Dedication

I dedicate this book to my parents, Ted and Betty Ann Czech, who gave me life, gave me my creativity, and supported me in all my endeavors, hairbrained and otherwise.

To Theresa M. Nana Nardis, my mother-in-law, who passed away in early 2024. I’m sorry I didn’t get this done sooner so you could have seen it.

To my wife and our two sons, for your love and patience with all the hours I spent in the study. You mean everything to me.

Contents

Special Bulletin – Trump Assassination Attempt

Dedication

Contents

SPECIAL BULLETIN — TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

Introduction — The Day the News Died

PART I DESTRUCTION

Chapter 1 — Decades of Deception

Chapter 2 — 24 Hours Is Not Enough

Chapter 3 — The Disregard of Objectivity

Chapter 4 — The Rise of Reporter-activists

Chapter 5 — All-in on the Deception

Chapter 6 — Fact-checking Is Unnecessary

PART 2 FALLOUT

Chapter 7 — Donald Trump

Chapter 8 — Elon Musk

Chapter 9 — Media Sows Distrust and Pays the Price

Chapter 10 — Land of Layoffs

Chapter 11 — Dreams Don’t Pay the Bills

Chapter 12 — Tucker Carlson Out at Fox News

Chapter 13 — Reporters Fired for  Social Media Vigilantism

Chapter 14 — The Dawn of  Independent/Citizen Journalists

Chapter 15 — Local Ownership in News Deserts

PART 3 RECKONING

Chapter 16 — The Other Way Doesn’t Work

Chapter 17 — Mea Culpas

Chapter 18 — Do the Work

Chapter 19 — More Whistleblowers

Chapter 20 — Teach Journalism the Right Way

Chapter 21 — Resist Focusing on Race

Chapter 22 — No Donations

Chapter 23 — Continue Covering Local News

Chapter 24 — Cover Crime the Way It Should Be Covered

Chapter 25 — Have Business People  Run the Business of Newspapers

Chapter 26 — Get Rid of Personality-driven News

Chapter 27 — Let the Creativity Flow

Chapter 28 — Say Goodbye to AI

CONCLUSION — Now What?

About the Author

SPECIAL BULLETIN — TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

Do you remember where you were when JFK was shot, or Ronald Reagan? How about the Challenger explosion or the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11? We now have a new landmark historical moment to add to that tragic tally – the attempted assassination of Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump at 6:11 pm on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Following the sniper attack on Trump, I had a decision to make – already past my deadline to finish this book, should I include an additional chapter about what happened? The decision was a swift and resounding yes, not only for the sheer magnitude of what occurred, but because of the media’s sheer incompetence in reporting the incident.

A primary pestilence plaguing journalism today is that the thirst to be first usually means you are the worst. In journalism, you want to be timely in your reporting to inform the public, and in harnessing that speed, you will get more eyeballs on your product, because journalism is both a public service and a business. However, communicating the first nugget of information you receive, no matter how uncooked, is downright irresponsible. But yet, that’s exactly what happened.

Here’s a headline from the Associated Press Facebook page, posted at 6:23 pm, 12 minutes after the assassination attempt: BREAKING: Donald Trump has been escorted off the stage by Secret Service during a rally after loud noises ring out in the crowd. Below a photo of a bloody but brazen Trump surrounded by Secret Service agents, was another line: Donald Trump whisked off stage in Pennsylvania after loud noises rang through the crowd.

I clicked on the link more than a week later, to see the headline to the actual story had been amended: Trump injured but ‘fine’ after attempted assassination at rally, shooter and one attendee are dead.[1]

In this case, the media, including the AP, desperately needed a giant syringe of two drugs – WAIT and CONFIRM. But that is the one thing journalists detest more than anything... waiting. It’s beaten into plebes in J-school that if you wait, especially in reporting breaking news, you might miss a deadline, fail to reach that pivotal source, or arrive at the crime scene after everything is cleaned up.

But the AP, in its fool’s errand to be first, went with loud noises? What were they, a nearby train’s horn? Somebody banging pots and pans? A protester blasting an air horn? This sows confusion rather than provides clarity. The right thing to do would have been to wait and get an official word as quickly as possible.

Paul Fahri of The Washington Post said the media was cautious in their reporting and that because they waited, they were criticized.[2] I disagree. The media was taken behind the woodshed because they did not wait. Instead, they hastily blasted out the smallest morsels of sketchy information, most of it incorrect.

If CNN wanted to exercise discretion, they would not have written the headline, Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally. Totally incomplete and misleading. He fell, as in he lost his balance? I bet they were just chomping at the bit to write that, after President Joe Biden’s numerous falls during his presidency. USAToday described the gunshots as loud noises, as did the Chicago Tribune, and NBC called them popping noises. Instead of all this vague conjecture, simply report that Trump was rushed off stage by Secret Service, he appears to be bleeding from his ear, and we’ll get further details as they become available.[3]

But the media doesn’t worry about casting an incomplete headline to the public because they can just update it online like the first one never happened with a little stealth editing.[4]

Then came the caterwauling pundits. At some point following the assassination attempt, the NBCUniversal bigwigs made the decision to have one feed on the assassination broadcasted on NBC, NBC News Now, and MSNBC. This drew the ire of MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts and married couple Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who were told the day after the attempt not to show up Monday for work.[5] In response, the couple threatened to leave their jobs the next time they were replaced by a feed.[6]

But there was apparently more to the story. According to CNN, the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole.[7]

But MSNBC refused to muzzle another of its personalities, Joy Reid. She preposterously suggested the assassination attempt was a photo-op. She also stated that Biden surviving Covid was equal to Trump rising to his feet, blood streaming across his face, raising his fist and yelling, Fight! Fight! Fight! after nearly getting his head blown off.[8] Yep, definitely the same thing. Trump could have allowed Secret Service agents to roll him out on a stretcher, but he refused, insisting he walk out as a show of strength.

I understand that political critics are expected to pontificate opinions, and we know what to expect on a liberal-leaning network such as MSNBC, but Scarborough, Brzezinski, and Reid appeared to be consumed with enmity, which has rendered them incapable of any sense of fairness or even common sense. Their only aim is the annihilation of a man – legally, politically, financially – even in possibly the most traumatic moment of Trump’s life.

This is but one example of why I am writing this book. So read on, true believer.

Introduction — The Day the News Died

Feed the beast.

It was both a newsroom battle cry and a lamentation of reporters on deadline. The beast – journalism – required nourishment, that is news, to be satiated.

Several decades ago, the beast survived organically, receiving sustenance through professionalism, fairness, and objectivity. But more recently, the ingredients have been tainted by parasites such as advocacy and solidarity journalism, and both-sides-ism.

The beast is dying.

The fresh ingredients mentioned above are tethered to the absolute bedrock of journalism – the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It allows for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but in the ultimate irony, it is now under attack by the very people expected to practice it.

On June 22, 2021, Katherine Maher, who at the time had left positions as CEO and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, had this to say about the First Amendment:

The First Amendment ... is a fairly robust protection of rights ... for platforms ... to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites, but it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from and some of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.[9]

Wait a minute, hold on.

The First Amendment is tricky and a challenge? And what exactly does she mean by bad information?

Less than two years later, Maher would assume leadership of one of the most influential media outlets in America, National Public Radio.

There also seemed to be a case of cognitive dissonance when it came to feeding the beast. Emma Tucker, Chief Editor of the Wall Street Journal, was part of a panel discussion in January 2024 at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference when she may have inadvertently pulled back the curtain. If you go back really not that long ago, as I say, we owned the news, Tucker said. "We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well. If it said it in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, then that was a fact."[10]

In a sense, she’s not wrong. There was a time, not that long ago, when the mainstream media enjoyed a mostly amicable relationship with the public; the public expected the media to present the news in an unbiased, objective manner and in return, gave the media its trust, time, and money.

Still, saying that an industry owns the facts is a bit chilling because the inference is that having possession over the facts means having free rein to manipulate them.

Facts are facts.

Or so we thought. Over a period of several decades, American journalism, once a bastion of freedom, free speech, and democracy, is nearly unrecognizable. Forces and ideologies outside of the newsroom have corrupted and controlled American journalism, mutating it into a screeching, pulsating, sinister creature. The American public has responded with frustration, distrust and downright enmity.

But in saying the quiet part out loud, Tucker’s words serve as an indicator of the mindset of journalism moguls across the country. They seem stupefied as to why their metrics and subscriptions are plummeting, why people say they are fake, why they are forced to shutter or gut newsrooms of key personnel.

To those in the mainstream media, if you want to know what the problem is, look in the mirror. It’s you.

The beast is dying, eating itself from within.

How we got to this point took time, though some tried to sound the alarm; unfortunately, no one listened. President Richard M. Nixon warned us about the narcissistic sickness that was overtaking the media and even submitted the reason why it would get worse. In a 1983 interview, he said journalists spend their entire careers putting everyone and everything under the microscope, and as a result, have a very difficult time doing any amount of introspection.[11]

The problem is that they have a sense of self-righteousness, Nixon said. They can find everything wrong with somebody else, but they will not look inside and ever admit that they could be wrong themselves.[12]

Almost two decades prior, Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, delivered a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, and addressed concern about the media’s unbridled influence over the American public.[13]

Nowhere in our system are there fewer checks on such vast power, Agnew said. So nowhere should there be more conscientious responsibility exercised than by the news media. The question is, ‘Are we demanding enough of our television news presentations?’[14]

There may be fewer checks on the American media, but that is necessary for a free press. But the countervailing prospect is that the public is also free to not tune in with their time and their money if they are not pleased with the media’s products.

I was a newspaper reporter from 1996-2021. During the latter half of my career, I sensed that the American public was growing increasingly frustrated and distrustful of the media. Later, I became aware of several surveys that backed up my suspicions. Before I left the profession, I sensed the industry was headed sideways to the point that ethically, I wasn’t sure I could continue to operate in it.

All of this leads to one question – can the beast be saved?

The answer is, like most things, complicated; but yes, I believe it can. It’s going to take time, some deep soul-searching, and probably a fair amount of pain. In this first section, I’ll take a look back at history, so that we might arrive at the root causes of the issue, then how those root causes manifested in the decades that followed, and finally, lay out what can be done to remedy the situation.

The other possibility is that the old beast may be allowed to perish, while a new beast will be – and possibly already has been – bred and nurtured by those the public has determined are better equipped to feed it.

PART I

DESTRUCTION

Chapter 1 — Decades of Deception

When I first considered the relationship between mainstream media and the public and how it had deteriorated over the past few decades, I realized there wasn’t one cause, but several ingredients which, when churned together in a big boiling cauldron, produced a witches’ hell-broth of distrust and frustration.

In my journalism school days at the University of Rhode Island, in the early- to mid-1990s, professors wove cautionary tales about defrocked reporters. These poor souls violated journalism ethics by fabricating sources, quotes, and sometimes entire stories. They paid the price, usually in the form of public embarrassment and a pink slip. But their selfish actions carried with them reverberations in the form of shame, not only on their respective newspapers, but to journalism as an institution. These incidents, many of which were front-page news, had a cumulative effect; the public remembers and can only take so much.

It is possible that some of these media transgressors were spellbound by the glamourization of journalism as it was portrayed in movies in the 1970s and ’80s. During those decades, a sizeable chunk of highly-acclaimed films featured hardscrabble, charming, or otherwise ethically-driven journalists as their main characters: The Parallax View, 1974; All the President’s Men and Network, both in 1976; Absence of Malice, 1981, and Broadcast News, 1987.

The Unwanted Trailblazer

In J-school, Janet Cooke was the cautionary tale; she committed the cardinal sin of journalism – she flat-out concocted a story – and appeared to be among the first in an agonizingly long line of journalistic charlatans. In 1981, after an internal investigation at The Post, Cooke admitted that her Pulitzer Prize-winning story, Jimmy’s World – a feature about an 8-year-old heroin addict – was a total fabrication.[15] In the years that followed, it seemed like a twisted game of whack-a-mole because so many dishonorable reporters were grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Cooke’s story was not only impactful because of its inaugural status, but also because the stakes were so high. The prestigious Washington Post, not far removed from the notoriety of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate investigation, won the prize of all prizes, The Pulitzer, and the story was written about two topics that hit people hard: kids and drugs. And on top of all that, it was written by a black woman, an anomaly in the profession in the early 1980s, and the first to win the vaunted prize.[16]

And from that moment forward, journalism changed, too, Mike Sager wrote in a 2016 Columbia Journalism Review piece. "Cooke became infamous, the first in a line of publicly exposed fabulists including Stephen Glass of The New Republic, Jayson Blair of The New York Times, and Jack Kelley of USA Today."[17]

Shattered Glass

As Sager mentioned above, another high-profile case involved Stephen Glass, a writer for The New Republic. The revelation and subsequent investigation into Glass’