PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

A headline in the Washington Post the other day caught my attention for at least two reasons. The headline was this: MEDIA MALPRACTICE IS DESTROYING AMERICAN POLITICS

My two reasons:

1. I started my career as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Oregon. From that time forward, as well as in college before I started working, I always have been keenly interested in politics.
2. After the daily newspaper gig, I continued my career working for federal and state government in positions with political overtoneS, and then for 25 years as a state government lobbyist in Oregon.

My conclusion mirrors the headline: The way reporters and editors cover political issues in this country is destroying the very system of how our country is governed.   Put simply, the problem is a preoccupation with gaffes and scandals, which, I suppose, contribute to subscriptions and rating, but which do nothing for the common good.

Brian Rosenwald, a senior fellow at the Fox Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the co-editors of Made by History, agrees with me. Or, rather, better put, I agree with him. Here is a quick summary of what he wrote in a piece for the Washington Post.

“Many Republicans take it as an article of faith that Mitt Romney was badly mistreated by Democrats and the mainstream media during the 2012 presidential campaign.

“Republicans blamed mistreatment of Romney for ushering in the Trump tide, but Romney proved prescient about Russia, which he memorably called America’s ‘number one geopolitical foe.’”

Romney was treated no worse than many presidential candidates in both parties over the last half-century. “His experience,” Rosenwald writes, “is an indictment of a longstanding — and damaging — obsession by the media with gaffes and scandals that dominate American politics.”

Rosenwald contends that “changes in the media over the last half-century, along with an intense focus on every word candidates say and every mistake they make, has resulted in saturation coverage of peccadillos and blunders rather than policies. This may be a good business model for the media, and effective politically, but it has undermined attempts by both parties to overcome polarization and govern.”

As I reflect back on my own past, I think the Vietnam War began to change media posture.s As government officials maintained the war was going well, video from the battlefield made clear it was not. A credibility gap emerged and led to far more intense scrutiny of public officials, especially by reporters and editors who felt the country deserved honesty.

Further, the exposés of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate gave rise to a new era of investigative journalism. The press became more adversarial, looking to pounce on any perceived misdeed or character flaw as journalists sought to become the next Woodward and Bernstein and expose the next Watergate.

Rosenwald reflects that two other changes in the 1970s and early 1980s aggravated the intent to put candidates under a microscope. As conservatives pressed the media for fairer coverage, the press settled into a both-sides approach to fairness, demonstrating objectivity by including a voice from the left and a voice from the right in most stories. While this sounds fair, it allowed spin artists to push claims regardless of their veracity, knowing they would be included for balance.

Technological changes, Rosenwald adds, furthered this trend. The 1980 launch of CNN spawned a 24-7 news cycle, creating a programming need for saturation coverage of any gaffe or perceived scandal.

So, in all of this, government is at least partially to blame for a growing perception that democracy is in trouble.

But, for me, as both a former reporter and a retired lobbyist, the media shares in the blame.

When I worked for a daily newspaper, my writing colleagues and I tried, as do such media heavyweights as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post (both of which I read every day), to practice fact-based reporting.

If there was to be analysis, we would label it as such. And the reporting function would stay separate from the opinion function on the editorial pages. Plus, we always tried, no doubt imperfectly, to avoid just focusing on minor issues, gaffes and mistakes.   The question was more this – what would our readers want to see in our coverage of issues that matter in their daily lives.

Donald Trump, for me the worst of presidents, has only aggravated the dislocation. Many reporters and editors pay almost endless attention to his tweets. I say ignore most of them because they are written to incite and inflame – then, of course, Trump capitalizes on the reaction to change the subject and stay at the center of his own universe.

House Speaker Paul Ryan gave a speech to Congressional interns this week:

He was reported to have said, “We should restore the foundations of ‘civic life’ and reclaim a ‘raise your gaze’ outlook.”

He also issued a stark warning about the nature of today’s political discourse, which, he said, is “filled with disillusionment and lacking substance … reason … facts … merits. Those engaged in the debate rarely skim below the surface, then feed off a social media network with a narrow vision of society.

“Snark sells, but it doesn’t stick,” he said of what he labeled “today’s attack culture.”

Kudos to Paul Ryan, even as he leaves government. We’d all be better off if the media practiced a higher-level of journalistic performance and if all of us would support a higher calling for journalists.