Local Journalism Matters–And We’re Losing It

Ever since the 2016 Presidential election, most Americans who follow the news have been fixated on Washington, D.C., and the antics of our increasingly surreal federal government. That’s entirely understandable–but while we’ve been tuning in to the national soap-opera, we have continued to lose track of equally important matters closer to home.

Americans depend upon local news sources–newspapers, broadcast news organizations–to tell us what is happening in our communities. How is local government responding to challenges from potholes to policing? How is the local school board addressing deficits in civics education? Is the Secretary of State purging voter rolls, and if so, is that process being handled properly or with partisan intent?

The measures taken by our state legislatures and City Councils affect us more dramatically and immediately than even Trump’s disasters (assuming he doesn’t blow up the world). Recently, the Shorenstein Center held a symposium exploring the continued loss of local news and the consequences of that loss.

When Setti Warren first took office as mayor of Newton, Massachusetts in 2010, the local paper, the Newton Tab, had an editor, a publisher and two reporters dedicated to covering the mayor’s office.  When he left office after his second term in 2018, the paper had lost its editor; its one remaining reporter covered multiple cities. Also during this time, the Boston Globe eliminated its regional editions, including the Globe West, which covered Newton and other parts of the MetroWest region.

The problem isn’t limited to Newton, Massachusetts.

Nationwide, many local news outlets have shuttered entirely – a March 2018 study published in the Newspaper Research Journal finds that from 2004 to 2015, the U.S. newspaper industry lost over 1,800 print outlets as a result of closures and mergers. As Warren suggested, this portends danger — studies show that areas with fewer local news outlets and declining coverage also have lower levels of civic engagement and voter turnout.

Lack of local news can occur without the complete shuttering of a local newspaper; here in Indianapolis, the Star now devotes its (dwindling) column inches primarily to sports and “the bar beat.” Coverage of city hall and the statehouse is sporadic and woefully inadequate.

As I noted in a previous blog, lack of local journalism doesn’t simply frustrate accountability; it even translates into higher costs for taxpayers. “Due diligence” by institutions that purchase municipal bonds  includes investigation of the fiscal probity of the issuer. When no local journalists are covering city hall, buyers demand a higher interest rate to offset the increased risk of the unknown.

At the symposium, Mayor Warren was blunt:

I am gravely concerned about the fact that we don’t have journalists covering city hall, policy decisions, political decisions in an in-depth way, because the citizenry of my own hometown, Newton, Mass., as well as the citizens of the Commonwealth, if they don’t have the facts, they can’t make sound decisions on what directions they want their politicians to go in. So if there’s an absence of good investigative journalism, and there’s a vacuum of having data and facts and reporting, what could get filled into that vacuum is information that is not accurate. Misinformation, disinformation and opinions, not straight reporting. So we are in danger, at the local level, at the state level, and certainly at the national level if we don’t have journalists on the ground doing the interviews, double, triple checking sources. We’re not going to make sound decisions on our policy, whether it’s housing, education, transportation or the ability to protect.

In the absence of good information, a dangerous combination of social media, special interests and people who simply have an ax to grind will fill the void, making it nearly impossible to deliver genuinely responsive governance.

Without legitimate journalism–what has been called the “journalism of verification”–we can’t hold elected or appointed officials accountable.

When no one is watching the store, it’s easy to rob.

When no one is watching government, taxpayers, too, can be robbed. Even under the “best case” scenario, however, if no one is watching, it won’t function properly.

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There’s Religion, And Then There’s Religion

Yesterday’s post sparked a number of comments about religion, pro and (mostly) con.

It is easy to look at the self-righteousness of the Christian warriors–the Mike Pences and Franklin Grahams of the world–and come to the conclusion that Christianity (and for that matter, all religion) is a poorly-veiled effort by self-righteous prigs to control and dominate others.

And yet….

We need to recognize that even those of us who are nonbelievers are nevertheless  products of specific religious cultures, and consider the ways in which our early socialization into those cultures have shaped the attitudes with which we approach issues of justice and human behavior. (Pardon the shameful plug, but I wrote a book–God and Country: America in Red and Blue–– about the ways in which those unrecognized religious roots influence Americans’ positions on ostensibly secular policies from economics and criminal justice to the environment.)

Religion was initially a way to explain an inexplicable world–especially why some people prospered and others suffered. Different religious traditions approached these questions differently, and when humans invented science, some embraced the “new learning” and some rejected it.

That leads me to an utterly banal observation: some approaches to religious belief encourage people to live together amicably, and some do not. My own unoriginal rule of thumb is based entirely upon the behavior of purportedly religious folks. If your religion makes you more compassionate and kind, if it provides you with a helpful (but not unduly prescriptive) framework within which to approach moral dilemmas, it’s probably good.

If it turns you into a self-righteous moral scold, it probably isn’t.

I came across a far more eloquent version of my approach on Phil Gulley’s blog. Gulley, as many readers know, is a Quaker pastor and author from a small community near Indianapolis. The post in question was his response to a mean-spirited cartoon by Gary Varvel, who is a longtime cartoonist (and inexplicably, recently a columnist) for the Indianapolis Star. The cartoon, which portrayed Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser as a demanding publicity seeker, is reproduced on Gulley’s blog.

The Star evidently refused to print Gulley’s response, saying that the newspaper had already apologized for printing the cartoon. (A number of people canceled their subscriptions, citing it, and I can see why the paper might prefer not to call any further attention to it.) That’s a pity, though, because Gulley has captured the distinction between religious beliefs that prompt humility and self-examination and those that serve as a substitute for self-awareness and as a crutch for judgmentalism.

You really need to read the entire post, but here are the paragraphs that illustrate that distinction:

I’ve known Gary Varvel most of my life. We were raised in the same small town and have many friends in common. We embraced the Christian faith around the same time. I once believed as he still does. But his faith has taken him places I cannot go, embracing causes I cannot support. To be fair, he likely says the same thing about my faith. Gary has often said his faith informs everything he does. I believe him, which is why I reject his faith, or at least his version of Christianity, which always comes at the expense of others, be they women, or gays, or liberals, or any “others” whose demands for justice challenge its narrow and settled world.

I have never wanted anyone to lose his or her job. It has happened to me twice, and each time was painful and difficult. While I have never wanted anyone to be fired, I have often wished those who neglect the hard work of self-awareness and self-improvement would retire, or perhaps find another line of work that doesn’t involve shaping, or misshaping, public opinion. That is my wish for Gary, to retire and spend time learning the world his wife, daughter, and granddaughters inhabit, a world far different from his own.

Amen.

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The God Squad In The Courts

Rewire has a feature called “Gavel Drop,” with brief descriptions of recent lawsuits involving religion and the First Amendment, and providing links to longer descriptions of the parties and issues involved. This particular issue highlights the current (sad) state of “faith-based” America.

Allow me to share a few of the featured entries.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is now arguing in federal court to allow homeless shelters to deny services for transgender people. Downtown Soup Kitchen in Anchorage, Alaska, filed the religious freedom lawsuit against Anchorage earlier this year over the city’s nondiscrimination law; a case had been filed against the center after it denied a transgender woman admission to its shelter. The shelter director said that the woman was denied because she appeared drunk, but also that it would never accept a “biological man.”

In the linked article describing the lawsuit, ThinkProgress points out that ADF’s claim for relief  isn’t simply a request to allow this particular discriminatory act; it is a demand that the court overturn the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance in its entirety. It’s part and parcel of the Christian Right’s persistent attacks on any and all LGBTQ protections, in the name of “religious liberty.”

If a homeless transgender woman has to be thrown out into the cold Alaskan street in order to show proper deference to the religious sensibilities of the “Christians” who run the shelter, well, those are the breaks.

Speaking of religious liberty, the Gavel Drop also reported on this lawsuit from Illinois.

Illinois’ Fourth District Appellate Court upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging a state law that provides funding to Medicaid and state employee health insurance plans that cover abortion services. Anti-abortion groups, represented by the Thomas More Society, are planning to appeal the case to the Illinois Supreme Court.

I note that, for these “good Christians,” religious liberty goes only one way: their way. Adherents of religions that permit abortion are to be denied the liberty to follow their beliefs.

Nothing more clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy of the “religious freedom” movement as piously promoted by people like Mike Pence and organizations like ADF and the Thomas More Society than this insistence that “liberty” means their right to have government impose their beliefs on everyone else.

The theologies of these “Christian” plaintiffs prohibit abortion (for them and for any of their neighbors); but those theologies evidently do allow flat-out lying in service of their “godly” goals. Their argument against the law included the repeated accusation that the measure promoted taxpayer-funded abortion services.

“Taxpayer-funded abortion” is a myth pedaled by abortion-rights foes that feeds on public ignorance about abortion funding. Two-thirds of the public is unaware the federal Hyde Amendment prohibits paying for abortions with federal Medicaid dollars, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

Also among the lawsuits listed in the Gavel Drop was yet another effort to have government endorse Christianity by displaying a cross on public property.

The city of Pensacola, Florida, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and allow a large memorial cross to remain standing on public land in Bayview Park. Earlier this month, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court judge’s ruling that displaying the cross on publicly owned land violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The city of Pensacola is represented by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

These public monument cases are brought repeatedly, and just as repeatedly dismissed under a long line of precedents invoking the Establishment Clause. Not only do I fail to see how moving the cross to private property violates anyone’s  “liberty,” I fail to understand why the Christian Right is so dead-set on having the government endorse their brand of religion.

Okay, that’s a lie. I do understand.

They’re theocrats, just like the Taliban. They want government to post their symbols in order to remind the rest of us that this is their country, and the rest of us are just here by virtue of their forbearance.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really get tired of these people.

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Meanwhile, Under The Radar….

One of the problems with political discourse grows out of specialization–as the world around us gets more and more complicated, people who are experts in different fields, who use different vocabularies and operate from within different conceptual frameworks have trouble communicating with each other and with the public.

This “silo-ing” can be frustrating, and it’s made worse by the unnecessary use of jargon. But a lot of it is inevitable. I can’t follow the more detailed statistical analyses of my economics colleagues, or the computations that support climate science, or the medical terminology my doctor uses.

Similarly, very few Americans follow legal matters that are more complex than an episode of “Law and Order.” That’s why a case currently pending before the Supreme Court has gotten very little attention, despite its potential consequences. The case is Gamble v. United States.

To its credit, The Atlantic had an article explaining the issue, and those consequences.

Gamble addresses a fairly arcane area of constitutional jurisprudence:  the dual-sovereignty doctrine. That’s a 150-year-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition of double-jeopardy. In plain English, the doctrine allows state and federal courts to prosecute the same person for the same criminal offense.

And why, you are asking yourselves, should you give a rat’s patootie about that?

Within the context of the Mueller probe, legal observers have seen the dual-sovereignty doctrine as a check on President Donald Trump’s power: It could discourage him from trying to shut down the Mueller investigation or pardon anyone caught up in the probe, because the pardon wouldn’t be applied to state charges. Under settled law, if Trump were to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for example—he was convicted last month in federal court on eight counts of tax and bank fraud—both New York and Virginia state prosecutors could still charge him for any crimes that violated their respective laws. (Both states have a double-jeopardy law that bars secondary state prosecutions for committing “the same act,” but there are important exceptions, as the Fordham University School of Law professor Jed Shugerman has noted.)

If the dual-sovereignty doctrine were to be tossed, then Trump’s pardon could theoretically protect Manafort from state action.

Senator Orrin Hatch has submitted a brief in the case, arguing that the doctrine should be invalidated, although he claims the Mueller investigation has nothing to do with it. (Pardon me while I snicker….)

Here’s the analysis: If Trump shuts down the Russia investigation, Mueller  could “farm out” cases to state-level attorneys general. Those AGs can’t be shut down by Trump and they can, within some limits, charge people with state crimes, even after those people have received a federal pardon. If the dual-sovereignty doctrine is invalidated, however, a federal pardon would essentially block a subsequent state-level prosecution.

The original issues in the case had nothing to do with the Russia investigation; it began as a relatively arcane argument about how federalism should work. And Paul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the conservative R Street Institute thinks it may not have the effect that Orrin Hatch evidently thinks it will.

Trump’s pardon power is “explicitly limited in the text of the Constitution to pardons for ‘offenses against the United States,’” Rosenzweig said. If that language is interpreted to mean federal criminal offenses specifically, a Trump pardon wouldn’t protect against a state criminal prosecution, he said, no matter what happens to the double-jeopardy clause in Gamble.

If that Constitutional language is interpreted that way. But it probably won’t be, if Brett Kavanaugh–or someone like him– is on the Court.

That’s one example of why judicial philosophy–and appointments to the Court– matter a lot more than many people think.

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Reflections on Kavanaugh And The Rule of Law

I cite to a lot of publications, but I’ve not previously quoted (or, let’s be honest, read)  America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture. That said, I am in full agreement with the article in which that journal withdrew its endorsement of Brett Kavanaugh.

But even if the credibility of the allegation has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt and even if further investigation is warranted to determine its validity or clear Judge Kavanaugh’s name, we recognize that this nomination is no longer in the best interests of the country. While we previously endorsed the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh on the basis of his legal credentials and his reputation as a committed textualist, it is now clear that the nomination should be withdrawn.

Congress and the Administrative Branch are broken and dysfunctional. Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is an assault on what remains of the legitimacy of the judicial branch. Together with the shameful refusal to grant Merrick Garland even the courtesy of a hearing, it represents a surrender to toxic partisanship and an acknowledgment that we are in a virtual civil war.

About those “hearings”….

Many years ago, when I was active in Republican politics, I was asked whether I would consider being a candidate for a local judicial position. I explained that I lacked a judicial temperament—I tend to be an advocate, and advocacy in my view (then and now) is inconsistent with the judicial function.

We lawyers talk a lot about “judicial temperament,” because it matters. We The People are entitled to have our disputes adjudicated by sober, thoughtful people who can put aside their own prejudices and emotions, and fairly weigh the relevant facts.

The Kavanaugh hearing was not a trial. It was a job interview–his opportunity to demonstrate that he has the intellectual capacity, maturity and judicial temperament appropriate to a judicial position.

He failed.

Ignore his refusal to submit to an FBI investigation, or to a polygraph. Ignore his highly partisan past behavior. Ignore the committee’s refusal to provide over 90% of his work product for the Bush Administration, or to call the people who were identified as witnesses to Dr. Ford’s assault. Ignore the fact that there is irrefutable evidence that Judge Kavanaugh lied about his history of drinking to excess.

Just focus on his demeanor. And ask yourself if you would want this hostile, petulant, entitled man to rule on a case involving your Constitutional rights.

There was a reason the nation’s Founders created an independent judiciary. They reasoned that removing judges from the political process, from the need to respond to the “passions of the majority,” would allow them to rule dispassionately on the matters before them. Their judgments wouldn’t always be correct, but they would be rendered in good faith—based upon their reading of the law and facts, and not their personal re-election prospects.

When our elected representatives are asked to “advise and consent” to a lifetime judicial nomination, they need to recognize the difference between a conservative or liberal judicial philosophy and simple partisanship. We should be wary of a jurist who approaches the Constitution without a well-developed belief in his or her proper interpretive role, and we can agree with that philosophy or not, but disagreement does not disqualify the nominee.

Partisanship is another matter entirely. A judge who is committed to the fortunes of a political party, who will approach the issues from the perspective of a “team player,” poses a clear danger to the rule of law, and undermines respect for the judicial process. Kavanaugh’s entire history marks him as a highly intelligent partisan hack.

There is a reason the American Bar Association called for an FBI investigation and a delay in the confirmation vote. There’s also a reason the Republicans would have ignored it–along with the huge public backlash to the conduct of that farcical “hearing”– but for the position taken by Senator Flake.

Kavanaugh may yet be seated on the highest Court in the land.

These are really dark, dark days for the American Idea and the rule of law.

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