“Newspapers are dying,” writes Rob Kall, Editor-in-Chief of progressive (but refreshingly open-minded) opinion site OpEdNews, in a (recently updated) 2010 op-ed. “Let them. There may have been people who wanted to rescue the buggy whip industry. But they were misguided. It was transportation they really cared about. We need to initiate dynamic, bottom-up approaches to support the ailing field of Journalism, not newspapers.”

Kall’s analysis is as trenchant now as when he first addressed himself to the decline of the newspapers that previous generations knew, and to what looks like a “market failure” on the part of today’s Internet-based news culture. Any mistakes in translating that analysis here are mine, by the way. Here we go:

The rise of free content and ease of entry into the field has us getting more “journalism” … but less real information.  Opinion writers (like me) are a dime a dozen. Amateur stringers and glorified copy editors cover five-point-lede “hard news” on the cheap. But the shock troops of news, full-time investigative journalists, have to learn the ropes and they have to be paid. That’s not happening. The result: Many important things get missed and many things that aren’t missed get only insufficient,  inaccurate — or worst, sponsor viewpoint biased — coverage.

Kall’s proposed solution: “If the US government invests directly in journalists, so their writings and reports can be freely used by any media organization or site, that investment will yield big results.” He suggests a $3.5 billion program, translating to 50,000 investigative journalists receiving salaries of $60,000 per year with benefits.

My response to Kall: “If the US government invests directly in journalists, we’ll get the journalism the US government wants us to have.”

Kall’s response to me:  “That’s a knee-jerk, anti-government reaction. If the funding is structured so journalists can be independent … it doesn’t have to be that way.”

In fairness, I do resemble the “knee-jerk, anti-government” remark.

On the other hand, as Karl Marx — hardly an anti-government type — pointed out long ago, the state is the executive committee of the ruling class. When the state pays the piper, the establishment calls the tune. $60k per year and benefits is a powerful incentive to step far from the paymaster’s toes.

I agree with Kall on the problems journalism faces. But the supposedly “free” American press already tends to act as a free stenography pool/ press release service for government. Direct government funding of journalists would just exacerbate that problem.

I don’t see any easy way through the crisis in American journalism. If it can be saved, I suspect it will be independently minded newspaper and web site editors like Kall himself, and journalists who are willing and able to forego financial security while seeking truth, who save it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“I’m not going to ruin Judge [Brett] Kavanaugh’s life over this,” US Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News’s Chris Wallace on September 23.

“How much evidence is required to destroy a person’s life?” conservative columnist Marc A. Thiessen asked in the Washington Post a few days earlier, weighing in on the same controversy.

“Ruin?” “Destroy?” Really?

Kavanaugh stands accused of, as a high school student, attempting to rape another high school student.

Did he do that? I don’t know. You probably don’t know either,  nor do the 100 US Senators now weighing his confirmation.

Decades after the alleged incident, only a few people COULD know. It really comes down to whether one believes the accuser and those who say they were there or that she disclosed details to them, or whether one believes Kavanaugh and those who vouch for him.

I’m not going to express an opinion on the accusation, because I’m not qualified to offer anything but a gut feeling based on watching from afar.  Those 100 Senators, who really don’t have any choice but to express their opinions with their votes, are going to vote with their parties or on their own gut feelings as well.

But the hype … wow. In what universe does not getting a gig as one of the nine most powerful judges in the United States equate to having one’s life “ruined” or “destroyed?”

Brett Kavanaugh knocks down $220,600 per year as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Absent impeachment proceedings, his job is safe, and even assuming such proceedings a 2/3 US Senate vote to convict on the basis of a decades-old accusation not related to corruption is extraordinarily unlikely.

If he is somehow forced or pressured off the bench, he’s a guy with options.  He’s a graduate of exclusive schools (Georgetown Prep and Yale) and a former partner at a $3 billion law firm (Kirkland & Ellis).

If he’s not confirmed, he’ll command five- and six-figure speaking fees, large book advances, talking head “analysis” gigs on cable news shows, etc. He could probably build a lucrative new career doing nothing but whining to conservatives about how he was robbed of a SCOTUS position.

Don’t worry too much for Brett Kavanaugh. He’s going to be fine.

Given his expansive views of government power to surveil, confine, and interrogate both Americans and foreigners, though, the rest of us might end up regretting his confirmation.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

 

On September 17, Politico reports, US president Donald Trump partially declassified a government surveillance application targeting former campaign consultant Carter Page and directed the US Department of Justice to publicly release text messages relating to the “Russiagate” probe between former FBI Director James Comey and other DoJ/FBI personnel.

Whether or not this is a SMART on Trump’s part remains to be seen, but in my opinion it’s the RIGHT move. I’m giving it two cheers, not three, only because I’d like to see more stuff declassified and publicly released.

Americans stand divided on the question of whether or not the Russian state “meddled” in the 2016 US presidential election. We’re also divided on the question of whether or not Trump and/or key associates of Trump, “colluded” in such meddling.

So far, the actual publicly produced evidence makes a very limited case for the “meddling” charge (a Russian troll farm apparently ran some cheesy Facebook ads, etc. and the whole operation doesn’t seem to have cost a drop in the bucket compared to e.g. Sheldon Adelson’s $125 million “meddling” on behalf of Israel), and no case at all for the “collusion” allegations that wouldn’t apply equally to Trump’s opponents (who paid a British former spy to work Russian sources for “dirt” on Trump).

At this point, “Russiagate” continues to look like a ham-handed attempt to explain away Hillary Clinton’s poorly run — and losing — 2016 presidential campaign, because nothing that happens to Hillary Clinton can ever be even a little bit Hillary Clinton’s fault.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has had 16 months to get the goods on “Russian meddling” and “collusion.” So far he’s publicly produced bubkes beyond indicting some Russians who will never face trial (or, conveniently for Mueller, testify) and some charges (including a few with plea bargains or convictions) against Trump associates on pretty much everything under the sun except his actual brief.

The closest he’s come is with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who’s admitted to lying to the FBI about post-election, not pre-election, contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak — contacts concerning the United Nations and (there’s that other country again) Israel.

Classification of information by the US government is structured per Executive Order 13526, which mandates that:

“In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to … conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error … prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency … [or] prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.”

The allegations are already out there. The only plausible reasons for keeping the evidence for (or against) them classified are the reasons expressly prohibited in that executive order.

President Trump, get ALL the information out in public. Let the American people see the sausage, and how it was made, for ourselves instead of putting us through more re-runs of commercials about how great Democrats will think the sausage tastes and how Republicans will all get salmonella from it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY