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 to 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 my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as 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.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I visited a business in town the other day where, out of apparent friendliness, a staff member began a conversation with me, of all things, by saying that the media was in line with Democrats on the left to bring the country to ruin.

He was not antagonistic; just convinced he was right.

I didn’t argue with him, but offered, quickly, an alternative view based on my background in journalism, as well as my focus on the solid journalists working for such publications as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Atlantic Magazine. 

My view is that, other than in stories marked by the word “opinion,” these outlets don’t intentionally take sides.  They try to report “news” as objectively as it is possible for a human being to do.  Do they get objectivity right all the time?  Of course not.  But the effort is noteworthy.

The store employee talking to me, laughed a bit and said he had no problem with hearing a different point of view – and I add that tolerating differences occurs far too infrequently these days, so I appreciated his deference.

This minor episode came back to me as I read a column by George Will in the Washington Post.

A solid journalist, Will’s column appeared under this headline:  Josh Hawley, senator-as-symptom of a broken news business.

Will is right. 

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is crazy, intentionally so because, by that measure, he hopes to be re-elected and, perish the thought, could be considering a run for president in the future.

Here is how Will started his column:

“Like an infant feeling ignored and seeking attention by banging his spoon on his highchair tray, Senator Josh Hawley last week cast the only vote against admitting Finland and Sweden to NATO.  He said adding the two militarily proficient Russian neighbors to NATO would somehow weaken U.S. deterrence of China.

“Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton responded:  ‘It would be strange indeed for any senator who voted to allow Montenegro or North Macedonia into NATO to turn around and deny membership to Finland and Sweden.’”

That evening, Will wrote, Hawley appeared on Fox News to receive Tucker Carlson’s benediction.

Will also reported that Chris Stirewalt, in a new book, Broken News, deplores the kind of conduct Hawley exhibited.  Stirewalt knows whereof he speaks.

He was washed out of Fox News by a tsunami of viewer rage because, on election night 2020, he correctly said Donald Trump had lost Arizona.

Now, according to Will’s column, Stirewalt says “today’s journalism has a supply-side problem — that is, supplying synthetic controversies.”

Of this sort:  “What did Trump say?  What did Nancy Pelosi say about what Trump said?  What did Kevin McCarthy say about what Pelosi said about what Trump said?  What did Sean Hannity say about what Rachel Maddow said about what McCarthy said about what Pelosi said about what Trump said?”

But journalism, Will argues, also has a demand-side problem:  “Time was, he writes, “journalists assumed that news consumers demanded more information, faster and better.  Now, instantaneous communication via passive media — video and television — supplies what indolent consumers demand.”

More from Will:

• More than half of Americans between ages 16 and 74 read below the sixth-grade level.  Video, however, requires only eyes on screens.  But such passive media cannot communicate a civilization defined by ideas.  Our creedal nation, Stirewalt says, “requires written words and a common culture in which to understand them.”
• Technology — radio, television, the internet — turned journalism from reporting what had happened to reporting what was happening, and now to giving passive news consumers the emotional experience of having their political beliefs ratified.  “By 1983,” Stirewalt reports, “the percentage of Americans who got their news from television alone pulled ahead of all newspaper use by offering a passive, more emotionally engaged product.  Television news can be far more emotionally compelling than the written version, and does not come with the need for nearly as much cultural literacy or the challenge of … internalizing ideas.”
• Between 2004 and 2020, a quarter of U.S. newspapers disappeared. Today, it is much easier to get national rather than local news; this encourages the belief that the national government is all-important. Into this context came, Stirewalt says, national journalists’ embrace of the moral imperative ‘to go to war’ with a president:  “Bigtime news dove in the mud with Trump, where he had home field advantage.”

Technology, Wills continues, has produced a melding of journalism and politics, to the degradation of both, as illustrated by the seamlessness of Hawley’s Senate floor grandstanding and his cable news self-congratulation.  Small wonder that the news business treats politics like sports — entertaining, but with no meaning deeper than the score.

This, I add, is often called “horserace journalism.”  It is a trend I oppose.  Just knowing who might be winning is not enough.

Go deeper on issues.  Ask candidates to explain their views in something other than 30-second sound bites.  Dig for the rationale behind their positions.

This kind of quality journalism – the kind George Will practices and advocates – is one way to make the country better.  Not the only way – but one way.  And, goodness knows, we need to find ways to avoid, or at least limit, our descent into near civil war.