{"id":19879,"date":"2017-02-20T01:28:41","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T01:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19879"},"modified":"2017-02-20T01:28:41","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T01:28:41","slug":"enemy-of-the-people-talk-is-way-overblown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19879","title":{"rendered":"‘Enemy of the people’ talk is way overblown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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All the recent “enemy of the people” discussion prompted by the president of the United States has caused me to think about the career I pursued.<\/p>\n

I worked in the mainstream media for 37 years. I got to pursue some great stories. I was able to see and do some fascinating things and meet some remarkable individuals.<\/p>\n

I never considered myself an “enemy of the people.” Donald J. Trump has labeled the media as such, while proclaiming he doesn’t think the media are his personal enemies.<\/p>\n

When the president of the United States impugns the integrity of the individuals who are doing what I used to do, well, I take it personally.<\/p>\n

Did I make everyone happy while pursuing my job? Not in the least. I angered some public officials, made them squirm. For instance:<\/p>\n

* I once wrote an investigative piece about a\u00a0trial judge in Oregon City, Ore., who had developed a reputation as a jurist who lacked the temperament to do the job properly. I interviewed fellow judges, prosecutors, defense counsel and, of course, the judge himself. We published the story.<\/p>\n

Then the judge died. My editor then assigned me to write his obituary. Who did I call to collect information about the judge? His wife. We had a nice visit and she told me she didn’t harbor ill feelings — let alone hatred<\/em> — for me.<\/p>\n

* I moved later to Beaumont, Texas, and then got another judge quite riled at me when I noticed something in a news story we had published one day. It spoke of the district judge getting a permit to operate a private business on the ground floor of the county courthouse where he worked as a state employee.<\/p>\n

Big deal, you say? Well, yes. You see, he used facsimile state letterhead stationery to communicate with the county auditor, who had to approve the bids; the auditor — who reported to a panel of district judges, including the judge who was bidding for the permit — then granted the judge the permit.<\/p>\n

I wrote some editorials calling this activity into question. The judge took great offense at it and, from what I heard, wanted to sue the newspaper and yours truly for libel.<\/p>\n

* I moved to Amarillo after that and promptly got sideways with a former city commissioner who was appointed to the board of\u00a0a public district that oversaw the\u00a0then-publicly owned hospital. The problem, though, was that he was employed by\u00a0a competing for-profit hospital, which seemed a tad inappropriate; he shouldn’t have served on a public hospital district board while working for a competitor. I wrote an editorial calling attention to that conflict of interest — and incurred the wrath of the former city commissioner.<\/p>\n

I was doing my job as I understood it\u00a0in all those cases. I never thought of myself as a purveyor of “fake news” or someone who “had an agenda” that differed from the public I sought to serve.<\/p>\n

When the president assumes such things about the media and then challenges them in such a direct manner, a lot of us with ties to this particular craft take it all quite personally.<\/p>\n

I am one of them.<\/p>\n

I might have angered my share of officials along the way. As for “the people,” well, they cannot live without a free and aggressive press … no matter how mad the president says they might be in the moment.<\/p>\n\n

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All the recent “enemy of the people” discussion prompted by the president of the United States has caused me to think about the career I pursued. I worked in the mainstream media for 37 years. I got to pursue some great stories. I was able to see and do some fascinating things and meet some … Continue reading ‘Enemy of the people’ talk is way overblown<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,13,14],"tags":[179,1424,2858],"class_list":["post-19879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-media-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-agn-media","tag-donald-trump","tag-mainstream-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19879"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19882,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19879\/revisions\/19882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}