Washington Posting

When I was seven  years old, my brother, who was five years older, got a newspaper route delivering the "Evening Star," and I became his employee. I was not old enough to get a paper route, but he paid me $3 a month for delivering half the route, and it was my first introduction to newspapers and the idea of their importance. 

In those days, most people in our neighborhood got a morning paper (The Washington Post) and an evening paper, the Evening Star. 

I read both papers, although selectively, beginning with Dick Tracey and the other comics, and scanning the headlines about stories I did not fully understand, like those about a Senator named Joseph McCarthy who said  communists were infiltrating the government.

Years later, when I moved back to Washington, D.C., we had friends who wrote for the Wall Street Journal and were in the journalist crowd.  There were lots of dinner parties in those days--that's what you did in Washington-- and I found myself sitting next to Annie Garrels, the NPR correspondent who covered Moscow, who asked me what I did and when I told her I was a doctor, she said, "Oh, don't say you regret that, that medicine is all a sordid trade now, and that medicine in America is cooked."

"Actually," I told her. "I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do."

"Good then," she said, "You'll do."

She engaged in a brief exchange in Russian with Tim Sebastian, across the table, who was a BBC correspondent in Washington, but he had lived for years in Moscow and spoke fluent Russian. 

Tim and I became friends and he was constantly remarking at something I had said, "Oh, God. That is just so American."

I used to run a lot--sixty miles a week--and Tim said, "Oh, you Americans! You think death is optional."

"What?"

"You think if you exercise enough and eat right, you'll live forever. Brits know we are all cooked."

"Oh, well," I told him, "Brits, I'm sure, are all cooked. But I'm going to live forever."

The journalists were fun, and this group was bright. 

But I met plenty of newspaper reporters in Washington who were, simply put, not very bright. Magazine editors, too. Just this side of really dim. But, there were a score of fun, bright journalists who were good at asking the right questions.

But somehow, something about them bothered me, as a group, a culture.

Their knowledge was, as a rule, superficial. They could get into a story and learn a lot by asking questions, but they were only as good as their sources. If you guided them to the right people, they might get deep into a story, close to the truth, but they were just as likely to get deflected in the wrong direction, and they did not know their subject well enough to know when they were talking to the wrong people. They were like the proverbial medical intern. The old saying: "It's not the intern who doesn't know stuff you have to worry about. It's the intern who doesn't know he doesn't know. That's the guy who ought to terrify you."

I could see this in the stories they did about medicine, and I realized they were just operating in a different world.  I would go to conferences and listen to people argue about minutiae for hours, but out of that crawled the truth and you knew how tentative that truth was. For the journalists, who wrote on a deadline, this was simply not what they did. They were always in a hurry. They were always certain. They had their stories and they were sticking to them.

On the other hand, they could surprise you. At lunch with an editor of the Washingtonian magazine, I asked him who he liked for President. This was in 2007. This editor was from Mississippi, a graduate of Princeton. He was one of those men who knew what people thought of Mississippi and he knew what people thought of guys from Mississippi who went to Princeton. He was self aware, and self effacing and I liked him and he was one of the smarter journalists I knew. He knew the world is not a perfect place. Anyone who grew up in Mississippi knew that. And he said, "I kinda like the chances of this fellow  Obama."

I nearly fell out of my chair.  I had seen Obama on T.V. I had seen him schmoozing at the Iowa pig roast, and I had stopped channel surfing to watch him and I said, "I'll change the channel the instant he gets boring." I listened to him for half an hour. 

"I'm talking about someone who has a snowball's chance," I said. "Someone who does not come out of the gate already down by ten Southern states." 

"Well," he said, "Every Democrat is in that position. Obama's no worse off in the South than any Democrat. Ain't nobody going to win in Richard Nixon's Southern tier. But, I think Obama can do better in the toss up states. He's the genuine article."

Later, I thought back on that conversation and I thought, maybe these journalists, if they talk to enough people, they actually learn something I don't know.

Now, however, I hear Mr. Bezos wants his editorial page to embrace personal liberties and free markets, whatever that means. Well, I know at least partly what it means. The owner wants his paper to embrace his own values, and to not offend the current Republican mob in Washington.

Which is not to say there hasn't been a prescribed formula at the Post when it was run by people who believed deeply in diversity, inclusiveness and equity.

And one might ask, why does any paper feel it is the place of a newspaper to endorse any candidate for President of the United States?  Where did that imperative come from?

Jefferson said if he had to choose between a state which had government but no newspapers, or a country with no government but had newspapers, he would choose the newspaper state. 

William Randolph Hearst gave us the Spanish American War, manifest destiny and the American Empire. He sent his man to Havana and he told him to get him some photos showing that the Spanish had sunk the Maine and did it to provoke war. The reporter said he might get some photos, but he wasn't sure he could find the connection to war, and Hearst replied: You give me the photos; I'll give you the war.

And he did.

Now we have a President who wants to sue newspapers into oblivion. Freedom of speech is just another thing to sue into oblivion. Newspapers are the enemy of the people.

At their best, journalists allow us to Aude Alteram Partum: Hear the other side. 

Obadiah Youngblood, Lock 8, C&O Canal

Currently, there is so much coming at them, I'm not sure journalists can keep up. 

Tariffs beget consequences and the stock market crashes and it's all Biden's fault, although it's just a transition to a new free market economy which will make everyone  rich. Ukraine started the war. Good tariffs make good neighbors. Putin loves you, and Zelensky is a dictator.

So, there you have it: There's still a place for speaking truth to power--until power sues you out of existence.