Taking a Break

Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

I've tried with varying degrees of success to live up to that jounalistic mission in my 22 years as a reporter and with this blog. Blogging has been one of the few pleasures of unemployment, but I'm suspending this blog to avoid the apperance of a conflict of interest in my new job at a Northeastern Ohio newspaper.

I'm grateful to my new employers and to have found a job in this wretched economy in which there are five unemployed Americans for every job. http://workplacepsychology.net/2010/07/21/5-unemployed-americans-competing-for-1-available-job/ Given the "burn the village to save it" economy strategy of Republicans and the acquiescence of many top Democrats, things are only going to get worse and I have tremendous empathy for unemployed people.

However, this is a bittersweet moment for me. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love being a reporter. I was the 8-year-old who ran home to watch the Watergate hearings on television, hung out at court trials on my summer vacations as a teenager and drove around with my portable scanner on days off while a crime reporter.

Unemployment was frightening and frustrating but this blog was a respite. It freed me from the constraints of conventional journalism and allowed be to be an activist/ journalist. Some people say you can't be both, but I disagree.

Some bloggers piggyback off the work of mainstream journalists to take cheap shots and pontificate. I believe the role of a blogger is to offer fact-based analysis and opinion that too often gets lost in the daily mainstream media cycle of he said/she said, who's up, who's down?, journalism.

As a blogger I didn't have to walk the fine line between writing analytical, fact-based journalism that offers context and perspective and editorializing. Reporters don't have that luxury, but too often they either play it safe or become co-opted by the people they're supposed to be holding accountable.

A reporter has an obligation to be fair, but I don't believe that should stop us from crusading against injustice no matter how lofty that goal may sound. I've had the pleasure of working with some outstanding editors and reporters during my career, but also too many reporters who were essentially stenographers.

Our job is to hold the powerful accountable. Not the "manufacture of consent" for them, a phrase coined by the rightwing journalist Walter Lippmann who belived the elite needed to control the masses. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Walter_Lippmann

As I grew more experienced as a reporter I began to understand that being fair is not always being balanced. If I wrote about a Holocaust survivor I didn't feel the need to insert a quote from a Holocaust denier. While seeking quotes from child molesters and neo-Nazis when writing about them, I didn't feel that I needed to approach the story with " an open mind" about them, just treat them fairly.

Too often reporters draw false equivalents between two sides either in a mistaken attempt at balance or out of fear of offending powerbrokers and losing access to them. That can often lead to a trip to the unemployment line.

Pretending both sides are equally to blame for an issue is also a convenient way to avoid taking sides. A good example is America's deficit and national debt.

Ronald Reagan, aka St. Reagan, ran up astronomical deficits and national debt with huge military spending and tax cuts for the rich. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26402-2004Jun8?language=printer

Bush II inherited an approximately $260 billion surplus from Bill Clinton and left Barack Obama with an approximately $1.3 trillion deficit. The deficit was primarily due to tax cuts for the rich, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the Medicare Part D prescription drug giveaway to Big Pharma. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/08/deficit_numbers.html

In fairness, most Democrats supported the war and a handful voted for the tax cuts, but by and large the deficit was created by Republican initiatives. Yet the mainstream media's refusal to state the obvious has helped fuel the perception of tax and spend Democrats and thrifty Republicans.

 Journalism should not be about false narratives. Whether you're a blogger or a reporter, good journalism is about rocking the boat which is how I came up with the name of this blog. But when you rock the boat, you better be prepared to swim for your life.

As a reporter I've challenged that conventional political wisdom and taken heat even though I had my facts right. Usually it was local powerbrokers protecting their turf,  readers who'd become conditioned to he said/she said stenography, or cowardly bosses protecting their jobs.

While I confess to enjoying raising a little hell, my only agenda was accountability. Whether it was cops, corporations or politicans. I've questioned Democrats as fiercely as Republicans when they deserved it.
I grew up and spent most of my early career as a journalist in Connecticut where Democrats hold sway.

I angered Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd by questioning his ties to the insurance industry and Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro for supporting sending helicopters made in her district to the Colombian military despite it's atrocious human rights abuses documented by our own State Department. Then Republican Gov. John Rowland didn't appreciate my questions about his role in a deal with Enron that cost the state some $200 million (Rowland later went to jail for corruption unrelated to the Enron deal).

Anyone whose read this blog knows my feelings about Obama, aka The Great Capitulator, aren't much different than about Bush II. But that doesn't mean I won't acknowledge that Obama inherited a mess from Bush or that Republicans have been obstructing him since his election to the detriment of America.

While I've always tried to be fair and usually succeeded, writing a personal opinion blog while a working journalist could create the appearance of a conflict of interest. It's tricky ground.

Some journalists believe we shouldn't vote or make political contributions. Or get involved in any kind of political activity like attending antiwar or pro-war rallies, aka Support the Troops rallies.

I don't believe you should sacrifice all your duties or rights as a citizen when you become a journalist or paint yourself into a corner with restrictive rules. I think you should take it on a case by case basis.

I believe voting is not only a right, but a duty. And that journalists have a right to donate to causes or politicians they believe are worthy in the same way a citizen does.

But sometimes we have to take a step back. For instance, I strongly believe in the rights of all workers to collectively bargain. But I understand how a supporter of Ohio's new union busting law known as Senate Bill 5 could question my objectivity if I continued to blog critically about it and then had to report on it. I would honor my responsibility to be fair, but it could unfairly draw heat on my employer.

Ideally, I would be a columnist and get paid to give my opinions. But that isn't my new job.

I want to thank the people who have taken the time to read this blog. Your comments online and in person have made all the time I've put into it worthwhile.

I'll continue to to try to ask hard questions and tell hard truths as a journalist whatever the consequences. That's what we're supposed to do.