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Fake news and me

Posted: October 15, 2019 by chrisharper in media
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One of my daughter’s colleagues recently asked me if I worked as a journalist.

“No,” I replied. “Neither am I a mass murderer.”

It wasn’t exactly like Peter denying Christ three times. But I am no longer proud of the job I did for more than 20 years and have taught students to do for nearly 25 years.

Although I have had a variety of difficulties with the mainstream media in recent years, I hadn’t jumped completely on the fake news bandwagon until the Ukrainian phone call and impeachment. The media in American have become so shrill–a partisan press without a purpose other than to attack Trump. That doesn’t apply to all reporters and editors, but I think it applies to a significant number, particularly among the media elite.

As a result, journalism has fallen on hard times in the eyes of the public. It’s been a long time since journalists have been held in high esteem, but many people looked to the news media to provide some insight into the issues of the day.

Every morning, I start my day by reading several websites, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. I’ll usually check CNN and Fox News and may listen to the radio talk shows for 30 minutes or so.

I don’t read many opinion pieces because I find the analysis wanting, particularly from DaTimes and DaPost. It seems like all they want to do launch a new screed against Donald Trump.

Over the past decade or so, I have been advocating a change in how news organizations go about their business. The old standards of fairness, balance, objectivity, and a few others have been long gone from what I see.

In my view, the tenets should emphasize accuracy, transparency, and professionalism.

Transparency is one that sticks in the craw of most journalists. I want their political views, campaign contributions, past history of advocacy, and even tax records available to readers and viewers—much of which reporters and editors ask of politicians.

Michael Schudson, the noted analyst of journalism, wrote recently in The Columbia Journalism Review, that the issues transcend the current battle between the press and Trump.

“[T]he old days of ritually objective news reporting (he said/she said) are not gone but have been reduced in importance from the 1970s on, as mainstream outlets have increasingly emphasized analysis in news coverage—not quite so much ‘who, what, when, where’ as ‘why.’ There has been a profound cultural shift in journalism during this period. The limitations of straitjacketed objectivity came to be understood and journalism began to embrace the necessity of interpretation, as both quantitative studies and journalists’ recollections attest,” Schudson wrote.

“News organizations should have to explain themselves—to communicate the difference between the news department and the editorial page (more than a quarter of Americans do not understand the distinction); to show how they gather their news; to clarify why they sometimes cannot divulge their sources,” he added.

I hope journalists will listen to Schudson because I have failed in my mission to convince my former and current colleagues.

Whatever the case, I am no longer proud to call myself a journalist. I don’t think I am alone.

On her majesty’s service

Posted: October 8, 2019 by chrisharper in war
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It’s been almost 40 years since I met British diplomat Gordon Pirie and his wife, Maria, at the coffee shop at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tehran.

Iranian militants had just taken American diplomats hostage in what would be become an ordeal of 444 days.

As a reporter for Newsweek, I was trying to figure out what was going on. Gordon provided me with important insights into what was happening.

Unbeknownst to me and the rest of the world until two decades later, Gordon played an important role in saving a number of American hostages who had managed to escape the takeover of the U.S. embassy.

The Times of London provided an account of his derring-do to correct the errors of Argo, a 2013 movie about the hostage crisis that gained critical acclaim but had little to do with the facts.

Gordon and a colleague, Martin Williams, learned that the diplomats had holed up in the southeast part of Tehran.

The two men drove around and made contact with five fugitive diplomats. A sixth found his way to the Swedish embassy and joined them in hiding 10 days later.

Gordon and Williams were meant to take the Americans back to the British embassy, but as it was occupied, that was out of the question. They decided to go instead to Williams’s home in the British compound in the northern suburbs.

The Americans’ relief was palpable when they made it to the relative safety of the compound, where Maria, who is Italian, cooked up pasta.

Eventually, the Americans went to the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and were spirited out of the country on January 28, 1980, bluffing their way through passport control at the airport in Tehran as Canadians from a film crew created by the CIA for their escape.

Just as the CIA’s role in springing the Americans was not declassified until 1997, so the British decided to keep quiet fear of further inflaming relations with the Iranian regime.

Over the years, my wife Elizabeth and I spent many hours with the Piries, who moved across the street from us in Beirut and down the street from us in Rome.

We often regaled one another with memories of how Gordon, who was fluent in Farsi and several other languages, helped us bargain with Persian carpet sellers to get the best price possible.

In Rome, our apartment looked into the love nest of the Italian finance minister, who brought numerous young ladies there for his extramarital affairs. We’d turned off the lights and peered from behind the curtains to see what new woman he’d decided to wine and dine. We justified our Peeping-Tom approach as research into Italian politics!

Last year, Gordon, who was in his 80s, ran into the inevitable problems of getting older. I was able to visit him, and it was as if we hadn’t spent a day apart from one another.

Sadly, Gordon died a few weeks ago. He was a tribute to his work as a diplomat throughout the world. More important for me, he was a dear friend who will sorely missed.

A thank you to Bill Clinton

Posted: October 1, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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I would like to thank Bill Clinton for making me a conservative.

Before Clinton’s impeachment, I had a voting record that usually tilted toward the integrity of the candidate rather than his party. I supported George McGovern, Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale, and H. Ross Perot.

But Clinton’s sexual antics in the White House and subsequent perjury about them brought me into the conservative branch of the GOP.

It’s worthwhile recounting those days as the Trump impeachment process begins.

Simply put, the accusations against Trump and the media’s handling of the “facts”—are decidedly different than 20 years ago.

For example, Newsweek sat on a story about the sexual affair between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky because the magazine didn’t think it had enough confirmation about the accuracy of the account.

Think about that for a moment. A news organization actually trying to make sure it had a story right before publishing it. [Transparency note: I worked for Newsweek].

Matt Drudge, a Hollywood gossip reporter, got wind of the story and put out a story on his website that Newsweek was holding the report. It was the first major online scoop and pushed Drudge into the forefront of the news business. The publication of Newsweek’s caution or coverup—I’m not really certain which one—launched the online news industry, which dominates information throughout the world.

Ultimately, the House of Representatives passed two of the four articles of impeachment:

Article I charged that Clinton lied to the grand jury concerning:

  1. The nature and details of his relationship with Lewinsky
  2. Prior false statements he made in a deposition
  3. Prior false statements he allowed his lawyer to make characterizing Lewinsky’s affidavit
  4. His attempts to tamper with witnesses

Article III charged Clinton with obstruction of justice in a case brought by Paula Jones, who had accused him of sexual harassment:

  1. Encouraging Lewinsky to file a false affidavit
  2. Encouraging Lewinsky to give false testimony if and when she was called to testify
  3. Concealing gifts he had given to Lewinsky that had been subpoenaed
  4. Attempting to secure a job for Lewinsky to influence her testimony
  5. Permitting his lawyer to make false statements characterizing Lewinsky’s affidavit
  6. Attempting to tamper with the possible testimony of his secretary Betty Currie
  7. Making false and misleading statements to potential grand jury witnesses

I thought that Clinton should have been removed from office, but both articles failed to get the 67 votes in the Senate necessary to kick him out of the White House.

It’s rather ironic that had these “high crimes and misdemeanors” been discovered today, I am relatively certain that the #MeToo movement would have driven Clinton out of office.

Whatever the case, Clinton’s actions and the impeachment proceedings had a profound effect on me. Thank you, Bill!

The truth about hate crimes

Posted: September 24, 2019 by chrisharper in crime, culture, Uncategorized
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Hate crimes have been rampant under President Trump, amounting to a horrendous rate of 0.005 percent of the incidents tracked by the FBI.

That’s right. Despite the narrative that this administration has ushered in a climate of hate, the number of crimes is almost statistically insignificant.

Although every hate crime is abhorrent, I think it’s important to keep such incidents in perspective.

The most recent statistics from the Department of Justice and the FBI from 2017, an estimated 1,247,321 violent crimes occurred nationwide, a decrease of 0.2 percent from the 2016 estimate.

Of these incidents, hate crimes represented about 8,000 cases. Murders across the nation were double that. Rapes were 20 times higher. Burglaries were forty times worse.

A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.

Although anti-Islam/Arab incidents rose after 2001, the numbers are relatively small. Moreover, blacks and Jews faced more attacks. Following are the statistics:

In 2017, law enforcement agencies reported that 4,832 single-bias hate crime offenses were motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry. Of these offenses:

 48.8 percent were motivated by anti-black or African-American bias.
 17.5 percent stemmed from anti-white bias.
 10.9 percent were classified as anti-Hispanic or Latino bias.
 5.8 percent were motivated by anti-American Indian or Alaska Native bias.
 4.4 percent were a result of bias against groups of individuals consisting of more than one race.
 3.1 percent resulted from anti-Asian bias.
 2.6 percent were classified as anti-Arab bias.

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,679 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-biased offenses showed:

 58.1 percent were anti-Jewish.
 18.7 percent were anti-Islamic (Muslim).
 4.5 percent were anti-Catholic.

Simply put, the data don’t back up the narrative presented by the media and Democrats that hate is running rampant in the United States, But neither group has ever let the facts stand in the way of a bad story, particularly when the target is Trump.

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