I got very lucky early in my newspaper career to find myself at the Bellingham Herald at the same time the great Dick Beardsley was the city editor and news columnist. Dick, who in his day was a big dog at numerous iconic newspapers, is held in a sort of reverential awe by every journalist lucky enough to cross his path long enough to learn from him at any point in his or her  career. Dick was a firm believer that a newspaper must be responsive to and representative of its readership. It was from Dick I learned never to forget that anyone I wrote about is not only a story subject but a human being whose life was almost certainly going to be impacted in a far more profound way than writing the story would impact mine. Understanding  that drummed into me what an awesome responsibility I had as a reporter to do my job well each and every time. I couldn’t have a bad day at the office, because the ramifications of that failure on the subjects or issues of each story and their communities could be disastrous. This didn’t mean avoiding the tough story or soft-pedaling a serious situation. It simply demanded  absolute focus and my best effort on every  story. No settling for anything short of that. If you know me, you may be thinking “Yeah, but Scott, you were a sportswriter, really you just had to get the score and stats right, It’s a realm of games, you’re  not writing  about  critical stuff.”

Okay, there’s a bit of truth in that, but over my career I wasn’t always limited to the realm of games. At different times and newspapers I covered murders, wrote about missing persons, city and county government, natural resources and serious social issues like teenage suicide, the AIDS epidemic, poverty, homelessness and acquaintance rape and public education. I once went after a Texas police chief a source had told me was extorting sex from a dispatcher, a  close friend of the source. I was a REPORTER. In any of those milieus, and yes, also in sports reporting, Getting the story both right and fair was an absolute imperative.

I was not unique in feeling so strongly about that. I believe most (nearly all) serious newspaper journalists are just as determined to do their jobs well. Most had at some point found  their own Dick Beardsleys to inspire, mentor and drive them. I just got lucky enough to intersect with the genuine item early in my career.

Knowing what I know about journalistic ethics makes me really angry to see mainstream journalism thrown under the bus and derided as “fake news” by a man who, long before he became president, had considered the media not just his own personal enemy (They have, after all, reported  extensively on his misdeeds) but also the enemy of the people.

Back in 2018, early in his first presidential term, after one or more of his followers had targeted with pipe bombs and mail bombs various perceived Trump enemies, including media outlets, his public response and attitude was to blame the media for being targeted, basically saying, Well, why wouldn’t people want to go after that scum?They are the enemy of the people.

Presidents going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson have spoken eloquently and adamantly of the need for a free press in any democracy. Now we have a president who supports attacks on media members, as he did when a Montana politician assaulted and body-slammed a reporter from The Guardian. Trump made a do-gooding hero out of the  attacker, calling him   “my guy”. Donald Trump is clearly not mine.