OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
OUR VIEW
Media’s failures in a year of Trump
Ted Shorack/The Daily Astorian
Dennis Richardson is the first Republican to win statewide office
in more than a decade.
Richardson will
help influence
decision-making
epublicans dominated Oregon politics for much of our
state’s history. That one-party rule was not good for
Oregon, and neither is the Democrats’ one-party rule that
persists today.
As of the new year, that domination was broken — a bit.
Dennis Richardson of Central Point in southern Oregon will
begin his tenure as secretary of state, the first Republican elected
to statewide office since U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith won re-elec-
tion in 2002.
A healthy two-party system helps ensure that a broad range
of interests are represented in the Oregon Capitol. Discussion
is deeper. Issues and candidates are vetted more closely, instead
of being approved or denied simply because of one party’s
dominance.
Most Oregonians occupy the broad center of the politi-
cal spectrum and care little about party labels. That is why
Richardson won at the November election, although Republican
voters were outnumbered by Democrats and nonaffiliated voters.
Richardson, who took the oath of office on Friday before a
standing-room-only crowd in the state Senate Chamber, vowed
to run the Secretary of State’s Office in a nonpartisan manner.
He has told fellow Republicans not to count on him to seek retri-
bution against Democrats.
Richardson also pledged to be transparent and account-
able, but his appointment of Leslie Cummings as deputy secre-
tary of state raised eyebrows. Cummings had been forced out of
the state Employment Department amid allegations of wasteful
spending and nepotism.
In an interview Friday, Richardson said Cummings was a
whistleblower, who brought wrongdoing to his attention when
he was a legislator and who was the victim of a witch hunt at
Employment.
Such appointments will set the tone for his administration.
If Richardson is right about her situation, he deserves credit for
giving a talented public servant another opportunity. If he is
wrong, he will have undermined his legitimacy.
Richardson’s conservative views and rural perspective cer-
tainly could be a welcome and influential counterbalance to
years of Democratic dominance in Salem.
He will be the first Republican to serve on the State Land
Board since Secretary of State Norma Paulus left office in 1985.
The Land Board — comprising the governor, state treasurer and
secretary of state — oversees nearly 1.6 million acres of land
and related resources. They include farm and range lands in
Eastern Oregon, forests in western Oregon, mineral rights and
state-managed waterways. Among other things, the Land Board
in 2017 will decide whether to proceed with the controversial
sale of the Elliott State Forest.
Richardson also should be good for the Oregon Republican
Party. He demonstrated that voters will support mainstream
Republicans who are experienced and well-qualified, and
Oregonians will reject Democrats who are far left of the main-
stream — Richardson’s opponent in this case, state Labor
Commissioner Brad Avakian. It is worth remembering that
Richardson won election with the support of at least two
Democratic leaders — state Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose
and state Rep. Brad Witt of Clatskanie — and he received every
newspaper endorsement.
Oregon’s Republican election machinery deteriorated over the
years, because there were too few viable statewide Republican
candidates to keep the campaign consultants in business. In con-
trast, Oregon is awash with Democratic campaign consultants.
Those trends contributed to Oregon’s leftward swing in state
politics.
Richardson’s victory gives hope for a resurgence among
Republicans. But the party must field experienced, well-qualified
candidates who represent mainstream Oregon.
And Richardson must live up to his commitment to transpar-
ent, accountable government.
R
Chinatopix via AP
A worker takes a picture of a giant rooster sculpture resembling U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on
display outside a shopping mall to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Year of the Rooster in Taiyuan in
north China’s Shanxi province.
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times News Service
T
he last year has not been the
news media’s finest.
Despite some outstanding
coverage, overall we misled many
people into thinking that Donald
Trump would never win the
Republican nomination, let alone the
White House. Too often we followed
what glittered, yapped uselessly at
everything in sight and didn’t dig
hard enough or hold politicians
accountable for lies.
In 2008, the three broadcast
networks, in their nightly news
programs, devoted over the entire
year a total of three hours and 40
minutes to issues
reporting (defined
as independent
coverage of
election issues, not
arising from candi-
date statements or
debates). In 2016,
that plummeted to a grand total of
just 36 minutes.
ABC and NBC had just nine
minutes of issues coverage each;
CBS had 18 minutes. So ABC and
NBC each had less than one minute
of issues coverage per month in
2016.
Those figures come from Andrew
Tyndall, whose Tyndall Report
monitors the news programs. By
Tyndall’s measures, there was zero
independent coverage in 2016
on those nightly programs about
poverty, climate change or drug
addiction.
“Journalists were confronted with
the spectacle of an issues-free cam-
paign,” Tyndall told me. “They had
to decide how to react: with com-
plicity, since such tactics were easy
to shoehorn into the ratings-pleasing
entertainment structure of a reality
TV show, or with defiance, by delv-
ing into what was at stake.”
They chose the former, he says,
and “treated their viewers not as
citizens, but as so many pairs of
eyeballs.”
Granted, there were exceptions,
including first-rate digging by
newspapers and magazines into
Trump’s foundation, taxes and past.
One challenge was commercial
pressure as news organizations in
all platforms — print, digital and
TV — scrambled for a business
model. Everyone knew that Trump
We should be
infused with a
renewed sense
of mission.
So, for a
New Year’s
resolution, let’s
try harder to
be watchdogs,
not lap dogs.
was ratings gold, while a segment on
poverty was ratings mud.
As Leslie Moonves, the CBS
president, said in February about
Trump’s run: “It may not be good
for America, but it’s damn good for
CBS.”
The entire media world needs
new revenue sources — including
philanthropy — to finance coverage
that is important but unprofitable.
Still, many of us chose journal-
ism because we believed it to be a
public good. I’ve seen journalists
abroad risk their lives to get a story
because they believed it important.
If they can do that, maybe executive
producers can occasionally risk
ratings?
As early as March, Trump had
received $1.9 billion in free media
coverage, 190 times as much as he
paid for. Back then, I called around
to journalists and scholars, and there
was already a widespread view
that television had screwed up by
handing Trump the microphone and
failing to fact-check him adequately.
In addition, Trump was masterly
at diverting us from substance. As
Tom Rosenstiel, a veteran press
critic, noted: “We need journalists to
cover what is important, not bark at
every car.”
It didn’t help that the national
media isn’t very diverse — not just
in racial or ethnic terms, but also
socioeconomically and geographi-
cally. We don’t have many national
journalists with working-class or
evangelical roots, so our coverage
of Trump voters was often shallow
or condescending, and we largely
missed the fury and despair that
Trump rode to victory.
We’ll have to figure out new
ways of doing things while focusing
on journalism and not stenography.
Jay Rosen of New York University
suggests perhaps sending interns to
cover White House briefings, and
the veterans to dig up real stories.
We’ll have to be persistent,
continuing to press for the release
of taxes and for policy details. We’ll
have to avoid the perils of false
equivalence, quoting a person on
each side as if there’s a genuine
debate when we know there isn’t.
And this may sound odd for a
columnist to say, but we need more
reporting, less pontificating.
We should also try harder to
debunk fake stories. A false story on
Facebook about President Barack
Obama banning the Pledge of
Allegiance in schools had more than
2 million shares or other interactions,
and a make-believe story about Pope
Francis endorsing Trump had nearly
1 million such interactions.
When so many Americans
believe false claims, we should
weigh in aggressively on the side of
truth.
Would it matter if the mainstream
media did a better job? Or do we live
in a post-truth age in which we are
so distrusted that our investigations
will be dismissed, if they are seen
at all? I’m not sure, but we must at
least try.
We will soon have as commander
in chief the most evasive, ignorant
and puerile national politician I’ve
ever met, and while there are many
factors behind his election, I think
we in the media contributed by
skimping on due diligence.
The lesson learned? As 2017
dawns, let’s focus on what matters.
Not celebrity, but substance: Will
millions of Americans lose health
insurance? What will happen to the
21 percent of U.S. children living in
poverty? Will Syrians be endlessly
slaughtered, and will south Sudan
collapse into genocide? Will there be
a trade war? A real war?
For too much of 2016, we in the
news media — with many stellar
exceptions — sometimes were
mindless mutts that barked at every-
thing. Partly because of that lapse,
the country today needs a robust
fourth estate more than ever. We
should be infused with a renewed
sense of mission. So, for a New
Year’s resolution, let’s try harder to
be watchdogs, not lap dogs.