Outdated Rules Are Neutering the News Media
In my junior year at University of Florida, where I was majoring in TV journalism, I was called into the news director’s office. It was 1991 and I had started a new organization in Gainesville that promoted accurate and positive portrayals of LGBTQ Americans.
The day before I was called into this meeting, I held a press conference to unveil our ads featuring gay and lesbian students. The ad campaign received substantial media coverage, including from the city’s most popular television station and the local paper, The Gainesville Sun.
The news director, who was pro-LGBTQ, (two news anchors and a key producer were gay) told me that I had violated one of the fundamental rules of journalism: Don’t become part of the story.
He declared that I must make a life-altering career decision: choosing activism or journalism. To this day I disagree with his opinion, because standing up for one’s own equality can’t be reduced to activism, when it is a fundamental human right.
Nonetheless, my professor’s view was the prevailing opinion of the time. One simply did not mix advocacy and reporting, and the audience was never to have any idea of a reporter’s opinion or political affiliation. I agreed with the ground rules and made my choice.
Today, in the age of opinion TV journalism, talk radio, livestreaming and podcasting, my professional crossroads seems rather quaint. I was simply ahead of the curve and born 10 years too soon. My journalistic advocacy role, in contemporary times, would have been a shortcut to MSNBC, or Fox, had I been conservative.
Of course, much of this change in the media had to do with President Ronald Reagan’s FCC voting 4-0 to repeal the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which had required broadcasters to present competing viewpoints on controversial issues. This collapse of providing equal time soon led to the rise of FOX, Rush Limbaugh, and Rep. Newt Gingrich railing against Democrats on C-SPAN to an empty House chamber.
My point isn’t to complain, as I have no regrets about my fulfilling path in LGBTQ activism or fighting against right wing zealots, such as my work with Truth Wins Out exposing the charlatans behind Project 2025. In a circuitous way, I did, in fact, spend my career in journalism.
What I am trying to impart is that journalism standards have rapidly evolved with changing times. Simply being open about one’s sexual orientation or gender identity is correctly no longer viewed as inherently political. The most successful journalists, who collect the biggest paychecks, are the most eloquently outspoken firebrands. Most of the commentators on MSNBC, for example, are former political operatives or PR flaks—none of whom would have been hired when I was in college.
Unfortunately, one remaining taboo from this bygone era stubbornly persists. Hard working journalists are forbidden from standing up for themselves when serially abused by the subjects they interview.
This double standard has created a decided advantage for tantrum-throwing conservatives in general, and President Donald Trump specifically, allowing them to exploit the rules to deflect unpleasant questions. Trump and his bootlicking minions regularly deride journalists interviewing them as liars, political hacks, fake news and nasty people devoid of ethics. In almost every case, the journalist calmly absorbs the blows, uncomfortably shift in their chair and awkwardly smiles.
This must end.
Journalism is ultimately about distilling the truth from a fog of falsehoods. Allowing crass, self-serving politicians to bully journalists into not doing their jobs is antithetical to the profession. Purists would argue that pushing back would make journalists “part of the story.” But isn’t it the personal insults, crude scapegoating and ugly ad hominem attacks against journalists that usually thrust reporters into the story against their will? The current system creates a gaping power imbalance that heavily favors unprincipled politicians over their crossexaminers.
This morning, I watched CBS’ Norah O’Donnell interview President Donald Trump. They were discussing a manifesto written by the gunman who fired shots at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where Trump was scheduled to speak. O’Donnell reasonably asked Trump: “In the suspected shooter’s manifesto, he wrote that ‘I’m no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.’ What’s your reaction?”
Trump acerbically replied: “I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. I’m not a pedophile. Excuse me. You read that crap from a sick person. I was totally exonerated. You should be ashamed of yourself, reading that. You’re a disgrace.”
O’Donnell’s riposte was a succinct and brutal takedown of the president: “Oh, do you think he was referring to you?”
Ouch.
Had the president’s churlish insults ended there it would have been fine. However, the humiliated Commander in Chief launched an attack:
“You read that crap from some sick person? I got associated with all stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated.”
“Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things.”
“I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.”
In fact, the evidence incontrovertibly proves that he is some of those things—and is very likely all of them, starting with the fact that Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies. His exoneration is a product of his vivid imagination.
It wasn’t O’Donnell who forced Trump to be best friends with pedophile extraordinaire Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years. That was a poor choice made by Donald Trump. It wasn’t O’Donnell who campaigned on draining the swamp and stoked the expectations of Q-Anon that an international network of child rapists and traffickers would be exposed. It wasn’t O’Donnell who then betrayed these conspiracy theorists by concealing the Epstein Files and fighting their release at every turn, while demanding his followers move on.
It wasn’t O’Donnell whose name appeared in the Epstein Files more than Harry Potter’s name appeared in the Harry Potter book series. Donald Trump is mentioned approximately 38,000 times across more than 5,300 documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. By comparison, the name “Harry” appears 18,956 times across all seven Harry Potter books.
It was Trump, not Norah O’Donnell, who said he could grab women by the pussy because he was famous. Norah is famous too, yet there are no reports of her grabbing any man by his dick.
In July 2023, Judge Lewis Kaplanof the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, not O’Donnell, claimed that the jury’s verdict in the civil trial brought by writer E. Jean Carroll effectively found that Trump had raped her in the “common modern parlance” of the word.
It wasn’t O’Donnell who transferred notorious pedophile, and Epstein’s partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas. She even received perks, such as a comfort puppy, gourmet meals and extra toilet paper, which inmates convicted of similar crimes were barred from receiving. Why is Trump coddling this convicted pervert?
It’s exclusively Trump’s despicable behavior that associated his name with Epstein, like peanut butter is tied to jelly. O’Donnell asked a reasonable question based on inconvenient facts. When Trump launched into a swivet, she should have been able to throw these facts in his face.
I’m not suggesting she do so in a partisan, gratuitously rude or unprofessional manner designed to get followers on social media. Decency, fairness and decorum should always be the core of professional journalistic standards. But the current rules, where being a pushover is equated with professionalism, are wrong. If a journalist is personally attacked, they should be allowed to be feisty and use the truth to fight back. They have no obligation to be doormats and get stepped on to keep their jobs.
Henceforth, no politician should berate reporters without the reporter being afforded a spirited rebuttal. If an individual chooses to be in a sadistic relationship in their personal life, that is their business. A reporter or news anchor, however, is doing a job. It is appalling how news organizations allow their employees to be demeaned in the workplace under the guise of news standards. There is no other profession in America where workers would be expected to take such abuse without being able to confront the abuser.
The situation is more than just cruel and morally wrong. The bullying allows politicians to shovel more bullshit to the public. By avoiding tough questioning, they skirt accountability. Their obnoxious behavior often forces exasperated reporters to abandon legitimate lines of questioning and say, “Let’s move on.” But they are moving forward before the necessary answers are provided by our leaders, at the expense of democracy and the public interest.
The preservation of outdated rules—where reporters curtsy while politicians use a club– has little to do with enhancing journalism. It endures due to media organizations being owned by billionaires with larger corporate interests. If a news organization is deemed too hostile, it could potentially affect everything from access to interviews, influencing advertising revenue, the possible loss of broadcast licenses, frivolous lawsuits and rejection of potential mergers, keeping corporate overlords from enormous paydays.
Trump’s war on the media has had a high degree of success, whether it is cowing CBS News, ABC briefly suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel, or billionaire Jeff Bezos gutting journalism at The Washington Post.
The pressure on news organizations was most notable at The Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded reporters sign a contract to only report on government-approved news—much like they do in Russia. When they refused, he replaced much of the Pentagon press corps with slobbering MAGA toadies. Apparently, the exaggerated manliness Hegseth displays when doing pushups is absent when confronted with pushback by real journalists.
The media landscape has changed dramatically since I was at UF’s journalism school. It has become a wild, wild west, where guns are blazing for politicians, yet journalists are still expected to meekly sit quiet while terrorized in the saloon.
This relic of a bygone era must change. Reporters are employees that deserve better treatment, and the news products would improve if journalists were allowed to ask tough questions. Belligerent interview subjects might also be a little less quarrelsome and a bit more forthcoming if they could no longer avoid facts by hurling insults at helpless lemmings. We can no longer allow unfair rules of absolute neutrality to neuter the news media.
