As a matter of full disclosure, I have a couple of biases in this column.
First, I do not like Donald Trump. I appreciate many of his policies, even the ones I don’t agree with, because I appreciate that he is doing something. I really appreciate his Supreme Court appointments.
That said, I strongly dislike who he is as a person. I wish he would get off social media. I wish he would stop being a bully. I wish he would speak about his policies without belittling any other group. I wish he would talk about the media in real terms, rather than working to undermine the only job so vital to a democracy that our founding fathers wrote its protection into our country’s Constitution.
That brings me to my second bias. I support newspapers. I support journalism in a variety of media — television, magazines, radio, newspapers, even responsible blogging. I understand the value of informing people about their community. I understand the value of giving residents a clearinghouse for reliable information. I see the value of journalism at the very grassroots level, in small towns and know what real journalism can do for a community and what happens in its absence.
With all of that said, our President is treated wrongly. We recently received a letter from Bo Johnstone expressing appreciation for the Journal-Tribune’s coverage of the Battle of the Bulge 75TH anniversary included in an edition last week. In the letter, which appears on this page, Johnstone wrote about the battle and what it meant.
“It is unfortunate that you have to rely on the AP for such articles, as their blatant bias against President Trump was openly on display.”
Sadly, he is right.
In the fourth paragraph of an article celebrating the American Soldier and what he did for the world, the AP wrote: “And at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is fanning the flames of trans-Atlantic discord, the pristine white rows of thousands of grave markers over the remains of U.S. soldiers in cemeteries on the former front line hark back to the days when Americans made the ultimate sacrifice for a cause across the ocean.”
There was absolutely no need to bring Trump’s policy into the discussion. The story was about the Battle of the Bulge. I understand the contrast between a time when America came to the World’s rescue versus our current isolationist position. That is a comparison that maybe deserves to be made and critiqued in an editorial or by a historian or a foreign policy expert.
Even the AP eventually recognized this, taking the reference to Trump out of later iterations of the story.
But this is not an isolated incident. Earlier in his presidency, Trump went to a factory opening and the lead was not that Trump had saved jobs or even that the factory was staying local and what it would mean for the community. The AP chose to lead the story by saying Trump attended an event in an effort to escape a firestorm in D.C., then listing all the controversy surrounding the President.
When journalist treat him unfairly, they give credence to his claims journalist treat him unfairly and that journalist are unfair.
Good journalists work hard to keep bias and opinion out of the newspaper. To think journalist do not have opinions is naïve. But my hope is that you would never know my political leanings from any news story I write and If I didn’t tell you in a column.
Good journalists don’t treat news differently based on the organization or person involved. Journalists do not change a story, devalue a story or exaggerate a story based on their feelings about the issue involved. If journalists want to claim the high ground, we need to take the high road. We need to take our responsibility to our readers and our community seriously.
We need to do better and until we do, those who say we aren’t will continue to be right.
-Mac Cordell is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.