What the Hell Does it Take???

In 2015, Speaker of the Minnesota House Kurt Daudt mysteriously had $13,000 in credit card debt forgiven.  With some of the debt, the debt was vacated at the request of the creditor, who then asked the courts to end the case with no further costs to either party.  How rare was an arrangement like this?  Out of 650 cases researched at the time, only four (0.6%!!!) had been forgiven in the same way, with death and bankruptcy being contributing factors in those cases.  Daudt's debt was not forgiven in a manner available to most people who had credit card debt issues.

Kurt Daudt was neither dead nor was he filing for bankruptcy.  One of the legal teams who helped vacate Kurt's debt was part of a law firm who lobbied for political causes in the Legislature, including lobbying the Legislature on behalf of another Daudt creditor who had also settled their financial grievance with the Speaker of the House.

For anyone who just read this, MASSIVE red flags should've gone off.  Here was a fiscally compromised Speaker, the head of one of the two branches of the Minnesota Legislature, having $13,000 in debt disappear, with a lobbying firm (at least) partially to thank for such an act of benevolence.  At the very least, an extreme conflict of interest seems to have been uncovered, AT BEST!

You'd think the Twin Cities media would've picked apart this story, digging deep to find out if any wrong doing occurred.  Outside of City Pages, Minnesota media didn't look too deeply at all.  A few outlets had interviews scheduled with Daudt, but he canceled, instead issuing a press release where he acted as if this was a private matter.  It wasn't, as the Speaker of the House could potentially get calls from the same lobbying firms who's co-workers helped Daudt's debt disappear.  The public had a right to know what was going on, but the media shrugged their shoulders, implying "he doesn't want to talk about it" was a viable defense for their lack of coverage on what could still be a fairly large bit of corruption.  We don't know the truth, and I guess we'll never know.

Journalism is dying.  Their death can be contributed to a few different causes:  the purchase and large scale consolidation of media (especially print media), sales staffs having ultimate control over content, and online competition.  One cause which doesn't get mentioned, but one which I think is the biggest contributor of all, is simply crap journalism.

In Minnesota, I think there are maybe 5 journalists who carry the mantle of journalistic integrity, who are worth reading and who do a consistently good job. That's it!  Beyond those five, NONE of the remaining "journalists" in town would get hired as an intern in a 1970's news organization.  Most modern journalists need to have the story nearly spoon fed to them.  They're writing copy from select information they've been given, converting it into a format friendly paragraph, with no intent of looking past the minimal facts they've been presented.  Journalism today has more in common with a classified ad of the 1970's than it does with the stories which ran on page one back then.

This system is extremely easy to exploit, and the Republican machine does it with ease.  Republican press organizations assemble the talking points they want in a story and then, under the guise of being helpful, send the story nearly written to the journalist.  This allows them to make sure maximum coverage is given to stories which make Republicans look good and Democrats look bad.  It also allows the opposite stories to get overlooked.  Overworked and frazzled journalists, with minimal encouragement, take their copy points and run with them.  Think of the Ebola story from a few years back.  It was the number one story in every media outlet in the country, until he day of the 2014 election, when overnight the Ebola story disappeared.  I asked multiple journalists in town about what happened to 'the story of the century,' and they all shrugged their shoulders, offering no excuse on why something which dominated their own news cycles all the sudden didn't exist.  It didn't exist anymore because the Right stopped pushing it.  The goal was to scare people before the election, and when they were done, they stopped spoon feeding the media the narrative.

Last week, local media was all a flutter about US Representative Ilhan Omar's alleged anti-Semitic remarks, remarks which, when looked at in the harshest light by her most vicious critics, could be flimsily labeled anti-Semitic, but they were far more critical of official Israeli policies in the Middle East, especially in regards to the Palestinians, and critical of established US Conservative 'Israel over the US' policy.  Before anyone jumps on me, there was an element which alluded to loyalty pledges, something which was used in the past to discriminate against the Jewish people (and many others), but Omar's comments about loyalty pledges was undeniably about her own choices, not trying to force anyone else into one.

Did the story deserve some coverage?  Sure, but the wall to wall coverage Minnesota (and nationwide) media gave it?  There was clearly a manipulation of the media to make this story far more than it was.  Proof of that is the complete ignoring of Republican Iowa Representative Steve King's repeated bigoted, racists and anti-Semitic comments and actions which are FAR WORSE than ANYTHING Ilhan Omar has uttered.  It was only when people started asking "what about Steve King" did the media all the sudden let the story go, acting as if the whole problem had been solved by Omar getting a slap on the wrist from Democratic Leadership.

The media in this town all had the same talking points, the same narrative, and in more than a few cases, the exact same quotes.  They got played by the machine.

Here's where the failure of journalism gets really ugly.  On the 23rd of February, there was a pro-gun rally in the Minnesota Capitol Rotunda.  One of the speakers at the event was far right MN Representative Cal Bahr.  Cal took to the stage to rile up the gun kooks in attendance when his comments took a VERY ugly turn:

• "There's a lot of us in this room that have had enough, and it's time to start riding herd on the rest of these people that want to take your rights away from you.  They will not go quietly into the good night.  They need to be kicked to the curb and stomped on and run over a few times."

WOW! A sitting Republican MN House Representative was in the Capitol Rotunda calling for violence against House Democrats who were writing common sense gun regulations.  It's clear he was directing these comments towards the Democrats and it's very clear he called for violence.  After numerous Democratic leaders called Bahr out, he didn't really apologize, rather made an excuse which blamed everyone else.  He lied by saying he never called for violence against people, only the bills themselves (wha...?), and then he said he never intended violence.  This was an outrageous cover story, easily foiled by simply watching the video.  For goodness sake, a Congressman in the Capitol was calling for Democrats to be violently attacked for writing legislation he didn't like.

For Minnesotans, this is undeniably a far more damning and scary story than the Right wing hyped up Rep. Omar fiasco.  You'd think journalists would be out asking BASIC questions: Was the MNGOP leadership okay with this threat?  Do Republican leaders condemn or condone his comments?  Should Bahr issue a formal apology?  Should Bahr be punished by House leaders?  Should Bahr be allowed to have a gun? Should Bahr resign?  The headline should've read "Bahr's Excuse for Calling for Violence Contradicted by his Own Statements."

It'd be great to see Twin Cities journalists to pursue this story with the same vigor and intensity they went after Ilhan Omar, or the intensity they went after ANY Democrat when they smell a feeble lead.  Instead, the media decided to stop doing their job the minute Bahr issues his lie filled excuse.  Since the Right wasn't spoon feeding them the talking points, they decided to was too much work to do a BASIC FOLLOW UP.

I know many journalists will read this and insist I'm out of line, that they did their job, and I just don't understand the nuances of writing news stories.  No 'journalists;' you miserably failed yet once again.  The follow up on Steven King or Bahr didn't require sifting through stacks of paperwork for hours, or meeting a mysterious source in the shadows of a parking garage.  It required making a few phone calls, cornering the politician in the halls of the Capitol, or doing a SIMPLE Google search.  These simple follow ups were too much for Minnesota 'journalists' to tackle.

Journalism will die because 'journalists,' who are so freaking in love with the movies which highlight the journalistic integrity of yore, are incapable of doing their job in 2019.  Outside of a few exceptions, they don't know how to write a good story, investigate a lead, or even write a competent follow up.

For the record, even if they did stumble upon a bit of journalistic integrity, my guess would be their sales focused bosses would stomp it out before hand.  They don't want to upset Republican voters who might buy an ad with the paper; who might consider cancelling their subscription.

So to salute the modern journalist, let's update the movies journalists love:

• In All the President's Men..., when the White House stone walled them, Woodward and Bernstein shrug their shoulders, go back to the paper and say, "well I guess there's no story there."
• In Spotlight, when they realized the story had been under their noses the entire time, they decide to ignore it as a way to cover up their mistake, instead focusing on something sports or puppy related.
• In The Post, realizing the amount of work it would take to track down the Pentagon Papers, sort through them and figure out what exactly happened, they dismissed the story and wrote something which wouldn't hurt the social status of the paper's owner.

Wow, writing those three new descriptions really highlights how close to death modern journalism is.

Here's hoping the good ones still left can find some way to carry on.