'Crook, Liar, Racist': As a Veteran Reporter, I’m Not Afraid to Call Trump What He Is
Calling Trump corrupt and a threat to America are not opinions. They are objective statements of fact.
Donald Trump’s corrupt, chaotic presidency has propelled a long-running journalistic debate: how to accurately characterize the threat he poses to America.
Indeed, my opening paragraph itself provides grist for that debate. Can a fair-minded reporter flatly describe the president as corrupt and a threat to America itself? Are those facts?
Many colleagues I respect would answer “no.” When I interviewed the great newspaper editor Marty Baron a couple of weeks ago, he cautioned that such descriptions allow Trump to discredit journalists as partisans and are best left to opinion pages.
But I say, “Yes.” Calling Trump corrupt and a threat to America are not opinions. They are objective statements of fact.
I never expected to reach this point when I became a journalist 47 years ago. I did not pursue opinion journalism for a reason. My model was my father, Richard Harwood, who built his stellar Washington Post career on fearless reporting and news analysis.
Indeed, dad was appointed the Post’s first ombudsman after an earlier Republican president, Richard Nixon, howled about biased journalism the way Trump denounces “fake news.” An orphaned kid from the Midwest on a newspaper stocked with Ivy Leaguers, he found merit in some of those complaints.
So I began my career at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, well aware of the need to fairly reflect different viewpoints – Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, police officers and college professors, Blacks and whites. My first big political profile was a sympathetic look at a GOP retiree legendary for her success in rounding up votes within her condominium complex.
Crediting the legitimacy of both sides wasn’t difficult then. American politics did not neatly sort the good guys from the bad guys.