...humility and evenhandedness are assets that help engender respect and trust.
The Houston Chronicle, the second-largest newspaper in the state of Texas, has revealed that its statehouse reporter apparently fabricated quotes from made-up individuals in dozens of articles. What immediately attracted me to the mea culpa announcement on the paper's website of the results of its internal investigation on former reporter Mike Ward was not the specific details but the tone of humility adopted by The Chronicle.
Frankly, it's a good look for the newspaper. Unfortunately, this comes under the most dire of circumstances for a media outlet. If only our fatuous journalists today could understand that humility and evenhandedness are assets that help engender respect and trust. Absent those the news media business has become reviled by so many Americans today. The Chronicle has lost both of these characteristics in recent years and is now reaping the results of its arrogance.
Fake Reporter
Ward, the paper's now-former Austin bureau chief, liked to incorporate in his articles statements from notable political figures and quotes from regular folks on the street. The only problem was that most of those folks on the street don't seem to exist.
When questions were raised about some of Ward's reporting, the paper conducted an investigation. It found clear evidence of serial fabrication on Ward's part.
Mike Ward
"In all, the review found and verified 103 of the 275 names, just more than a third," The Chronicle stated. "For another 50 people named, Ward's stories provided insufficient information to conduct searches. And 122 could not be found."
That means almost two-thirds of the people Ward quoted cannot be verified to exist. With 122 of 275 not being located, despite information that should have led to them, it is obvious that Ward, The Chronicle's man in the state capital, was largely writing pure fiction.
Yet for some reason the newspaper is retracting only eight of Ward's articles. The vast majority of his reporting for the newspaper is still readily available on the paper's website.
Is it stretching things too far to say that The Chronicle itself is responsible for Ward's grotesque violations of basic journalism ethics? The paper gleefully abandoned any impression of impartiality during the bitter 2016 presidential election and waded full bore into the realm of Fake News.
Poisoned Well
One of the most egregious displays of Fake News that reflected so poorly on the so-called mainstream media in 2016 was the repeated and unabashedly deceitful attempt to portray Republican candidate and now-president Donald Trump as a close ally of the Ku Klux Klan.
It's an easy game to play. Find one fringe extremist who says something nice about Trump and portray him as the face of all Trump supporters. Of course, this is patently ludicrous to any remotely objective observer. Trump garnered more than 62 million votes during the election, yet wholly irresponsible media outlets promoted the fiction that he was the new face of white supremacy based on one or two weak examples.
The Houston Chronicle promoted this lie to an astonishing degree, going so far as to run multiple articles about the KKK on the day after Trump's election. Here are some of the 2016 headlines dated Nov. 9 and 10 on the paper’s website:
"Former KKK leader David Duke: 'Our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump!'"
"Alt-right websites celebrate Donald Trump election victory" – Duke is featured three times in a 13-image slideshow.
"KKK distributes fliers in Birmingham after Donald Trump elected president."
The unhinged slanting has continued during Trump's term in office. A 2017 editorial by the newspaper titled "Isolate Trump" insanely declares that "we know beyond any doubt that we elected a president whose affinity is for the nativist, the white nationalist, the neo-Nazi, and others of their cruel and craven ilk."
The Chronicle also showed its colors by joining an organized media effort to take on the president. The paper participated in The Boston Globe's call for a coordinated attack on Trump for his criticism of the media by running an editorial denouncing the president along with some 200 other publications. Wonder why the president considers the media an enemy?
"The next time the president starts in on the press, remember: Journalists who report facts that powerful people don’t want you to know are not the enemy; they’re the strongest ally democracy has," The Chronicle's editorial loftily concluded in a self-congratulatory manner that looks especially unfitting today.
Wallowing in Falsehood
This was the poisonous atmosphere in which Ward was writing up his fabrications. And to be honest, who can blame him? The Chronicle abandoned its commitment to informing readers to join in on a partisan assault against a sitting president. Its arrogance fully mirrors that of CNN clown Jim Acosta, who feels he is the show at presidential press conferences.
A climate that pushes a distorted political bias over any regard for facts is bound to produce reporters who also have no regard for facts. The sober evenhandedness The Houston Chronicle reserved for itself in its reporting of its Ward probe findings would prove far more salutatory if it were granted to the president of the United States as well.
