The 2019 Tony Awards

Welcome to another edition of the Tony Awards! Annually since 2002 I've dedicated one column to naming what was, for me, some of the most outstanding journalism and/or commentary of the year. I operate from no automatic set of criteria when deciding what media to honor, but in general I am drawn to:

• insightful works that shed light on some important public issue.
• creative works that deserve a wider audience.
• informative works that provide eye-opening education on a difficult topic.
• courageous works that speak truth to power.
• humorous works that skillfully provoke laughter and thought at the same time.
• local works that promote community and civic engagement.

I would like to dedicate this year's Tony Awards column to the memory of the late journalist William Greider. A former editor and journalist for the Washington Post, Greider died at the age of 83 on Christmas day 2019.  He wrote a number of important books, but his Who Will Tell The People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (Simon & Shuster 1992) remains, for me anyway, a classic examination of how our government was taken over by the very interests it was supposed to be regulating. The politicians did not listen to Greider, and of course the situation has become much worse. 

The late William Greider's 1992 Who Will Tell The People: The Betrayal of American Democracy described the forces impacting government dysfunction in the United States. Greider's "speaking truth to power" style is unfortunately rare in modern mainstream journalism. 

Now let's get to this year's Tony recipients. If you don't like my list, the solution is simple: come up with your own! 

*Best Local Journalist: Miles Maguire. With this third consecutive Tony Award, Dr. Maguire has become the Bryan Cranston of the local press. (Cranston won three consecutive Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Walter White in Breaking Bad.). It's amazing that one person with a blog (The Oshkosh Examiner) can produce high quality, rigorous journalism that is more useful and credible than anything produced by the region's profit-driven newspapers, radio stations, and television networks. 

Miles Maguire's Oshkosh Examiner blog is a vital source of credible reporting in the Oshkosh region. 

A 2019 study by the Knight Foundation found that sixty percent of Americans believe that the local media do a "fair" or "poor" job of holding leaders accountable for their actions. My guess is that if every city and town had a Miles Maguire, the perception of the media would be much more favorable. 

*Best Media Criticism: William Arkin's Letter of Resignation from NBC News. In early January of 2019, NBC national security analyst William Arkin resigned from the network, and released a 2,228-word letter explaining why. In the letter he called the mainstream press "prisoners of Donald Trump," lamenting the stories missed due to the daily Trump obsession. More important, Arkin called out the huge error made by NBC in its uncritical promotion of national security state actors (generals, former CIA agents, etc.) to the status of mainstream media pundits. 

Bill Arkin's resignation letter from NBC expressed frustration at the network's inability or unwillingness to cover national security affairs truthfully and free from the influence of national security state actors. 

That "liberal" news organizations ended up embracing the chief architects of the disastrous national security policies of the last twenty years--in some cases even making these shady characters into anti-Trump "resistance" fighters--might go down as the single worst programming decision ever made by mainstream news outfits. Back in the day the national security establishment had to engage in behind-the-scenes manipulation of journalists and news executives to frame the major stories of the day. Now they do it right out in the open, often on stations supposedly representing some kind of small-d democratic opposition to the neo-fascist tendencies of the Trump Administration. As Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi put it: "The cause of empire has been cleverly re-packaged as part of #Resistance to Trump, when in fact it’s just the same old arrogance, destined to lead to the same catastrophes."

*The Tell Us Something We Don't Already Know Award: The Washington Post's The Afghanistan Papers. So it turns out that for pretty much the entire duration of the war in Afghanistan, government and military leaders have repeatedly announced progress, while off the record admitting the complete failure of the operation. I'll bet you're surprised, eh?

The Afghanistan Papers is award worthy not because of any new revelations, but because it confirms what critics of the war have been saying for years. Post journalists released six articles based on the revelations ("At War With The Truth," "Stranded Without A Strategy," "Built to Fail," "Consumed By Corruptions," "Unguarded Nation," "Overwhelmed by Opium"), all of which confirm the bleakest estimates of what has been going on over there for almost two decades. 

Someone in a position of power needs to apologize in public to Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis. Some of you may recall that in 2012 Davis put his reputation and career on the line when he released the report "Truth, Lies, and Afghanistan" in the Armed Forces Journal.  Everything Davis concluded in that report about the deception of the war planners has been validated. He concluded that report by saying, "The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start." Seven years later, the Afghanistan Papers requires the same conclusion, though given our overall apathy it is not clear to me that WE actually "deserve better," though the Afghan people certainly do. 

*Best Wisconsin News Site: The Wisconsin Examiner. Back in August I wrote about the Wisconsin Examiner for the Oshkosh Independent. Thanks to the Wisconsin Examiner, Wisconsinites FINALLY have a daily news source rooted in the Fighting Bob LaFollette tradition of searching for the truth and then speaking that truth to power. Sign up for the newsletter here. 

*Seriously Fun Baseball Site: Jomboy Media. Thanks to Jimmy O'Brien ("Jomboy"), I had more fun following baseball in 2019 than at any time since the 1970s. Jomboy takes video and audio feed from games and offers "breakdowns" of what we are seeing and hearing. What I find appealing is Jomboy's almost deadpan style as he narrates situations that are sometimes absurd. And it's not all just entertainment: Jomboy's video sleuthing has provided important evidence to show how the Houston Astros used a video system to steal pitch signs in 2017.  

Not surprisingly, the higher ups at MLB have threatened to shut Jomboy down (or at least make it more difficult for him to use video clips), even though it's pretty clear that what he does helps baseball connect to a younger, more social media savvy fan base. 

*Investigative Journalism of the Year. The Guardian's "How Monsanto's 'Intelligence Center' Targeted Journalists and Activists."  For more than twenty years, journalist Carey Gillam has been researching and reporting on the safety (or lack thereof) of the nation's food supply. As she dug into the topic, she learned of the disturbing ways in which science is corrupted for the benefit of corporate chemical producers. Her great 2019 book Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science, details her experience with uncovering Monsanto's attempts to marginalize any critique of their cash cow herbicide glyphosate (i.e. Roundup). The World Health Organization classifies glyphosate as a "probable human carcinogen."

As revealed in the Guardian piece, Monsanto has actively tried--in deeply deceptive ways--to discredit journalists like Gillam and activists (like rock singer Neil Young) who have cast doubt on the safety of their toxic product. Says Gillam in the Guardian piece: “I’ve always known that Monsanto didn’t like my work … and worked to pressure editors and silence me, but I never imagined a multi-billion dollar company would actually spend so much time and energy and personnel on me. It’s astonishing.”

Though Monsanto has now lost three jury trials that charged them with malice in the way they minimize the toxic qualities of glyphosate, they continue to wield enormous power in the halls of Congress. 

*Musical Activist of the Year: Mavis Staples. At the age of 80, that blues/soul great Mavis Staples is still recording and performing is amazing. That her performances and recordings are keeping the spirit of activism alive in a time when all of our freedoms are under threat is inspiring. In 2019 she released "Live in London" and "We Get By" (studio recording), both of which feature Mavis' powerful vocals communicating themes of love, hope and change in the face of despair. 

Honorable Mention: The Who's "Ball and Chain." Rock gods The Who in 2019 released their first studio album in thirteen years. In their 50+ years of recording and performing, the Who have occasionally made political statements, though I would argue the bulk of the band's output dedicates itself to an exploration of guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend's various neuroses (NOTE: It is entirely possible that ALL rock-and-roll is primarily a vehicle for working out the artists' neuroses). But in their 2019 album, the Who feature an overtly political song, "Ball And Chain," that makes a statement about the continuing nightmare at Guantanamo Bay. It is quite possible that Townshend saw the New York Times article on "Guantanamo Bay as Nursing Home," in which we learn disturbing details of the methods the CIA has used to keep us safe: 

"Mustafa al-Hawsawi, 50, a Saudi man accused of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers with travel and expenses, has for years suffered such chronic rectal pain from being sodomized in the C.I.A. prisons that he sits gingerly on a pillow in court, returns to his cell to recline at the first opportunity and fasts frequently to try to limit bowel movements . . ."  Bet that makes you proud to be an American, huh? 

It's also worth mentioning that in terms of energy, melody, and vocals, "Ball and Chain" holds up rather well against the band's classic recordings of the 60s and 70s. Always nice to see old guys still rockin'! 

Journalistic Achievement of the Year: The New York Times' The 1619 Project. Appearing originally in August in the New York Times Magazine, the 1619 Project is a series of essays and other works designed to reframe the experience of slavery in the United States from the arrival of the first slaves from West Africa in 1619. The Project is supervised by award winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. 

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the driving force behind The 1619 Project, an effort to rethink the role and legacy of slavery from the pre-revolutionary colonial years until today. Not surprisingly in our social media age, the Project has generated intense angst from people who have not even read it. 

The Project has been attacked by scholars and pundits from across the political spectrum, on factual and ideological grounds. Unfortunately, we live in a time when many people will read criticisms of works before they engage the work being critiqued, to the point where they will feel confident lambasting or praising something that they have no intention of actually reading. Here's my suggestion: READ THE 1619 PROJECT. (If it's behind a paywall you should be able to find it in your local public library.). I find it to be an achievement not because I agree with all of the authors' linking of our modern woes to the legacy of slavery, but because it is a rare example of a mainstream news source providing a credible, serious challenge to conventional thinking on matters related to our national character. I find it amusing that critics of The Project are worried that it will be used as "propaganda" in the nation's public school history curricula, as if what has passed for American history teaching all these years has been anything BUT propaganda. (See James Loewen's classic Lies My Teacher Told Me for some insight as to just how awful K-12 American history textbooks have been over the years.). 

Movie of the Year: Dark Waters. I've never given a Tony to a movie before, but Dark Waters so brilliantly portrays the (literally) toxic results of what happens when profit driven corporations face limited push back from a compromised government and impotent media that it became almost impossible for me not to recognize it. Based on the real life story of Rob Bilott, "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare," the film has put the toxic chemical PFAS on the map and might hopefully lead to more activism designed to hold corporate polluters accountable.

There you have the 2019 Tony Awards, the last for this decade. Interested in learning about all the award recipients from the 2010s? Follow the links below. 

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

On Trumpism, Media, and Paradigm Shifts

When I was in graduate school in the 1980s students in all academic programs read the late physicist Thomas Kuhn's 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In 2016 economist Elliott Green compiled data demonstrating that Kuhn's was the most widely cited book in the social sciences. Not a bad accomplishment for a guy who was actually denied tenure at Harvard University in the mid-1950s.

Kuhn's book remains popular among scholars for two main reasons. First, he demonstrates that progress in the sciences over time isn't the result of the application of "objective" methods carried out by always rational, emotionless Mr. Spock-like collegial scholars happy to admit  error when new evidence challenges their preferred theories. Instead, scientific progress results from an often contentious, highly subjective clash among HUMAN BEINGS heavily invested in having their methods and findings perceived as authoritative and current for a variety of personal, social, and political reasons.

Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) released The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. The book has exerted much influence in most academic fields of study, and can also be used to shed some light on the way we do politics and media. 

Second, Kuhn popularized the concept of "paradigm shift" to explain periods of time when the basic concepts of a scientific discipline undergo rigorous rethinking and ultimately get replaced by a new paradigm that becomes the dominant way of studying and talking about the subject matter of that discipline. What I have always found appealing about Kuhn's paradigm shift concept is its assertion that followers of the dying paradigm do not merely retreat in the face of new thinking. Rather, they often remain doggedly committed to a school of thought long after it has lost intellectual justification or practical use. In my field of Communication Studies for example, Kuhn's paradigm shift concept resonated in the 1970s and 1980s in part because our introductory course undergraduate textbooks at that time still featured "sender-receiver," one-way models of communication as respectable ways of talking about human interaction even though such models could not account for the ways in which dialogue makes meaningful interaction possible.

What has all of this got to do with Trumpism and modern mainstream media? Quite a bit, actually. Trumpism and mainstream media, which on the surface appear bitterly opposed, are actually wedded to the same dying paradigm. The adherents and practitioners of each, like the church fathers of the Dark Ages and Renaissance who persecuted anyone who dared challenge biblical accounts of creation and planetary movement, invest themselves in a view of reality that inflates their status as guardians of all that is good and true.

So how could we describe the dying paradigm that is as the root of Trumpism and modern mainstream media? The paradigm features three parts: (1) it accepts hierarchical forms of leadership as legitimate and even preferred, (2) it is profit-driven, (3) it is backward looking. Let's explain:

Hierarchy: If the 20th century taught us anything, it was that in any society, the drive to elect or appoint a "strong man" to fix problems that the unruly masses cannot was and is a blueprint for epic scale tragedy. Trumpism reinforces the strong man myth in dangerous ways, from members of his base mouthing nonsense like "only he can get things done," to members of congress suspending their sworn oath to uphold the Constitution in order to pledge allegiance to The Man.

Above Video: Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry recently called President Trump "the Chosen One." Perry's statement was just one more example of the president's followers falling prey to the "strong man" myth that continues to plague modern societies despite the devastating lessons of the 20th century. 

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Modern mainstream media has its own hierarchy issues, most notably in the way it largely serves and is controlled by elite commercial interests. As once noted by Ben Bagdikian, the late Dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and author of the classic The Media Monopoly: "With the country's widest disseminators of news, commentary and ideas firmly entrenched among a small number of the world's wealthiest corporations, it may not be surprising that their news and commentary is limited to an unrepresentative narrow spectrum of politics."

Originally released in 1983, Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly remains an indispensable work on the corporate domination of news media. 

Profit Driven: Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Donald Trump phenomenon is the manner in which the president has managed to make greed, naked self-interest, and lack of transparency about personal finances into minor infractions--at least among core parts of his base. Somehow a president who ran on a promise to "drain the swamp" has been able to surround himself with a guileful group of swampy sycophants.  Writing in GQ, Jay Willis stated the case succinctly: "If the people in the Trump administration share one thing in common (other than the obvious), it is their inspiring passion for the art of the grift." Writing for Buzzfeed, Anne Helen Peterson argued that "Trump is still an embodiment of the American dream, but of a particular version of it that has far less to do with bootstraps and hard work and far more to do with working the system." She argues further that for Trump's base, rejecting revelations about Trump's shady dealings has become a "point of pride," in part because such revelations come from "elite" journalists who've "rejected Trump all along." 

Above Video: When in October acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney announced that the Trump Administration had decided to host next year's G-7 Summit at one of the president's privately owned resorts, it was an extraordinary display of the grifter values of the administration that even Republican elected officials in the House and Senate were forced to speak against. The administration finally relented and agreed to have the Summit somewhere else, but not before the president released some angry tweets blaming the media and his political opponents. 

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Modern mainstream media cannot credibly expose grift and greed because its own bottom line, profit-driven orientation oozes hypocrisy. Professor Victor Pickard of the Annenberg School For Communication astutely connected the dots linking Trumpism and commercial media: "Much of what ails our media system stems from its extreme commercialism. The always-controversial Trump was irresistible for ratings-driven news outlets, and their endless profit-seeking helped legitimize a dangerous politics. While it’s tempting to blame audiences for lapping this up, this coverage didn’t just reflect popular demand. Media are beholden to their owners and to the advertisers who pay them."

The extreme commercialism of corporate media has even filtered down to smaller, independent outlets. As noted by journalist Nitsuh Abebe, a form of media con with origins in the far-right fringe is now also part of a neo-leftist "resistance grift" that exploits anti-Trump sentiment for profit:

"On the news site Splinter, the writer Alex Pareene has characterized much of modern conservatism as a grift gone wrong — pulling from the historian Rick Perlstein’s 2012 Baffler article 'The Long Con,' which traces out just how much of the movement’s far-right fringe was born and nurtured in self-enriching direct-mail and media operations. The game here is simple: Persuade people that everything they value is under attack, and they can be soaked for donations; feed them conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve and civil unrest, and they will become extraordinarily receptive to ads for bunker supplies and gold. A solid scheme, Pareene suggests, right up until you find that you’ve overagitated the marks, and they’ve started deciding party primaries."

"The personality type that responds to this sort of thing is, naturally, not restricted to the right. Trump’s election opened the field for a parallel play among liberals, spurring the rise of the 'Resistance grifter' — a type of social-media personality who shovels forth alarmist news and wild speculation about the president’s perfidy, posing as a lonely hero standing against it and raking in donations or subscription money along the way. Telling people what they wanted to hear used to be part of the average grift; lately, thanks to social media and crowdfunding, it works beautifully as a grift in itself."

Backward Looking: While arguments equating Trumpism with fascism often seem overly partisan and overblown, for me the two ideologies are similar in one critical respect; the longing for a return to some golden era of "greatness" that was somehow lost because of some scapegoat(s). Yale philosopher Jason Stanley puts it this way: "The story is typically that a once-great society has been destroyed by liberalism or feminism or cultural Marxism or whatever, and you make the dominant group feel angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power. Almost every manifestation of fascism mirrors this general narrative."

Trumpism's rise was facilitated in part by a backward looking mainstream media stuck in the past. Then CBS Chairman Les Moonves justifiably took a lot of flak in 2016 when he declared that Trump's candidacy "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." But if you think about it, Moonves was merely expressing the value system of the 20th century American mainstream media that survived into the new millennium: a phenomenon is "good" if it keeps eyes glued to content and thus generates more advertising revenue. When in 2016 the corporate media covered virtually every MAGA rally and ended up giving Mr. Trump nearly $5 billion in free advertising, they were simply acting on a more extreme version of the old time doctrine of "if it bleeds, it leads." Guess what: they are poised to do it again in 2020.

Conclusion: Do we have the courage to advocate for a paradigm shift?  

In this post I've tried to show how Trumpism and modern media--on the surface in opposition to each other--each operate according to the dictates of a dying paradigm rooted in hierarchy, profit-motive, and looking backward. It is important to keep in mind that dying paradigms--whether in the sciences or in politics/media as I've described here--do NOT just go away. From a Thomas Kuhn perspective, dying paradigms can dominate for a heck of a long time; when adherents feel under threat, they double down and struggle to retain status.

The dying paradigm of hierarchy, profit motive, and looking backward has been questioned for many years by a new paradigm rooted in an opposite set of values. Hierarchy has long faced the challenge of small-d democracy, those motivated by profit have had to contend with those who want to see decisions made on the basis of principle, and it's been clear for a long time that survival of the planet requires a critical mass of people to be forward looking instead of obsess over the past.

Will there be a time when democracy, principle, and looking forward are the values that dominate politics and media? Will there actually be a recognized paradigm shift in the way we do politics and media? Maybe, but only if enough of us have the courage, in both word and deed, to advocate for it. Here are some questions you should try to answer to determine your level of readiness to advocate for the new paradigm:

*Are you willing to support and become part of small-d democratic movements that abhor top-down, strong man approaches to problem solving, even when other participants might not look like you, sound like you, or agree with you on EVERY issue?

*Are you willing to refrain from supporting a mainstream media that enables and by design profits from top-down, strong man political movements? Will you support independent media that search for truth?

*Are you willing to defend people, in politics and media, who make principled judgments and decisions not just when doing so supports their political/professional agenda, but especially when doing so does not? Are you yourself principled in that way? 

*Are you willing to support forward looking policies and media outfits even it if might require you to make some personal sacrifices to benefit the future? 

When a clear majority of us say "yes" to those questions, AND back up what we say with visible actions, we will accelerate the demise of the dying paradigm and help bring about a paradigm shift that might leave behind a livable planet for future generations.