FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2019
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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news@bakercityherald.com
EDITORIAL
5J board
listened
The Baker School Board and its school improve-
ment committee obviously learned something last
November when voters defeated, by a wide margin,
a $48 million property tax bond measure to build a
new elementary school, remodel Baker High School
to accommodate seventh- and eighth-graders, and
make other improvements to schools.
In a post-election analysis the school district com-
missioned this past spring, the most common reason
voters cited for rejecting the measure was that the
district was asking for too much money.
It’s no coincidence that the committee’s proposal,
submitted to the board Monday, calls for a $7.5 mil-
lion bond. The board will meet Nov. 21 to discuss
whether to put the measure on the May 2020 ballot.
The new proposal is quite modest compared to the
rejected 2018 version, both in the tax rate increase —
66 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation compared
with $1.97 last year — and in duration — 10 years
versus 30 years.
But the board and committee didn’t listen only to
voters who opposed to 2018 measure.
That analysis showed that among supporters of the
2018 measure, moving seventh- and eighth-graders
to a remodeled section of Baker High School ranked
third among the reasons voters cast a yes vote.
The BHS remodel is part of the current proposal,
and that makes sense. Baker High School is being
underused, with about 450 students occupying a
space designed to handle up to 830.
The board will solicit public comments during the
Nov. 21 meeting. Residents should take advantage —
the district has already proved that it listens.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Your views
A poetic plea to keep cell
towers out of town
I hope that I shall never see
A cell phone tower masked as a tree
One that’s planted in concrete
Made of metal measuring 70 feet
There’s no way: you cannot fool me
That’s a cell tower not a tree
But our planning commission wan-
ders lost
Corporations profi t at the public’s
cost
And we’re prohibited from mention-
ing EMFs
Because the FCC blocks out all due
process
As Verizon lobbies with its corporate
wealth
They sacrifi ce up the public’s health
For EMFs are really real
From their effects we do not heal
And our view of the mountains? It
will go away
As soon as Verizon gets its way
Verizon says it’ll speed our data
That a tower’s looks don’t really
matta
A quick vote of no was what we was
wishin’
But no such luck from this commis-
sion
Our planning commission they
agree
That a cell phone tower can be a tree
So their conclusion seems forgone
Because Verizon now has them
conned
Their lone spat is what kind of tree
Should our cell phone tower really
be?
Poems are made by fools like me
But believe me Verizon: that’s not a
tree
Whit Deschner
Baker City
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Special protection risks journalism’s reputation
You might assume that because I
derive my livelihood from working
in the news media I would endorse
any law intended to protect jour-
nalists from physical harm while
they’re doing their jobs.
But no.
Perhaps I would feel differently
about the Journalist Protection
Act, which has failed to gain much
traction in Congress, if there was
compelling evidence that journal-
ists working in the U.S. face a
demonstrably greater threat than
the average citizen, and solely as a
result of their profession.
(I include the “working in the
U.S.” distinction intentionally; the
situation for reporters in some
parts of the world is decidedly dif-
ferent, which is to say, much more
dangerous.)
I expect my opinion about the
proposed federal law would be
altered as well if there weren’t
already laws in effect, in every ju-
risdiction in the country, regarding
assault against anyone, regardless
of their profession or whether they
happen to be engaged in it when
they get slugged.
I understand the potential
symbolic effect of the Journal-
ist Protection Act, which several
Democratic members of Congress
have introduced a few times over
the past two years.
The Act would make it a federal
crime to assault a journalist who is
gathering the news, if the suspect
knew the victim was doing so.
Ensuring journalists can do
their work without undue fear
of reprisals, most especially from
the government (hence the First
Amendment) but also from other
citizens, is fundamental to the
concept of a free society on which
America is based.
And I think it’s worthwhile to
emphasize on occasion this aspect
of our shared history — to recog-
nize that there is an inherent, and
indeed a unique, value to journal-
JAYSON
JACOBY
ism.
But an even more crucial factor
in the profession’s effort to uphold
its ideals, I believe, is its indepen-
dence.
Although perhaps objectivity is
the more apt word.
What I’m getting at is that I
believe journalism loses much, if
not all, of its vitality and its moral
authority when it sacrifi ces its
autonomy.
I don’t mean to suggest that
journalism, or journalists, are or
should be aloof.
But what troubles me about the
Journalist Protection Act is that
it would confer on journalists a
special status whether they want
it or not. It seems to me that the
Act confl ates the legitimate notion
that journalism as a profession is
special, with the untenable position
that journalists as individuals
ought to be sheltered by the federal
government in a way their neigh-
bors are not.
This strikes me as the sort of
cozy relationship between govern-
ment and any profession or group
that journalists not only eschew
but actively seek to expose — and
rightfully so, since such arrange-
ments occasionally involve bribery
or other unsavory, not to mention
criminal, acts. But when journal-
ism itself is tucked beneath the
protective cloak of government I
think the result is an erosion of the
credibility which is to journalism
what oxygen is to our lungs.
This is, I’ll concede, potentially a
matter of public perception rather
than reality.
Yet that perception, whether or
not truly justifi ed, is inextricably
tied to the reputation of journalism
or any other profession.
And it seems to me beyond
dispute that were Congress to
create a new, specifi c federal crime
for assaulting a working journal-
ist, a signifi cant number of people
would wonder whether reporters,
having had a particular protection
bestowed on them by Congress,
would, or even could, scrutinize
their legislative benefactors with
quite the same commitment.
The answer to that question
might well be that yes, journal-
ists could continue to serve as the
public’s watchdogs over the govern-
ment as effectively, and indepen-
dently, as ever.
But I fear citizens would not be
mollifi ed by any such assurances
from journalists, any more than re-
porters assume every statement by
a politician or government offi cial is
beyond reproach.
(Public opinion polls about the
reputation of journalism suggest to
me that the profession ought to be
aggressive in protecting the meager
credibility it generally has.)
The impetus for the Journalist
Protection Act is hardly a secret.
Its supporters frequently cite
President Donald Trump’s caustic
jibes about “fake news” and the
dishonest media as responsible for
creating what Rep. Eric Swalwell,
a California Democrat who has
sponsored the Act, deemed “a toxic
atmosphere.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-
Connecticut, is also a co-sponsor of
the legislation. He recently justifi ed
the Act based on a parody video,
shown at the Miami golf resort
Trump owns, that depicts the
president shooting and stabbing
opponents, including journalists.
Notwithstanding a White House
statement that Trump “strongly
condemns” the video, Blumenthal
and other supporters of the Act
seem to hold Trump responsible for
putting journalists in a danger they
wouldn’t otherwise be subject to.
I don’t fi nd the evidence for that
claim compelling.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
catalogs cases of journalists who
have been, among other things,
physically attacked (30 so far in
2019) or arrested (8). But the orga-
nization’s database dates only to
2017 — the year Trump took offi ce.
According to the Press Freedom
Tracker’s website (pressfreedom-
tracker.us): “We do not feel that
data collected retroactively would
meet our rigorous research
standards. We believe that data
collected before we established
a tracking system, methodology,
and outreach is likely to be less
comprehensive and therefore likely
to underestimate the number of
incidents before 2017.”
That’s reasonable. But the lack
of historical context also makes
it diffi cult for anyone to conclude,
with any level of confi dence, that
Trump’s rhetoric is directly re-
sponsible for journalists being at a
greater risk than they were before
he took offi ce — the very justifi ca-
tion, of course, for the Journalist
Protection Act.
To be clear, I fi nd Trump’s anti-
media fi xation abhorrent. But his
tantrums generally strike me as
ludicrous rather than threatening.
That’s because, by and large, he’s
simply wrong when he claims the
media are dishonest and inaccu-
rate — a contention he regurgitates
with the absence of nuance, much
less evidence, that is his hallmark.
A signifi cant amount of what
Trump and his acolytes construe
as “negative” journalism about the
president is based largely, if not
entirely, on his own public pro-
nouncements.
Trump produces vastly more
fi ction than do the journalists he so
often chastises.
And yet, when I examine the
evidence, I just can’t make the
case that our country needs a new,
largely superfl uous federal law to
protect journalists and ensure they
can continue to perform their vital
role in our society.
It is indisputable that the media
have been consistently aggressive
in pursuing allegations of wrong-
doing by Trump — as well they
should.
And I think it’s equally true that
the opinion side of journalism, as
distinct from the straightforward
news-reporting side, has been more
antagonistic to Trump than to any
other president in the past few
generations.
This, too, seems to me appropri-
ate given Trump’s animosity to
the press and his unprecedented
volume of invectives against the
profession.
But my point is that journalists
can match the president’s scurrilous
charges with as many words or
images as their employers see fi t to
publish or broadcast. The media in
the era of Trump is hardly under
siege to the point that its healthy
future — literally, in the case of
individual journalists — depends
upon the intervention of Congress.
If anything, the president’s dis-
dain has invigorated journalism,
spawning fact-checking campaigns
and organizations such as the
Press Freedom Tracker that were
curiously absent, or greatly muted,
during previous administrations.
Indeed, perhaps my greatest
challenge in putting together the
Herald’s Opinion page over the past
three years has been fi nding syn-
dicated editorial cartoons, columns
and editorials that deviate even
slightly from an anti-Trump theme.
The issue isn’t that this admin-
istration’s “toxic atmosphere” is
stifl ing the free press.
It’s that journalism has been
speaking with what at times seems
to be a single voice, and I can
scarcely hear anything else.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.