up, our government and CIA turned the huge angry gorilla of intelligence industry onto the leaders of this movement, and we saw how quickly things can turn sour when the powers that be are challenged.  So we don't have to look far to find our government and intelligence industry being on the wrong side of history.

King leaving the FBI after questioning.

Partisan rhetoric and Tea Party notwithstanding, you might be surprised that most everyone in the upper levels of politics does trust Obama on this matter.  Remember that Lindsey Graham and Peter King are on his side.  This is not about our current administration abusing these powers; what we are all afraid of is if we somehow get stuck with a truly bad administration that will use these powers for nefarious purposes.  We have to decide these issues not just on what is best for us now, but what is best for us in the future under less than ideal leaders.

Joseph McCarthy

The other side of this issue that I believe has created a numb confusion on this issue is the knowledge that all of our information is always being collected by the Googles and Facebooks of the world.  We are aware of this and are mostly comfortable with it, since we still use Gmail and Facebook; so hearing that our phone records were collected by the government didn't create the immediate visceral outrage that it would have a decade ago.  We've already given up so much of our sense of privacy, so why should we care if the NSA is using our phone records to track the evil people that want to kill innocents?  The simple answer is that Google and Facebook don't have the power to arrest you, ruin your life, and break families apart on erroneous and scattered information.   None of this matters when you are Lindsey Graham, a rich white southern man, who will never be profiled.   But we aren't all rich white southern men, are we?  In fact, I met an Iranian man the other night at Foothills Brewery who was amazingly fascinating and intelligent and is someone that I want to stay in touch with.  He lives in England and comes to NC often for his work.  If he and I stay in touch will that put me on a watch list?  Other than the red-neck banjo player watch list, of course.  You can see how easy these issues that at first seem non-tangible to us can digress into something very real.

These are the real issues here.  It is not about the whistle-blowers: it is about the type of society we want to live in, and the powers we want to grant our government to keep us safe.  So for once we can't just fall in line with whatever side the conservatives and democrats decide to fall on.  We have to think about this for ourselves, and I am glad that we have this opportunity.  If we had more of these opportunities maybe we wouldn't blindly side with whatever talking points are rammed down our throats by the powers that be, which have been rammed down their throats by the real powers that be: the corporations.  Americans having to think for ourselves--I'm all for it. 

A voice for the hardworking people in the bottom 50%

Everyone just wants something to work.  And it is OK to disagree on what works - because what works for the top 1% and what works for people below the poverty line are two completely different things.  But finding what works for the country as a whole becomes an endless game of chasing your tail, since it requires concessions on both ends.  And since nothing is ever completely fair, the larger concessions have to come from the very top, from the people with the loudest and most politically influential voices.  And so here we sit in a stagnant no-man's land.  


I ask you, what more can the bottom 1/3 of this country do?  They/we live paycheck to paycheck, if they can even find a job, and have no savings or extra money for things like decent health insurance.  There's a high percentage that are also facing "up-side down mortgages" (they owe more than their home is worth) and they have run out of options.   And nothing burns me up more than to hear right wing zealots say that these people are lazy and parasitic.  I grew up in a very small rural community where no one had more than a modest house and a tiny amount of savings for an emergency.  And I found out quickly that poor people are some of the hardest working people alive.  They will work repetitious factory jobs (back when there were factories), they will work outside in extreme weather conditions, whether it is building houses in freezing temps, or paving roads on hot summer days, or milking cows twice a day for 365 days a year. They'll work all week and then help their neighbor put up hay, or put on a new roof on the weekend.  For these people to be called lazy only shows the voices of the rich are completely out of touch with any type of reality and should be discounted immediately.  Choose a random person out of my community and I'll bet a month's pay that they work harder than Mitt Romney any day of the week! 

As I was listening to right-wing radio the other day I heard in the first five minutes that the bottom 50% of this country are "nothing but moochers and parasites" and that "the best thing that could happen on election day is for there to be a huge sale of Nike sneakers so the right people will be voted in."  As Matt Taibbi pointed out this new wave of conservative ideology and rhetoric will inevitably bring the GOP down.  This is not the voice for the middle, and who in their right mind would want to be a part of this vitriolic message?


Now, there are people who live off the welfare system and work harder to stay on that system than they do to be responsible.   And all of us, no matter what affiliation, will agree that is a huge problem that should be addressed and dealt with.  But in my poor rural county everyone that I know wants to be independent and make their own way.  For most people it is basic human nature, and when the conservative voices not only forget this, but disgrace us by using words like "moochers" and "parasites" they are only digging their well-deserved grave.   

Taibbi's use of the drug addict metaphor is dead-on.  The voices of the conservative movement have to keep one-upping each other for attention and taking bigger hits until the line where reality begins and ends becomes blurred.  One of the greatest political moves in the history of our great country was the Republican party convincing poor rural white people that they were looking out for their best interests.  "Low taxes, tiny government, and guns, guns, guns!" was the mantra, and it worked!  The party run by the richest of the rich for the rich convinced people living on $300 a week that they had their best interests at heart.  Unbelievably genius, right?   But in today's world of radicalized right-wing talk radio they have become unhinged from that one thing that has kept them competitive in elections.  There just aren't enough one-percenters out there to win the elections for them.  And now they are resorting to disgusting back-room tactics like re-drawing district lines in their favor, and passing various laws that will keep the poorest of the poor away from ballot boxes each cycle. 


What our country loses in this slide down into a radicalized cesspool of rhetoric is the fact that we need some of these forgotten conservative ideals in our political discourse.   The importance of personal freedoms along with personal responsibilities, the 2nd amendment freedoms and the responsibilities that come with it, the genuine desire to not let government overgrow, and financial prudence are all important ideas that have made this country great.  But these topics have no place in today's endless debates when you have unlimited soundbites from people who make the characters of Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" look visionary. 

Watching this slow motion train-wreck does have a morbid entertainment quality to it, I have to say.   Everyone must admit some joy as we feed energy to these caricatures of politicians, as we push one to the top and watch excitedly as they fall like a slalom skier wrecking at 60 miles an hour tumbling down the mountain.  Then we find another willing participant and push them to the top of the same mountain and wait for the same outcome.  The GOP race has turned into nothing but a Wide World of Sports disaster outtake reel.  

Everyone has to sacrifice to get out of this slump, and some more than others. I only wish the loudest voices of the conservative movement could get a glimpse of what poor people go through everyday to just have a place in this world. (Here's a good start. "Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America" - read it!)  And if I hear anyone call the simple people of rural communities lazy parasites again I just might fucking lose it. 

New paths, new ideas, new connections.

"People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values."  --M. Taibbi



Something has to give.  We can't continue on this path and give our grandchildren and great-grandchildren the life we want them to have.  Populations are exploding, and our oceans, rain-forests, and middle-class are dying.  We can pretend that those 3 things don't factor into our future, but you have to shut off any sense of reason to do so.  People who consistently look for new paths, new ideas, new connections are able to experience moments of clarity when things suddenly make sense, where several pieces of the puzzle suddenly  snap into place, creating a new picture that was not expected.   Two weeks ago I stumbled across an amazing video that articulated the visceral drive of the people protesting the current dirty affair between money and politics in this country.  But first, a few thoughts.   


The coverage of the Occupy Movement has been run into the ground by the 24-hour news cycle media; as one of my friends put it, "If I hear the word 'occupy' one more time, I'm going to lose it."  The protests started in the most beautiful sense that I've ever witnessed.  "We are the 99%" was a beautiful slogan that rightfully stated the true division of power, but through the combination of the Fox News Agenda and also of the Left Wing extremists taking over the discourse, the movement has been mostly divided back into the 49% vs 49% that so easily fits the standard media narrative.   If we keep it framed within this comfortable narrative then nobody has to stretch their ego-centric world-view to see a possible new path. If the story is 49% vs 49% then everything stays the same.  But if the story is 99% vs 1% then there is a chance for fundamental change in how Americans not only view our place in the global economic village but also how we focus our daily energy and how we define our "success."


But if you look close enough, and if you forget about arbitrary labels, then there is a tiny sliver of light breaking through the cracks.  A light that asks the questions, "Are you ok? Are we ok? Does the current zeitgeist feel right to you?"  The reason the protests took off with such speed and force throughout the world is that the answer is a general, "No.  We don't feel ok," and "No.  The current state of our society doesn't feel ok either."  Something isn't right and we can feel it, but we aren't sure what it is, and the easiest and quickest answer is to just blame the other side.  Blame the liberals, blame the conservatives.   Blame al Qaeda, blame the Chinese.   Blame the poor, blame the rich.  And on and on.  We have to blame somebody right? 

 Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame 

U2 - One

If we can just get those people out of our way then everything will be fine again; and just like an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, all will be fixed by supper time.  The first step to expanding our consciousness out of this endless blame cycle is to stop thinking in terms of labels.   There is only one label that will produce positive results: the human label.  It is important to realize that there are no such things as liberals or conservatives, republicans or democrats.  These are completely arbitrary terms that have no meaning other than to allow us to not only be divided and controlled, but also give us permission to turn off our brains and our sense of reason.   "I'm a conservative so therefore I believe this."   Or, "I'm a liberal so therefore I believe this."  Without any recognition that the given list of beliefs contains absurd contradictions and unyielding stances that by their very nature stop viable, workable solutions in their tracks.  It is almost as if the powers that be stood beside each other and picked hot-button social issues like an 8th grade gym class: "I'll take abortion rights.  Ok, I'll take gun rights.  I'll be against the death penalty.  Ok, well it is weird that I will be both pro-life and pro-death penalty, but what the hell,  they won't notice!"  And on and on...


I wish my writing could begin to match the beauty, elegance, and wisdom of Charles Eisenstein, but I am smart enough to know when to let someone's words shine.   Every line has a vast depth and meaning that is rare in today's pop-culture world, and it is important to recognize when someone so beautifully articulates the feeling in our collective hearts.  

What we are missing in today's money-based economy is our sense of meaning and purpose, and I believe that the majority of stress and unhappiness comes from the lack of these vital ingredients of a balanced life.   Eisenstein does a beautiful job of explaining that the top 1% are also missing these things, and their sense of unfulfillment is even stronger since, in the view of our money-based society, they theoretically have everything. "It's lonely at the top."    We've all seen the bitter Mr Burns character that sits alone in his mega-mansion suffering suffering from loneliness and isolation, and it is a near universal reaction that none of us would desire this.  Given the choice we will always claim  to pick love and community over wealth, but a strange disconnect happens when we spend our lives obsessing over the very thing we claim to not desire.    

“Someone asked us if we make money doing this... the answer is no... we make art, friends, emotions, adventures, songs, ideas, changes, noise, we make ourselves happy, and hopefully a few other folks happy along the way. Those are the things that we make. Who needs money?!”

In many ways the ongoing global depression has forced us to reconnect with both our community and our extended family.  Many are forced into roles of needing the people closest to them.  We are now depending on one and another in ways reminiscent of the last economic depression, and it is important to recognize that this is a positive transition for us.  When the federal government proves inept, we will find local solutions that not only solve direct problems but also strengthen the sense of community around us.  Sometimes 1 +1 can = 3, or 4.   If we are able, or even forced, to change the current paradigm from unbridled consumerism to service and support for those around us we will have the chance to re-develop the connective tissue that provides us with purpose and meaning, thereby filling the gaps in life with what is actually important.   The modern day financial philosophy that every person should have enough money that they can become an independent island and not need anybody for anything is an unsustainable idea and is fortunately dying a slow death.  The very act of having an important role in your community, of being needed, creates vitality, energy and love that symbiotically builds on itself.  

Hope everyone is having a great week.  
Brian