A FREE PRESS COMES WITH REPONSIBILITIES

“Journalism is the first rough draft of history.” Phillip Graham

The United States Constitution contains both a Free Speech and Free Press clause. Together, they give us our right to “freedom of expression.”    Each clause plays a distinct and important role in protecting our democracy.

Traditionally, elected officials from both political parties had a stake in maintaining a cordial relationship with the American press.  Journalists wanted access to information that would provide timely news.  Politicians sought reporting that was friendly to their positions and wanted the voting public to believe they were being cooperative and transparent. Neither side got exactly what they wished for, but the system appeared to work. For example, following the disaster in Vietnam and crisis of Watergate, 72% of the public continued to trust the news media.

Unfortunately, when Donald Trump was elected president, everything changed. He had no reason to be cordial or cooperative with the press. He waged a war against objective news with considerable success. Trump continues to convince millions of his followers that anything they see or hear in the “non-Trump” media is false. Today, only 14% of Republicans trust the mainstream news media.

This commentary discusses two issues that consider the obligations for maintaining a free press. First, I will briefly examine some history of journalism in America, which has often not been a shining example of fairness and accuracy. Second, in today’s frenzied news environment, where disinformation and conspiracy theories run rampant, I will discuss why each us has a duty to carefully separate hard news from opinion. In order for a democracy to flourish, freedom of the press comes with both journalistic and consumer responsibilities.

Placing journalism into historical perspective shines a light on troubling past practices. Unfortunately, some bad habits have returned to our social media “sound-bite” world. Before WWII, most newspapers focused on sensationalist “yellow journalism” rather than important civic events. Accurate reporting, nonpartisanship and accountability were not goals. Eye-catching headlines that increased distribution and sales were all that mattered. In addition, the wealthy owners of each media outlet skewed the news for personal gain or for political advantage well beyond the editorial page.

Until the 1960s, journalism was a white, male oriented career. Female and Black reporters were excluded from organizations like the National Press Club. Editors did not assign Blacks or women to cover national affairs.  The Washington Post did not hired its first reporter of color until 1951.

During the cold war era, journalists often did not reveal in their reporting what they learned about national-security matters. Many were recent veterans who supported an official Washington agenda to contain Communist expansion by keeping secrets from the public.  In 1977, Carl Bernstein, who helped expose the Watergate scandal, wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine on the relationship between the CIA and the press. His investigation discovered that since 1952 hundreds of reporters worked undercover for the spy agency. Some of the nation’s most renowned journalists were on the list. They claimed a duty to pass on to the CIA sensitive information learned on overseas assignments.

Walter Lippmann was a renowned political commentator with a career spanning 60 years. He was in the vanguard of an effort by the mainstream media to seek the pursuit of truth, along with a commitment to public responsibility. These goals have been hampered in the last two decades by a shrinking print press that has seen one in four American newspapers shutdown. The reputable news sources that are left must compete against social media and cable news networks who want to return to sensationalism or who pander to more extremist political views.  

One of my favorite journalism quotes comes from the 1947 Commission on Freedom of the Press: “It is no longer enough to report the fact truthfully. It is now necessary to report the truth about the fact.” With so many information sources refusing to follow this creed and purposefully distorting facts, each of us has a responsibility to seek out the truth with as much rigor and depth as possible.

Many of my conservative friends would disagree with my view that the New York Times and network news deliver accurate and fair reporting. However, even the most jaded right wing operative cannot deny that former Attorney General William Barr misrepresented the initial findings of the Mueller Report to the American people. Moreover, last week it was disclosed, through internal emails, that Fox news had repeatedly reported election fraud lies on its channel, knowing that the information was false.  There was internal discussion of the Fox network’s stock price trumping the truth.

Let me suggest how to escape the slanted information from cable news and dishonest officials. The free press also provides us with detailed source documents. Three examples are the 2019 Mueller Report; the Report issued the same year by the House Intelligent Committee on Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine; and the January 6 Committee Report. Granted, reading these reports takes considerable time and effort. (All are available online.) However, not doing so leaves an individual at the mercy of conflicting opinions that seek to muddy the waters.

These reports offer an excellent opportunity to become educated with corroborated factual investigations concerning the former president’s behavior and decision-making. In addition, the reports reveal what should be avoided and what requires immediate repair to keep our American experiment with the free press alive and well.

 

 

 

 

  

PUBLIC EDUCATION IS UNDER ATTACK

Public Education is under attack in America. Right wing conservatives and Christian nationalists have launched cultural wars against teachers unions, masking policies during the pandemic, the content of school libraries and textbooks, school districts that teach accurate history and LQBTQ students in public schools. Public education is the crown jewel of our democratic, constitutional republic. It is time for concerned citizens to take a stand.

By the mid-1800s, most states had adopted three basic assumptions governing public education. First, public elementary schools should be free and supported by taxes. Second, teachers should be trained educators. Third, children should be required to attend school. With this blueprint, the US population quickly developed one of the highest literacy rates in the world.

There are many advantages to a robust public school system. While the average private school tuition is $20,000/year, public schools are free. There is access to education for every child in the community. Students are exposed to diversity with classmates from different cultures and income levels that do not think, act or look exactly like them. Public schools offer advanced educational and extracurricular opportunities. They have a staff of special education and learning specialists, typically not found in private schools. While teachers in public schools are required to be certified, there is no such mandate in private schools.

To understand why an education system with these assets is now on the defensive and under attack, a review of recent cultural history is in order. Until the civil rights era, public and private schools coexisted with little conflict. In the 1960s, two Supreme Court cases removed religion from the public schools to preserve the separation of church and state.  It became illegal for public school districts to require religious studies or for school authorities to perform prayer. When this mandate was added to the previous Supreme Court decision to integrate public schools, many white evangelical parents rebelled. The widely held suspicion was that the federal government had schemed to put Blacks into schools and drive God out. Immediately, hundreds of alternative private schools were established attached to evangelical churches. Most had no minority students.

In the early 1970s, the IRS threatened to take away the tax-exempt status of private church schools that were not integrated. There was a new uproar criticizing government interference in the business of the church. Christian families who wanted unfettered school choice claimed they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. It did not take long for former right wing supporters of Senator Barry Goldwater to mobilize evangelicals into the powerful political force that dominates today’s Republican Party.

With similar goals, radical conservatives and evangelicals concluded, both figuratively and literally, that their political merger was “a match made in heaven.” Today they maintain that only their movement can save the nation from the apocalypse, even if it means adopting anti-democratic views and a conspiracy based approach to politics.

White Christian nationalism has set its sights on disrupting numerous well-established democratic institutions.  Public education is at the top of this list. Republican activist, Christopher Rufo, recently spoke at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan. He emphasized his strategy “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school mistrust.” He advised the students “to be ruthless and brutal” in creating their own narrative. If public learning does not look, sound and feel white and Christian, than it must change or be removed. Lies, smears and distortions that create fear and anger in parents are the right wing formula for attacking public education.

School administrators are now forced to confront a host of disruptive cultural issues. Moreover, extremist parents are demanding academic content that omits diversity. Radical school choice legislation further diminishes the public schools.

This is unfortunate because parents and schoolboards should be working to strengthen public education following the learning setbacks caused by the pandemic. Critical issues include expanding pre-K education, addressing shortages of teachers and bus drivers, focusing on post-pandemic behavioral problems and finding ways to replace lost learning. Our youngest students in reading and math have fallen the furthest behind.

Republicans interested in entering the 2024 presidential primary are using right wing education demands to gain momentum with these primary voters. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education Act, (the Don’t Say Gay Bill) banning instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity through third grade. He has limited what the public schools can say about racism and rejected 41% of textbooks because the content conflicted with the personal beliefs of religious conservatives in the Education Department. Most recently, DeSantis banned the College Board’s Advanced Placement course in African American studies for high school students.

What is to be done? One positive development is the recent Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruling that found that our state's funding of public education falls woefully short and violates students' constitutional rights. The opinion sides with poorer districts in a lawsuit that was first launched eight years ago. If the opinion stands, there will be billions of dollars in additional annual support for public education in Pennsylvania.

Concerned citizens can support this court ruling and demand more state funding for deprived school districts. Locally there are opportunities to mentor a student, join a parent organization or attend school board meetings to show support. Our public schools are worth the effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE EVOLUTION OF ADDICTION AND RECOVERY

Twenty years ago, I relocated to Washington County, got sober and started a new life. The people I met in the local recovery community were warm and supportive. They taught me how to persevere as a recovering alcoholic. Over the past several decades, the meaning of addiction and approaches to recovery have been transformed in meaningful ways. This commentary will discuss some of these important developments nationally and in Washington County.

As late as the 1990s, an individual’s drug and/or alcohol addiction continued to carry the erroneous stigma of a flawed, weak-willed character. The prevailing opinion was that those afflicted could not be trusted to perform well in society. While the recovery fellowships and medical profession recognized addiction as a disease, the average person was not buying it. There appeared to be no rational explanation for an addict or alcoholic going through negative life-altering consequences and unimaginable withdrawal symptoms only to chronically repeat the addiction cycle.

Over time, this impression has changed. Several events moved the needle toward treating addiction as a serious medical condition, requiring society’s compassion not disdain. First, in the 1980s, drug dealers converted cocaine powder into smokable "crack" that could be sold in smaller quantities and to more people. Unlike alcoholism that is progressive and takes years to develop or opioid (narcotic) addiction that progresses over a period of months, crack addiction was occurring in first time users. By the mid-1990s, crack use was an epidemic in the inner cities, but found in suburbia as well.

Second was the prescription-opioid crisis (Vicodin, OxyContin) that became widespread after 2010.  Pharmaceutical companies claimed that the risk of addiction to prescription opioids was very low and gave reassurances to prescribers.  To compound the problem, these companies sought large profits by promoting the use of powerful opioids to patients who did not require them.

The Council of Economic Advisers estimated that in 2018 alone, the cost of opioid addiction (including the value of lives lost) was $696 billion. Synthetic drugs distributed by “pill-mill” pain clinics decimated rural communities. (With recent litigation awards, Pennsylvania will receive more than $2 billion from these drug manufacturers to help fight addiction.)

Third, by 2014, the opioid fentanyl illegally entered the country in larger quantities and started to kill not only chronic heroin users, but also thrill seeking young people. Fentanyl is twenty times cheaper to produce and fifty times stronger than heroin. More recently, dealers began lacing other street drugs with fentanyl to increase potency. Weekend partiers now overdose in large numbers.

Lastly, the pandemic had a profound impact on addiction. Statistics showed that alcohol consumption in 2020 was 15% higher than just before the pandemic. There are troubling signs that the stay-at-home drinking binge has not abated. In addition, drug induced deaths skyrocketed during the pandemic. Many believe that the absence of in-person drug and alcohol fellowship meetings during the COVID lockdown, a lifeline for many recovering people, contributed to the problem.

Today, everyone knows someone who is fighting addiction. Most people accept addiction as a brain disease. The habitual intake of harmful chemicals causes changes in the brain systems that involve pleasure, reward, motivation and memory. Physical and psychological cravings and uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms make it more difficult for a person to stop using drugs or alcohol. The general population now understands that without medical intervention and therapy, addicts will continue to use a substance despite harmful or dangerous consequences.

Washington County has always been in the vanguard of addressing addiction through sound recovery options. There is a vibrant recovery community with multiple fellowship meetings every day of the week. When I sought treatment over twenty years ago, Greenbriar Treatment Center was already well established. After leaving Greenbriar, I was fortunate to become a resident of a local recovery house for six months that broadened my ability to live as a sober individual. Today, there are three long-term recovery houses for men and four for women that operate within the county.

In recent years, local government and the courts have recognized that addiction and recovery require pro-active solutions other than incarceration. President Judge, John DiSalle, supervises Washington County’s Drug Court along with a full time probation officer and case manager. This team works together to support and monitor a participant’s recovery. The twenty-three month program maintains a critical balance between supervision and encouragement.

Former District Attorney Eugene Vittone was instrumental in organizing the Washington County Drug and Alcohol Commission in 2003. He was proud of how this independent non-profit worked collaboratively with county government to facilitate its prevention programs. The aim was to help alcoholics and addicts recover in a nonjudgmental way. The D&A Commission now offers support in job training, housing, transportation, childcare and connections to mental health resources. Washington County was one of the first in the Commonwealth to provide naloxone, a life-saving medication used in the event of a suspected overdose, to first responders and the public.

Not all is well in the local recovery community. New legislation designed to provide state oversight of drug and alcohol recovery houses has made it difficult for small, independent operators in Washington County to comply. Some misplaced regulations undermine the “house rules” voted on by the residents to keep order and insure sobriety. Local recovery houses have stayed in business and continued to get referrals because they know what works. Unfortunately, state bureaucrats, even with good intentions, do not.

 

LIBERALISM AND NON PARTISAN PRIMARIES CAN HOLD THE CENTER

 

Following the midterm elections there was a brief period of political optimism in the air. Voters rejected election denier and extremist candidates in critical states. Observers held out hope that the center could hold and again become the norm in American politics.

The new year quickly dashed any good will engendered by the election and replaced it with “over the moon” partisan conflict at our nation’s Capital. In the House of Representatives, any chance that rational debate could take place was quashed when far right zealots were handed the keys to important committees. Republicans have refused to remove one of their own, George Santos, from Congress for his abhorrent conduct in lying about his background and family to gain office. There are no plans to consider compromise legislation on abortion, immigration reform, gun control or the federal budget. Clearly, holding onto power has won out over problem solving and integrity.

Both the President and former President (and now former Vice President) are mired in investigations regarding the mishandling of classified documents. Denial, lack of transparency and attacking the other for similar conduct have undermined efforts to fix the problem. What should be a middling, procedural snafu has morphed into a legal nightmare for both political parties.

The single institution thought to transcend political power, the Supreme Court, has been degraded by political posturing and infighting among the Justices. The present Supreme Court majority has moved to reverse long-standing precedential decisions on abortion and other cultural issues.

In the streets of America, political violence is becoming almost as common as mass shootings. The United States Capitol Police are debating whether to reorganize to become more like the Secret Service. This would enable them to provide around the clock protection for members of Congress.

In the words of poet William Butler Yeats, “When things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” I believe that, because of America’s dedication to “liberalism,” it is possible that the center can hold notwithstanding our distressing political environment. In simple terms, civic duty must replace gaining power as the fundemental goal of our government representatives. Officials must be elected that have no interest in controlling government to advance their singular ideological objectives. Government must return to being a level playing field where pluralism provides protection from majorities and mobs.

Most Americans believe in liberalism without stopping to consider what this important political theory embodies. (It is not a term that describes Democratic progressives.) Liberalism is the flexible foundation of our constitutional republic. It allows for the contradictory objectives of liberty/individualism (valued by conservatives) and equality/community (valued by progressives) to coexist at the same time. American liberalism was built on the foundation of property rights, honoring contracts and capitalism. However, those who value liberalism are always mindful that these economic principles can be abused and cause unwarranted inequality or discrimination. Liberalism in our democracy is constantly in flux. There is a continuing search for a grand compromise between individual freedom on one hand and human universality on the other.

A majority of Americans understand that a nation of 330 million individuals cannot be expected to agree on everything. The foremost role of government is to provide a framework to discuss our differences. Represenative democracy provides an open forum for citizens who are ethnically diverse and who have different opinions on politics, economics and culture.

American democracy can never be an all or nothing proposition. If Catholic countries can compromise on abortion legislation, if poorer nations can find solutions to much worse immigration problems and if countries with appalling domestic violence can adopt fair gun control policies, so can the United States of America.

Once liberalism is understood and championed by the voting public, the country should adopt voting laws that will enable it to proliferate. This would involve reforming the primary election system in America. Liberalism is set up to fail by primary politics that favor partisan zealots who place party and power above nation and compromise. In many primary elections a minority of extremist party officials and their supporters choose like-minded candidates that end up in Congress. These partisan primaries disenfranchise Independent voters, distort representation and fuel anti-liberalism once the candidates are elected.

There are currently three methods for conducting primary elections:

Closed Primaries.  In Pennsylvania and twelve other states, only those registered with a political party are able to vote in the primary. Fifteen states conduct semi-closed primaries. Candidates are incentivized to only seek the support of the partisan voters in their base.

Open Primaries. Twenty-one states employ an open primary system. Independent voters are allowed to vote in either party’s primary. Candidates must broaden their appeal beyond their partisan base.

Nonpartisan Primaries. Two states employ this system where all candidates run on one single primary ballot, regardless of party affiliation. All voters vote in the same primary election with the top two candidates advancing to a general election.

The nonpartisan primary model is by far the best at preserving liberalism. All voters’ voices matter no matter which party has a registration advantage. More voters participate in the primary.  The candidates elected in the general are more centered in their positions. All states should adopt this primary system as an important step in electing non-polarizing candidates who can “hold the center.”