RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/cnn-analyst-fabricates-quotes-from-gop-senators-to-smear-trump-fox-news/

On Wednesday afternoon, a CNN analyst cooked up a “conversation” between two Republican senators in order to smear President Donald Trump, his party, and Fox News. He later admitted to having completely fabricated the quotes, but only after The Washington Post’s self-described conservative Jennifer Rubin retweeted his “report.”

“Overheard convo between two Republican Senators who only watch Fox News. ‘is this stuff real? I haven’t heard any of this before. I thought it was all about a server. If half the stuff Schiff is saying is true, we’re up s**t’s creek. Hope the White House has exculpatory evidence,'” Joe Lockhart, the CNN analyst and the former White House press secretary for Bill Clinton, tweeted. His message received 5,600 retweets and 20,600 “likes.”

Ten minutes later, he added this caveat: “Ok maybe I made up the convo, but you know that’s exactly what they’re thinking.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/martha-mcsally-hack-comment-journalists-see-some-great-sacrilege/

As I note in my New York Post piece today, I don’t believe that Martha McSally, who is serving her first term in the Senate after being appointed to take John McCain’s seat, is going to be helped much by accusing CNN’s Manu Raju of being a “hack.” Attacking the press might be an effective way to excite national conservatives, but it probably does little to entice independents and moderates in Arizona.

One group, however, was greatly affected by the interaction: journalists, who seem to believe that McSally has engaged in some great sacrilege. A distressed National Press Club statement calls her comment “ethically wrong.” The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro says it is “never” ok to attack a journalist. One wishes there would have been this level of outcry when Elizabeth Warren, also a senator, called Fox News a “hate-for-profit racket.” But so it goes.

The Washington Post’s media critic labeled the interaction “chilling.” Now, “chilling,” it seems to me, would more appropriately describe the government spying on reporters or throwing someone into prison in effort to appease foreign theocrats. I’m pretty sure, at this point, the largely inconsequential McSally-Raju kerfuffle has generated more outrage from mainstream journalists than either of those cases.

It should also be noted, rude or not, that McSally’s underlying grievance is legitimate. CNN, as Charles Cooke has written, is no longer a news network, and Republicans have no ethical responsibility to treat it as such, whether one of its reporters happens to be asking a legitimate questions or not. And no matter how many times his colleagues put the word “respected” in front of Raju’s name, it doesn’t change the fact that he has a long history of partisan bias, not only with his still-unexplained Don Jr. “collusion” piece, but on the issue of Brett Kavanaugh and many others. The fact that Raju does some good reporting, doesn’t mean he isn’t also a partisan. You can be both.