A Journalist’s Lament: Impeachment & Insurrection
As a journalist, I find Trump’s final days a burden, and I am sure it is the same for others traveling in the marketplace of ideas who are guided by a common principle to “never overlook the obvious.”
IMO, the conversational traffic occupying our media highways during the post-Capitol insurrection, calls out for invocation of this principle. I am a journalist who impulsively looks for the other side of every story. I teach prosecutors and criminal attorneys (for CLE’s) the value from acquittals of two infamous and unpopular defendants — OJ Simpson & Casey Anthony.
The impeachment and insurrection story brings with it a burden from investigating such an unpopular figure as Trump. Using the open mind principle makes that burden seem heavier and heavier these days. My sources of information are finely filtered by a group-think narrative that dominates our media. My sources have all the characteristics of a consensus media who have powerful private agendas and an interest in protecting their own political and business allies. For them, Trump is not a threat to democracy, he threatens their alliance. The media-business-political alliance opposing Trump (of which there are many in both parties), are not motivated primarily by ideology or opposition to fascism. No please, big tech, the media, and politicians have raw power and business model expansion as their primary motivators. That is the “never overlook the obvious” proviso required in reporting news.
This alliance brands itself by “exclusion” which has taken the nation to a critical moment of dysfunction, mindlessly indifferent to the costs from its abandonment of the constitutional protections provided to unpopular ideas, causes, and leaders.
I often remember a day on my school playground when a group of students bullied one student in particular who had the misfortune of being cast as an “outsider” among us. We all stood by, even though we knew the student being targeted by a bully was being ambushed. The bully’s attack heard no defense from those of us watching. So I remember that day, and I remember that ostracized student who had a story to tell, but we never heard it because we yielded to the bully among us.
That memory has been useful and it motivates me often to look for the obvious whenever someone is being bullied into ostracism by a majority-controlling narrative. I have grown accustomed to accepting this burden carried by an open mind.
There is for sure, a Trump story that isn’t being told, one that can provide clarity and balance to the insurrection story being leveraged by only one point of view. The audience of onlookers (us) is content to hear only one point of view. I find it interesting that Trump’s POV is never part of the reporting. The narrative as written comes from his enemies, of whom there are many and powerful. I hear these unspoken words, as a reporter carrying the burden of an open mind, with a renewed interest in using the untold story to bring the clarity untold narratives always offers us. There is a lot at stake in reporting “the rest of the story” (a la Paul Harvey). In the event, we need the clarity that comes from reporting two sides of a story, in order for “news” to play a role in returning the equity of our government back to the people. The American democracy is threatened by the grip of a power-alliance that has formed among tech platforms, partisans, and the media, all of whom are in it for themselves. That is obvious.
Keith Long
