Outdated Rules Are Neutering the News Media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.
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