Journalism fits under one big umbrella, Gonzo to The Gray Lady, Mother Jones to Fox News.
But that’s not the half of it, only the stuff people grump most about, political drift: the differences among news media in outlook and coverage of Republicans, Democrats, Donald Trump, and maybe where all this fits with that democratic republic we founded in which “no law shall …” when it comes to freedom of the press.
We journalists are by design uncertified and unfettered, standing apart as the observant Fourth Estate, at least in theory. By law we’re allowed to be just as biased as we damned well please. This is the American way, like no other, and it’s right there in the venerable Constitution.
There’s only one bug spray for bad journalism that gets it wrong on purpose or wildly neglects facts in stories or commentary that may harm the innocent. That’s the courts. Libel laws, invasion of privacy, that sort of thing.
I’d like to say there’s another guard against bad journalism, too. But the very worst work tends to increase interest and audience. Alas, it’s good for business. Most journalism still gets done by companies and organizations that must sell advertising, attract donations, and entice consumers to buy in.
The greatest sin, then, is not inaccuracy, but dullness. Sorry ProPublica. Instead of protecting against journalism’s worst impulses, the public is an enabler, and addled by social media at that.
Winston Churchill had a line in a speech in 1947 about democracy being the worst except for all the other government systems that have been tried, and no end of pundits have extended the thought to capitalism. I might add journalism.
Here we are, waxing holy about our grand role, while the temptation to chase clicks proves overwhelming. So hand over heart, we go all in with Taylor Swift’s dating life with more gusto than the latest clock ticking to government shutdowns, only paying attention to those when the conversation bends toward outrageous.
Celebrity, crime and the sensational are sure bets from Park City to, well, everywhere. Today’s most successful politicians lean in to all three.
But look, at The Park Record and KPCW, we’re just trying to catch up to City Hall. Talk about eat-your-peas, small-town stuff. The most radical idea a City Council candidate has talked about in the current campaign so far is bringing in a commuter train along the Rail Trail.
No Lauren Boeberts around here. Thank God. Oh, but the attention if we did. I know. She represents my last town, and I wound up being the first to ask her rival last election, Aspen resident Adam Frisch, in person about an October surprise, a stinky bundle of sex and blackmail allegations that ultimately didn’t stand up to careful vetting.
This kind of thing isn’t why I chose my calling. We couldn’t care less about a politician’s romantic encounters, though we thought the blackmail question needed checking. So we collected and went through a small ton of old city email from back when he was on the council. Meanwhile, his campaign staff went dark to inquiries, Boebert supporters loudly held up a Breitbart account as gospel, and I was the one who happened to be there at his whistlestop appearance in Basalt. He was better with it than I was.
The Aspen Democrat went on to come a whisker from unseating the incumbent in a blood red congressional district that spans half of Colorado’s land mass.
In ski town journalism, my favorite, we get to jaw with future and former governors and presidents on occasion, but the basics are the same as interviewing a kindergartner during her first day of school. Whoever believes all stories are political, a philosophy that therefore would extend to all journalism, hasn’t covered that, or a powder day.
I go more with all politics is literature, part of the grand comedy and tragedy that surely serves to put us in touch with our own humanity at a much deeper level than we may think we want or need to know. There’s the true umbrella for journalism.
At the highest and lowest levels, with the cheaters and the heroes, the wonderous and the horrible, people are hungry for it all. This is how they stitch together understanding of their lives and their place in a community.
And so all life is story. Journalism, especially in a ski town, is simply a discipline aimed at ensuring ours happen to be true — true as we can back up, anyway, whatever our politics.
Don Rogers is the editor of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.