I capitalize The Media – and use “is” instead of “are” – because people talk about us that way, in the Giant Singular, as if we’re one great big monolithic creature, marching in lockstep to wreak evil upon the land.
To those who support Donald Trump, we are the “fake news media,” lying with abandon and indulging our flagrant bias without remorse. To an increasing number of those who oppose Trump, we are doing too much to “normalize” his presidency by reporting on him as if he were… the president.
It matters not if you’re a small, family-owned local newspaper or the New York Times. To many people, these are distinctions without a difference. You are simply The Media. And The Media is bad.
But not today. Today I am in Columbia for the South Carolina Press Association’s annual meeting and awards ceremony. It’s kind of like our own little “Oscars,” although even fewer people care about the SCPA awards than the Oscars. It’s basically just a bunch of journalists coming together to recognize other journalists for their work, and, yes, it’s a bit self-congratulatory. But we’re The Media. If we don’t congratulate ourselves, who will?
Anyway, it’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m sitting in a hotel room, waiting for the opening reception to start. It’s at Beirkeller Brewery – a cool, casual hangout on the riverfront. There’ll be free beer and wine, and probably even some brats and pretzels!
Legend has it the SCPA annual meeting was once a lavish weekend, complete with open bars and fancy-dress dinners and such. This was in the heyday of newspapering – back when they made money – and long before Jeff and I got into the business. The two-day event is now a much more modest affair, culminating in an awards luncheon – rubber chicken, no booze – but we always have a grand time. Journalists need to mingle with other journalists, especially in today’s atmosphere. The moral support, alone, is worth the price of admission.
Still, the news doesn’t stop just because newsies are throwing a party, so I’m here at the hotel checking my email, waiting for Jeff to return from the meeting of the executive committee, into which he was recently inducted. I see that I’ve received a forward from my friend Bonnie Hargrove at USCB Center for the Arts telling me that the SC Humanities Council has just been defunded by DOGE, along with all the other humanities councils in the country. After yesterday’s tariffs announcement, and this morning’s stock market plunge, it almost fails to register. Almost.
But then I Google “humanities” and learn that “among the thousands of groups affected by the sudden cessation of funds are state humanities councils, museums, historic sites, archives, libraries, educators and media outlets in all 50 states.”
Ugh. That hurts. Can’t wait to see what my fellow evildoers in The Media have to say about it at the SCPA reception.
And I wonder how to write about this latest gut-punch to our culture without bringing a deluge of violent disapproval down on my head. A reader of The Island News – our other paper, which is more “newsy” than this one – recently sent a Letter to the Editor in which he referred to us as a “communist news network” and a bunch of “liberal reprobates.” He’s not the first.
And it’s all very weird for me. No one has ever called me a communist OR a reprobate, and I’m not even sure what “liberal” and “conservative” mean anymore. Long-time readers of this column know me as a knee-jerk moderate who often goes to greater lengths than they wish I would to “see both sides.” It’s a compulsion. If I showed you a list of my daily reading and podcast choices – the sheer breadth and depth of conflicting opinion in which I willingly immerse myself – you’d probably wonder how I maintain an inkling of sanity. At this point, I’m holding onto that inkling by a very frail thread.
Having said that, the letter writer has a point about our Opinion Page at The Island News. We do have significantly more columnists writing from left of center than right. We’ve been working on that for a while now, with little success. All of our columnists are either local or from somewhere nearby – Andy Brack hails from Charleston, for instance, and Terry Manning’s in the upstate – and that’s entirely by design. The internet is lousy with national opinionators – “there’s something for everybody!” out there – so we choose to expose our readers to something different: the ideas, thoughts and feelings of their own neighbors and fellow South Carolinians. We have more submissions than we have space, and the simple fact is that most of the writers who reach out to us for publication are left of center. We do have a couple of conservative columnists, but their submissions are much less regular. I wish they weren’t.
As an extreme moderate, I dream of an Opinion Page that’s a perfectly balanced reflection of our community – and the cosmos! – and I gnash my teeth every week when it doesn’t materialize. Let it be known throughout the land: Our Voices section remains open to anybody who can write well and support their opinions with facts. Of course, it’s up to our editor Mike McCombs to make that call. (Yes, here in The Media, we still have editorial gatekeepers. People hate that.)
The SC Press Association gives a special award for Assertive Journalism. This year’s presenter – yes, I’ve skipped ahead to the awards luncheon now – started by saying, “Journalists are contrarians. If they weren’t contrarians, they wouldn’t be journalists. They’re good at prying truth out of people who aren’t inclined to tell it.”
I am not that kind of journalist. Not exactly. Every columnist has to do some reporting – as I said above, facts are non-negotiable – but prying the facts out of people in power is not my jam. It makes me squeamish, in fact. Thank goodness I have a team who enjoy it and are good at it. It’s truly the essence of good journalism, and we need it now more than ever.
My work/obsession is a bit different. It involves looking at those facts – and those powerful people – and trying to understand them. I live to pry the meaning – the larger truth – from that which meets the eye. Motives, passions, intentions, context, cultural implications, historical parallels… These are the “questions” that drive my journalism.
Am I a contrarian, too? Undeniably. I’m so ornery, in fact, that I can’t seem to accept any public narrative – or public figure – at face value. I’m a bloodhound for the story behind the story. As it turns out, most things are not what they appear to be.
Occasionally, however, they absolutely are. And that right there’s the rub.
