In February 2022, I passed a year in journalism, and what a year it was. Coming out of a global pandemic, with relatively little clue as to a future career direction, it’s hard to say what motivated me to start journalistic writing — perhaps Providence, perhaps madness, or perhaps a wondrously complex dance of both.
12 months later, I believe that the start of this journey, while by no means perfect, has been the source of some interesting lessons that the readers of this publication may find diverting and, in some way, relatable. Critics will likely rush to the labels of pedantic or moralistic, but the broader points made will hopefully subsume those concerns into something of benefit to the reader. Perhaps, indeed, we may all look back on this in twenty to thirty years and see whether these ideas have played out, and how well their author held to them.
The temptation to lie is both the most pernicious temptation and the one most necessary to avoid.
The stereotype of journalists as liars is nothing new, and complaints of fake news, regardless of their accuracy, have been flying about for as long as there has been news to report. In a sense, this is perfectly justified and experience in the journalistic world makes this point more poignant, not less. Human nature leads us to lie, and all the more to lie conveniently; no one lies on behalf of ideas that they do not themselves believe in. No, we lie to further our motivations, gratify our desires, and promote our pet causes and projects. While white lies may be “excusable” in the practical sense, such dishonesty carries real consequences in the world of political journalism.
One such example is the aftermath of Hunter Biden’s laptop story, a key point in a still-unfolding narrative over “questionable business dealings” on the part of the then-presidential candidate’s son. While the specifics of the story are unimportant to the argument being made, a Media Research Poll demonstrated that fully 16% of Biden voters would not have voted for him had they been aware of the specifics of the laptop story. After the New York Post broke the story in October 2020, major media outlets downplayed the story, with the New York Times only fully corroborating the story in 2022.
This situation isn’t as simple as mere media lies — outlets are well within their rights to cover what they wish, and that selection will likely fall along partisan lines. Yet this selection has real consequences: it exemplifies the importance of being honest in how stories are framed and presented. For myself, I find it dubious at best that no media executives at outlets like the Times realized the political implications of downplaying stories damaging to a particular political candidate. It is understandable to frame political candidates by downplaying very public negative coverage during election season — but let’s not fool ourselves and pretend like it’s ethical. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that journalists are entirely for everything that occurs as a result of their publishing work; if that was true then the ladies and gentlemen over at Vice would be in quite a bad way. The temptation to lie isn’t limited to mere plagiarism or fact distortion, it extends to understanding the impression created by stories and being cognizant of, if not partially responsible for, their influence.
To briefly segue into the next point in this reflection by means of a personal example: in covering a student conflict at the University of Connecticut, I was confronted with examples of highly non-conservative, liberal students, who were the ones standing up for free speech against their radical progressive counterparts. The UConn business didn’t quite fit nicely into the archetypal “bold conservative warrior standing alone against the left-wing horde” model. If I had tried to spin it that way, it might have won me some applause from some segments of political media (I can hardly say I missed it). It might have made for a neater story. It would have even, perhaps, been a more compelling story for some readers, all but for one thing: it wasn’t the real story. Real stories are not fables that divide neatly along political lines. People are complicated, and, despite our current American epidemic of negative polarization, sometimes the people we disagree with can make good points and fight moral battles. That is a harder line to draw, but it is the line that reality gives us, which leads into the second point in this reflection.
The divide between ideas and people must be considered and drawn carefully.
At UConn, I covered the plight of real liberals: devotees to free speech, open and informed dialogue, and protection against campus censorship, against factions of far-left individuals who saw liberal free speech warriors as unabashed intellectual traitors. This truly sad story shows the intellectual breakdown of the left — a political group that many conservatives generalize, demonize, and mischaracterize on the daily. This is unacceptable, and it overlooks the many more traditional liberals who believe in the same freedom of speech that conservatives do.
A word to the reader: do not mistake this for attempted moralization or a cheap call for unity. It ought to be taken as a warning to many on the right who treat their political opponents as monolithic: “monolithic” is not a correct characterization, and those who claim to conserve truth and moral values should either rectify that inaccuracy or maybe reconsider what it is they are truly conserving.
The line between ideas and people is a tricky one, fraught with the irritating complexities of free-thinking people believing different things for different reasons. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was known for saying, “I attack ideas, I don’t attack people – and some very good people have some very bad ideas.” On this, he was right, but the converse is also true. Some rather morally bankrupt people have managed to stumble their way into correct intellectual thinking. After interviewing many sides of the political spectrum, from progressive Democrats to nationalist Republicans, I have heard significant areas of agreement — all of these political camps seem to share some form of love for America and a desire to see the country live up to its founding principles of liberty, equality, and opportunity for all. While those similarities are partially clouded by definitional issues, it is neither correct nor useful to say that all of our political opponents are bad people by virtue of their bad ideas.
This does not fix the problem of political polarization. It magnifies it. As shocking as it may be, there are rational liberals worth allying with against radical progressive elements seeking to fundamentally alter American society. As shocking as it may be to liberal readers, there are rational conservatives worth allying with against radical nationalist and populist elements seeking to bring back aspects of the past without care for the suffering that comes along with them. If the coalition of correct-thinking Americans must be culled and refined to only that blessed segment of patriots who have managed to get every single issue right in glorious agreement… an astute reader will see the problem with such a notion. There will be disagreement within the coalition of the rational, and that is to be expected in a free-thinking nation with significantly more opinions than people. There are parameters to this, but we can look past disagreements on marginal tax rates and some governmental programs if we believe that the people we’re working with are good-hearted and want the best for the country. If, however, we cannot conceive of the people on the other side of the marginal tax rate divide as good because of policy disagreements, then perhaps we all need to do a bit more talking with each other instead of about each other.
It’s actually quite fulfilling and useful to have friends that disagree with you.
In the world of journalism, only slightly less pernicious than the temptation to lie is the temptation to dig in your heels on every issue and be the absolutely most dogged and stubborn person that has ever been. Without empirical data and only my personal experience to boot here, I can say that this is not a particularly happy way to live life. In my interviews and professional life, I have had many excellently fulfilling conversations with those on the left and those significantly more conservative than myself, and I certainly hope to have many more. General George Patton was known for saying, “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking,”- quite possibly the least profane of his public utterances. Yet it is true, and having friends that one can not only disagree with on political issues, but also live non-political life with, is invaluable. As a reporter, I have observed a trend, particularly among my very politically active peers, where one is expected to care about every issue every minute of every day, and any perceived ignorance of any particular struggle or issue is seen as the mark of moral degradation. It’s quite difficult to care about your progressive friend’s views on the welfare state or your nationalist friend’s views on immigration when you’re busy trying to beat them at poker or hit them with snowballs. In many ways, these make for much healthier wars to wage.
Another note regarding snowball fights on a cold winter night: they’re significantly less dangerous than political conflicts, because there’s only so much deep-seated human depravity you can tap into with a mouthful of snow. This may seem like a cheap, quaint anecdote, designed to artificially lift the mood before another long paragraph on politics, yet it’s well worth considering.
Political loyalties are dangerous.
Even after only a year in journalism, I have seen first-hand the discrepancies between people’s public statements and their private opinions, and how much the public front is controlled by political and financial loyalties. This is obviously not a call to badmouth employers and financiers without cause. It is a warning, to myself just as much as to any reader, to beware what your political loyalties can turn you into. The term political animal didn’t originate in Aristotelian thought by accident: the desire to perform on behalf of our political teams and tribes can look remarkably like animalistic instincts. When these animalistic instinct are combined with a fraught and hyper-polarized political climate, that leads to animalistic behavior – the kind of political behavior that segregates society by race and class, normalizes riots at the Capitol, and makes excuses for burning American cities to the ground in the name of racial “justice” that is in fact no justice at all. Large factions within both of America’s major political parties have made excuses for at least one of the above things. That should be an indicator enough of why loyalty to such parties can lead to dark places, but there’s still more. In the past year, I have met many who’ve made excuses for the above things, including some I know well enough to see how those excuses affect the quality of the media they both intake and produce.
For myself, I heavily tend towards haughty moralism and a heavy level of judgment towards both political parties, as a soon-to-be-card-carrying member of the “Pox on Both Your Houses” party. Yet this too can affect the quality of the media I produce — a heavy degree of political cynicism can easily lead me to dismiss out-of-hand arguments that are just as worthy of consideration as any other, if, for no other reason, than their prominence in the events I report on and analyze. Although I make every effort to provide readers with high-quality work, I have never claimed magical immunity from the problems that I have seen in this year in the industry.
The temptations of political life are both pernicious and poisonous, and it is only by the grace of Almighty God that we can hope to avoid their pitfalls. Through the intellectual gifts He has given us, we have a responsibility to seek truth, to distinguish between ideas and the people that hold them, to maintain good faith friendships with those we disagree with, and to avoid the kind of political loyalties that require us to sell our souls to party and tribe instead of leaving them in the hands of the One to whom they truly belong. I can only hope, by the providence of God, to make some incursion into this field that provides readers with truth and arguments worthy of serious consideration — and I certainly do hope that this is only the first of many years in that endeavor.
This piece was originally published in Cogitare’s Spring 2022 Print Edition.
