by Lynn MandavilleI recently came to the top of the hold list at the Chandler Library for the film “The Post,” another acclaimed Steven Spielberg creation that artfully, and emotionally, tells the story of the Pentagon Papers, and the new role of American journalism as defined by the Washington Post and its female owner Katherine Graham during the volatile 1970s.
Though a large portion of the story is one of women’s coming of age in the 1960s and ’70s, illustrated by Graham’s own coming to terms with her responsibility as a newspaper owner after the death of her husband, and wrestling with the changing roles of women in a boys’ club that was Washington, D.C., the item of most significance, in my opinion, was the evolving role of the press in America.
Prior to the McCarthy era of anti-Communism in the 1950s, newsmen were not prone to opining about the news they reported. Edward R. Murrow changed that when he spoke out against McCarthy and the machinations of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Then Walter Cronkite began to speak his opinions about the Vietnam War. So when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, and the Times was ordered by the courts to desist publishing them, the Washington Post found itself in the position of deciding whether to become a watchdog for the American people.
Our leaders in Washington had, for decades, been misleading the American people into believing that the Vietnam war was win-able, and that we were not sending our sons and daughters to meaningless slaughter in the jungles of Asia.
That was a lie.
The Post, after the Times was taken to court to suppress printing of the Pentagon Papers, took the first courageous steps toward investigative journalism on behalf of the citizenry of our republic. And they followed it up with Woodward and Bernstein’s revelations about the Watergate break-in, which toppled the Nixon administration.
The Washington Post was among the first, if not the first, to speak truth to power. It helped usher in the new age of high-minded journalism, with its standards of reportage and fact-checking that still exist among the cream of news sources.
Until recently, specifically until Donald Trump began campaigning for and winning the presidential election of 2016, I don’t believe Americans thought that true journalists were making up lies out of whole cloth.
Sure, we had the National Enquirer and their ilk, and television began producing its equivalent with programming like some Fox News shows and Geraldo. And initially it wasn’t too difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Unfortunately, our president has encouraged the proliferation of lying, and he has taken to labeling as fake whatever factual reports portray him in a negative or critical light.
Which brings us to Thursday’s verbal sparring between Jim Acosta, newsman for CNN, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s press secretary.
Acosta was adamant about pursuing his question regarding Trump’s claim that the press is the enemy of the people. Sanders strove to avoid the question and its follow-up with hollow rhetoric, resulting in Acosta leaving the press briefing before its completion.
It is alarming to me that the press has not joined together to denounce the unconscionable behavior of this administration toward America’s free press, which continues to be not the enemy, but the champion of the people.
Trump has singled out such reporters as Acosta and Katy Tur for ridicule and derision during public, Trump-biased rallies. As a result, reporters, as well as the press secretary herself, are receiving threats of violence or death.
This intimidation is unacceptable.
Our government ought to be open and transparent to the people. The press secretary ought to be able to answer questions by the press without fearing the wrath and bullying of her boss, and the press ought to be able to do their jobs without the president directly or indirectly inciting retaliation against that institution.
But here we are.
The president will not likely change his irresponsible ways toward the press. I fear the press will restrain itself (in a misplaced sake of propriety?) until some nut job murders a member of the White House press corps.
Republicans and Democrats alike should see the violent writing on the wall.
Megalomaniacs are not solely inhabitants of the right, but wherever they come from, the press is vital in exposing the truth about all aspects of life in America, whether it be in politics, religion, the arts, sports, or anywhere else.
The mainstream press is the guardian of truth, especially when the truth hurts.
I was a Republican who voted for Nixon. In my early 20s, still wet behind my political ears, I was crushed by the revelations of Woodward and Bernstein about the Nixon administration. It was truth I did not want to hear. But it was truth. And it had to be faced despite the repercussions. (It marked a turning point for my political leanings, as well as those of my dyed-in-the-wool Republican parents.)
Current day America is no different.
The mainstream press must be able to do its job without our president inciting his base at his rallies where the mob mentality screams vulgarities and physical threats at the press. The term “Fake News” should become one of those phrases to join the pantheon of words and expressions labeled as hate speech, subject to legal and criminal action. And Trump, continuing to utter his diatribes against reporters, should be brought up for censure before Congress for his despicable, irresponsible behavior.
Sticks and stones can break our bones. But names and rhetoric can do that, too, when wielded by a careless, former, reality-TV personality.
This public behavior is not frivolous, mindless entertainment, like The Apprentice. This is the governing of a nation, one that was previously the greatest in the world. Now this nation is in danger of becoming theater of the absurd, like the World Wrestling Federation.
Our voices should unite to reign in our president’s diarrhea of the mouth, before the world’s perception of the United States becomes its genuine reality.
Without a free press, would we ever have known about about the murderous massacre of at least 347 Vietnamese men, women, children, and infants at My Lai, lead by U.S, Army Lt. William Calley? Or Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, who intervened to end it? Would we know of the sexually criminal behavior of Catholic priests, or the cover-ups perpetrated by the church? Would we know of the Flint water crisis? Would we know of the cynicism of Kennedy and McNamara and Nixon and Johnson?
Yes, Lynn, I agree. Threats against the press are unacceptable.
Basura, thanks. All of your listed examples support our opinion.
Or the sexual predator, President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, sexually playing with a clerk, a subordinate guys in power today are fired, excoriated and shunned.
His pattern of behavior was known by many, both close advisors and friends, and the media, however, they protected him. Guess it only works for Democrats. The only redeeming Democrats were Truman and Carter.
Don’t you suggest that Bill Clinton was a sexual predator. From what I know from the accounts, he was a serial philanderer.
A sexual predator might better describe the kind of guy that would stroll through the dressing rooms of the Miss Teen USA contest to see “beautiful, gorgeous teen aged girls, the most beautiful in the whole world” in a state of undress. Or the kind of guy that would “grab women by the pussy” or “just start kissing them.”
I’m not defending Clinton, I’m just quibbling about the term sexual predator.
You’re right to mention Truman and Carter in counterpoint, and I think we could also mention Ford similarly.
When I say Don’t I am looking for a short term of address for Don’t Treat On Me. Sorry for any confusion on that. He may or may not have been a sexual predator, but we don’t know that he is by a dalliance with a young woman, who, by her own admission, came on to him. My point was never to defend Clinton, just to clarify usage of the term sexual predator.