Business? Or Profession?

I suppose it comes down to ethics, and the different ethical concerns applicable to different ways of making one’s living.

If I were to open a shop, my primary focus would be on my bottom line. I would certainly be obliged to operate honestly, and to treat my customers and employees fairly, but the primary focus of  business is making a profit. 

We have the right to expect doctors, lawyers, and other professionals to abide by additional ethical obligations–standards appropriate to the practice of those professions.

Journalism is one such profession–and when major news organizations are owned and managed by entrepreneurs focused solely on the bottom line, citizens are robbed of one of the most important protections of small-d democracy. When a purportedly “fair and balanced” media ignores any obligation to truthfulness in order to make money pandering to the biases of a designated portion of the population, the result is increased polarization leading to civic unrest and even violence.

Which brings me to recent revelations about Fox “News.”

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Fox News faced an existential crisis. The top-rated cable news network had alienated its Donald Trump-loving viewers with an accurate election night prediction for Joe Biden and was facing a terrifying ratings slide, not to mention the ire of a once-loyal president.
 
Concern came from the very top: “Everything at stake here,” Rupert Murdoch messaged Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott.
 
The billionaire founder was eager to see the Republican candidate prevail in the coming Senate runoff in Georgia — “helping any way we can,” he wrote. But he also advised Scott to keep an eye on the uptick in ratings for a smaller, more conservative channel whose election skepticism suddenly seemed to be resonating with pro-Trump viewers.
 
Newly released messages show Fox executives fretting that month over an uncomfortable revelation: that if they told their audience the truth about the election, it could destroy their business model.

It is one thing to protect the Free Speech rights of news outlets and reporters who are simply mistaken, or for commentators to report matters that they believe to be true, even when they aren’t. But Fox folks weren’t mistaken. They knew they were lying. The network abandoned its professional obligations in order to protect its bottom line. It gave its audience the lies that audience wanted desperately to believe.

What Fox’s loyal viewers wanted to watch — and what Fox News was willing to do to keep them — emerged this week as a central question in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.

As it conducted discovery in that lawsuit, Dominion uncovered reams of internal correspondence and other evidence, information that became  public last week via a court filing. The evidence showed Fox executives and on-air stars privately dismissing  the “wild and false claims of a stolen election” that they proceeded to promote on air.

“Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about a Trump lawyer who had appeared on Fox and spewed baseless accusations. “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses.

The linked article quotes from numerous internal communications demonstrating that Fox willingly and knowingly lied in order to protect its “market share.” 

As another article on the disclosures reported, a network executive in charge of prime-time programming warned that Newsmax’s brand of “conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled [Fox News Channel] viewer is looking for.” As a result, he added, Fox should not “ever give viewers a reason to turn us off. Every topic and guest must perform.”

A lawyer who knowingly misrepresented the law in order to keep a paying client would risk being disbarred. A doctor who knowingly misdiagnosed a patient in order to keep the dollars flowing would risk losing his medical license. Although the Society of Professional Journalists has promulgated a Code of Ethics, I am aware of no similar enforcement mechanism.

The  primary ethical obligation of  journalists–as set out in that Code of Ethics–is to: Seek Truth and Report It. That includes fact-checking, not intentionally distorting information, identifying sources, avoiding stereotypes, and supporting the open exchange of opinions. Most non-MAGA Americans already understood that Fox disdains and ignores those ethical obligations, but it is really stunning to read internal communications showing utter contempt for truth or fidelity to fact.

In the absence of a professional body able to impose sanctions for blatant ethical violations, Dominion’s lawsuit has done America a great service. Whether the unarguable evidence will be sufficient to awaken even a small percentage Fox’s devoted MAGA viewers is, of course, a different question.

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Is Education “Woke”?

The GOP’s hostility to higher education–okay, to education in general–has been getting more scrutiny since Ron DeSantis intensified his war on those “woke” institutions we call colleges and universities. DeSantis (smarter and much more dangerous than Trump) is latching on to the Republicans’ increasing hostility to education.

Before discussing the politics involved in this particular aspect of the culture war, let me readily concede that a significant majority of university instructors and educated Americans are what that base considers “liberal.” There are two reasons for that: first, the definition of “liberal” has changed rather dramatically over time; and second, (depending on that definition) reality has a pronounced liberal bias.

I can personally attest to the rather profound change in the definition of the word “liberal.” As I have previously noted, in 1980 I ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress. I was a Republican–and I was told I was “too conservative” by a fair number of voters.  Although I have changed my position on a couple of policy issues since then, as I learned more about them, my overall political philosophy has remained consistent. Only now, I’m routinely accused of being a pinko socialist/communist elitist.

While I was essentially standing still, philosophically, the GOP totally redefined conservatism. Conservatives are now True Believer authoritarians edging toward fascism. Using the current (re)definition, I’m no longer conservative, and neither are most of the GOP politicians with whom I once worked.

The Rights’ newly radical definition of “conservatism” rather obviously excludes the majority of college professors. But even before the transformation of the GOP,  and under the “old” definition of the term, a majority of university faculty identified as liberal. Not “leftist”as Europeans use the term, but liberal: people whose world-views are shaped by empirical evidence. These are people who recognize and are able to cope with the emergence of new understandings and/or evidence that conflicts with what they previously thought to be the case– people who lack  the all-encompassing, rigid certitude that marks today’s “conservatives.”

Liberal college professors recognize the limits of their knowledge. As I often told my own students, my goal was not to have them leave my classroom agreeing with my perspectives, political or otherwise; my goal was to teach them the importance of understanding and applying two important phrases: it depends, and it’s more complicated than that.

In today’s politics, conservatives are those who hold fixed, immutable beliefs (and want government to impose them on everyone else), and liberals are people who recognize contingency and complexity. DeSantis’ hated “wokeness” is willingness to examine new evidence, determine its credibility, and revise error when the facts support such revision.

In a recent column, Paul Krugman considered what he called “the extraordinary rise in right-wing hostility to higher education in general.”

Not that long ago, most Americans in both parties believed that colleges had a positive effect on the United States. Since the rise of Trumpism, however, Republicans have turned very negative. Recent polling shows an overwhelming majority of Republicans agreeing that both college professors and high schools are trying to “teach liberal propaganda.”

Did America’s colleges — which a large majority of Republicans considered to have a positive influence as recently as 2015 — suddenly become centers of left-wing indoctrination? Did the same thing happen to high schools, run by local boards, across the nation?

No, as Krugman notes, what happened was that right-wingers expanded their definition of what counts as “liberal propaganda.”

Thus, when one points out that schools don’t actually teach critical race theory, the response tends to be that while they may not use the term, they do teach students that racism was long a major force in America, and its effects linger to this day. I don’t know how you teach our nation’s history honestly without mentioning these facts — but in the eyes of a substantial number of voters, teaching uncomfortable facts is indeed a form of liberal propaganda.

And once that’s your mind-set, you see left-wing indoctrination happening everywhere, not just in history and the social sciences. If a biology class explains the theory of evolution, and why almost all scientists accept it — or, for that matter, the theory of how vaccines work — well, that’s liberal propaganda. If a physics class explains how greenhouse gas emissions can change the climate — well, that’s more liberal propaganda.

Krugman says that what we need to understand is that people like DeSantis are attacking education, not because it uses liberal propaganda to indoctrinate, but because it fails to sustain the ignorance they want to preserve.

I wonder how many MAGA folks ever encountered or seriously considered that famous quote from Thomas Jefferson: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

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Speech Versus Action

A recent report on an upcoming Supreme Court case from the New Republic made me think–definitely not for the first time–about the widespread misconceptions around the First Amendment.

Most of the people who read this blog are aware of many of those misconceptions. Probably the most annoying is the most basic–it constantly amazes me (okay, irritates the heck out of me) how many Americans don’t know that the First Amendment, like the rest of the  Bill of Rights, protects only against government action.

I still remember a call I got when I was with Indiana’s ACLU; the caller had applied for a position with White Castle, and had been told that his extensive tattoos were incompatible with their customer service standards. He demanded we sue White Castle for infringing his Free Speech rights. I had to explain that–had the City Council passed an ordinance against tattoos, that would have violated his First Amendment rights, but White Castle is private–and has its own First Amendment right to determine the manner of its own communication.

The case described in the linked article isn’t that clear-cut. It  involves an often-contested “gray area.”

The Supreme Court will hear Counterman v. Colorado in April to decide whether prosecutors must prove that a defendant meant to threaten someone with harm, or if they can opt for the lower threshold of whether a reasonable person might interpret a defendant’s actions or statements as a threat. Where the high court ultimately comes down on this distinction could be consequential in an age when it’s easier than ever for Americans to threaten not just each other, but also election workers, FBI agents, members of Congress, and even Supreme Court justices. How far does the First Amendment go to protect them?

In my classes, I took a rather unorthodox approach to this question, and a number of similar issues. While you won’t find my distinction in legal treatises, it seemed to help students understand the purpose–and limits– of the Free Speech clause. The fundamental distinction I drew was between speech (defined as communication of a message) and action.

The distinction doesn’t rely on whether there was verbal communication.

If I tell you that this cubic zirconium ring I’m selling is really a diamond, and charge you accordingly, I have engaged in fraud–a behavior. The First Amendment won’t protect me.

If I text and telephone you every hour and call you names, that’s harassment–a behavior. The First Amendment won’t protect me.

If I burn an American flag, I am sending a message (we know it’s a message, because  most Americans understand it and find it offensive). That message is protected by the First Amendment.

The problem for law enforcement arises when it is unclear whether we’re dealing with behavior–a genuine threat–or the expression of an opinion. (As lawyers like to say, it’s a “fact-sensitive” inquiry.) Social media trolling has vastly complicated this determination.

At the heart of this case is a campaign of harassment that seems all too familiar. The plaintiff, Billy Counterman, used multiple Facebook accounts to send hostile messages to an unidentified local musician in Colorado. Among the numerous messages that Counterman sent her were ones that read, especially in the context of the years-long barrage, as threats. “Fuck off permanently,” Counterman said in one of the messages. “You’re not being good for human relations,” read another. “Die. Don’t need you.” The target, who never responded to him and blocked him multiple times, ultimately contacted Colorado police, who charged Counterman for violating the state’s anti-stalking statutes.

Colorado law defines the offense to describe anyone who “repeatedly follows, approaches, contacts, places under surveillance, or makes any form of communication with another person … in a manner that would cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress and does cause that person … to suffer serious emotional distress.” Notably, under the rulings of Colorado courts, prosecutors aren’t required to prove that the defendant intended to threaten a person. They instead must only show that a reasonable person would have taken the statements as threats, which is a much easier threshold to clear at trial.

In the lower courts, the troll was handed a sentence of four years under the state’s anti-stalking statute.

This is one of those “hard cases” that –as the saying goes– sometimes make bad law. Four years seems pretty excessive for being an online asshole; on the other hand, such trolling far too frequently becomes a “heckler’s veto”-defined as behavior that allows  people who disagrees with a speaker’s message to shut that message down.

It remains to be seen how the Court will treat online harassment, but it sure seems like it falls on the “behavior” side of my explanatory line…..

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Fantastic News

One of the recurring themes of this daily blog (okay, perhaps “recurring rants” would be more accurate) has been my insistence on the importance of local journalism. When a community loses a credible source of local news, it experiences a number of very negative consequences–the most obvious of which is a loss of democracy, thanks to the lack of information needed to cast informed votes.

I thought about that when a reader of this blog sent me a report that began with the following introductory paragraph:

The Houston Chronicle is shining a bright light on some of the shadiest real estate dealsthat enrich charter school operators. What could be better than to get a charter, buy property, rent it to the charter at rates of their choosing, get the property made tax-exempt, and make a bundle using taxpayer dollars? In some charter schools, the superintendent owns the properties and pays himself rent.

Here in Indianapolis, local television stations have repeatedly been running an ad asserting the “unfairness” of charter school funding that is lower than that of public schools, and our legislative overlords are currently working hard to send more of our tax dollars to voucher and charter schools–schools that even Republican legislators admit lack accountability.

Misbehaviors like those the Houston newspaper uncovered are unlikely to be uncovered by our local “ghost newspaper,” the Indianapolis Star. Never a particularly good newspaper, Gannett has turned it into a pathetic shadow of even its undistinguished past.

Little by little, however, new efforts to improve local coverage have been emerging. I have begun quoting from the Indiana Capital Chronicle, which focuses primarily on the disaster that is our legislature, and I have pointed to outlets covering other matters of local concern. But the IBJ has now reported what I consider fantastic news. ( behind a paywall)

The Indiana Local News Initiative announced its launch Wednesday as a not-for-profit media organization planning to create newsrooms in Indianapolis and Gary.

With more than $10 million raised and the participation of civic leaders such as Penske Entertainment Corp. CEO Mark Miles and Women’s Fund of Central Indiana President Tamara Winfrey-Harris, the Indiana Local News Initiative said it intends to report nonpartisan information at no cost to its audience.

“This is public service journalism,” said Karen Ferguson Fuson, former publisher of The Indianapolis Star, who is serving as board chair of the new organization. “It’s ‘What do I need to engage in citizenship and democracy?’ ‘What do I need to live on a day-to-day basis?’”

The project started with a concern about protecting democracy.  The steering committee began with the premise that a free press is critical to a free democracy, and research has confirmed Indiana’s “big gap” in coverage of local,” boots-on-the-ground community journalism.”

In addition to the 25 staff members to be hired for the Indianapolis newsroom, the  Initiative will include funding for two new positions at The Indianapolis Recorder.

The Initiative will collaborate with existing media companies; its  roster includes The Indianapolis Star, WISH-TV, WFYI Public Media and the Recorder. IBJ has not signed on as a partner.

While Indy is among a shrinking number of markets that still has multiple news outlets with talented journalists, the sizes of many of these outlets are a fraction of what they were before, and a fraction of the size necessary to cover all of the things central Indiana residents say they want,” Ferguson Fuson said.

The Lumina Foundation, one of the Indiana Local News Initiative’s partners, is providing support to TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website authored by Franklin College journalism students, to make its content available for free to members of the Hoosier State Press Association. The website previously required newsrooms to pay a fee.

Funders include the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, Herbert Simon Family Foundation, Myrta Pulliam, Lumina Foundation, John Mutz, Michael Arnolt, the Robert R. and Gayle T. Meyer Family Fund, Gene D’Adamo, Joyce Foundation, the Indianapolis Foundation and the American Journalism Project.

The Indiana Local News Initiative plans to train and pay residents, known as “Indianapolis Documenters,” to attend public meetings and publish the results. The Documenters Network, overseen by not-for-profit media organization City Bureau, presently operates in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago and Cleveland….

The Indiana Local News Initiative is the latest media startup in Indianapolis, where not-for-profit The Capital Chronicle debuted last July and State Affairs Indiana debuted in December. Last August, digital media company Axios announced plans to launch a daily email newsletter in Indianapolis.

These efforts to combat our news desert are incredibly heartening. When people receive credible, trustworthy news and inhabit the same information environment, they not only become informed voters–they once again become members of the same community.

I’m a happy camper!

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Poverty

What is poverty?

The usual measure is economic. Those who don’t fall into that category tend to accept data reported by government agencies, but a recent article from the Indiana Capital Chronicle points out that Hoosiers with income inadequate to meet basic needs “is much higher and more extensive in Indiana than official counts would suggest — particularly among working, single mothers of color.”

The Overlooked and Undercounted report commissioned by the Indiana Community Action Poverty Institute analyzed how wages failed to keep pace even as expenses to families increased – namely food, shelter, health care, transportation and child care costs.

However, federal and state governments continue to use a measure that defines poverty based on one cost alone – food – and doesn’t account for increases in other categories.

This is hardly a surprise. I’ve previously posted about the ALICE research conducted by Indiana’s United Ways.

AlLICE is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. ALICE households have income above the official federal poverty level, but below reality– the actual, basic cost of living. The first report, issued in 2014, was eye-opening. Researchers found that

  • More than one in three Hoosier households cannot afford the basics of housing, food, health care and transportation, despite working hard.
  • In Indiana, 37% of households live below the Alice threshold, with some 14% below the poverty level and another 23% above poverty but below the cost of living.
  • These families and individuals have jobs, and many do not qualify for social services or support.
  • The jobs they are filling are critically important to Hoosier communities. These are our child care workers, laborers, movers, home health aides, heavy truck drivers, store clerks, repair workers and office assistants—yet they are unsure if they’ll be able to put dinner on the table each night.
  • For families living on the edge, families struggling just to put that dinner on the table, saving money is a pipe dream. There is nothing left to save. So these families are vulnerable to any unexpected expense—a car repair, an uninsured illness, even an unexpectedly high utility bill can be enough to plunge them into debt or worse.

For obvious reasons, families falling into this category struggle to find the time and energy to participate in civil society, or to engage in the kinds of information-gathering necessary to create informed voters. Financial poverty is all too often so overwhelming a challenge that the other “riches” that most of us take for granted–social, civic, intellectual–are simply beyond reach.

The United Way report was updated in 2016 and again in 2018. It probably won’t surprise you that ALICE’s situation didn’t improve. In 2018, I wrote

As the researchers point out, traditional measures of poverty don’t capture the real picture–the number of people who are struggling financially because the actual cost of life’s necessities where they live is more than they earn.

Indiana, for example, has 2,530,581 households. Thirteen and a half percent of those households fall below the official poverty line–but another 25.2% fall between the poverty line and the ALICE threshold. That’s 38.7% of Hoosiers who face a constant, debilitating struggle for economic survival….

The stress experienced by impoverished and ALICE families isn’t just financial: struggling people live in poorer neighborhoods that are less safe and less healthy. They lack the time and resources that permit other citizens to participate in civic and political life–and as a result, their voices aren’t heard–or their needs considered– in most public policy debates.

As the ALICE reports have emphasized, ALICE folks are in large part the workers that we more privileged folks rely upon for a multitude of essential services. Evidently, we aren’t willing to pay a living wage to the people who provide those services. (There’s a parallel here with our unwillingness to pay taxes adequate to support the public services we demand.)

The irony is, we pay in other ways. As the ALICE reports and the  Business Journal series document, there are significant social costs to a system that leaves so many hard-working people behind.

Dismissing the struggle of ALICE families as a consequence of laziness or lack of ambition is a sign of moral obtuseness–when it isn’t intentionally self-serving. When you tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, you should probably check to see if they have any boots.

The Capital Chronicle found that Hoosier families struggling to make ends meet are “neither a small nor a marginal group, but rather represent a substantial proportion of households in the state”… More than one in four Indiana households lacks enough income to meet basic needs.

Meanwhile, we punish poverty. Effective state and local tax rates start at 11.4 percent for the poorest 20 percent of Americans, fall to 9.9 percent for the middle 20 percent, and then decline to 7.4 percent for the top 1 percent.

After all,  ALICE folks can’t afford lobbyists.

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