Setting Aside Bias

What is expected of journalists is very much like what we ask of jurors.

When the members of a jury are selected, they are asked whether they can be fair in coming to a judgement — whether they can put aside any biases or pre-existing opinions about the people and issues involved in that trial in order to come to a dispassionate, balanced decision based not on beliefs or prejudices but on the facts as established in sworn testimony.

They are also reminded of this pledge by the judge when they receive instructions just before they begin their deliberations.

The analogy is not perfect but what we demand of jurors is similar to what we insist of journalists when we send them out to gather the facts for stories.

Editors and news directors recognize that reporters are just like anyone else in that they have their own beliefs, opinions, biases, blind spots and flaws. That’s only human.

But what a good journalist, like a good juror, has to set that all aside in favor of an all-consuming commitment to get it right.

That this is hard to do is obvious, especially when the truths we discover contradict our core beliefs, prejudices or assumptions. But, as I’ve said many times to student journalists, you can’t discover the truth as you wish it to be, you have to report the truth as you discover it to be.

The integrity of our legal system depends on jurors who can follow strict jury instructions in a search for the truth. The integrity of our media institutions depend on journalists who can maintain a similar discipline in their search for truth.

And our democracy depends on both them.

HEADLINES:

• Ukraine F-16 pilot killed in large-scale Russian attack, Zelenskiy calls for US help (Reuters)

• UN nuclear watchdog chief says Iran could again begin enriching uranium in ‘matter of months’ (CNN)

• Senate Republicans advance Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill after dramatic late-night vote (AP)

• Musk Fumes as Trump Tax Bill Cuts Electric Vehicle Credits (Bloomberg)

• The End of Publishing as We Know It — Inside Silicon Valley’s assault on the media (Atlantic)

• Trump says he will move aggressively to undo nationwide blocks on his agenda (WP)

• Around 100,000 march in Budapest Pride event in defiance of Hungary's ban (NPR)

• The Other Reason MAGA Is Melting Down Over Iran (Mother Jones)

• The United States Is About to Embark on a Terrifying Experiment in Mass Statelessness (Slate)

• America’s New Anti-Vaccine Foreign Policy (Atlantic)

• Unusual pushback, ‘dangerous precedent’: What the first meeting of Kennedy’s CDC advisers reveals about the future of vaccines in America (CNN)

• This Is Why High-End Electric Cars Are Failing (Wired)

• Lights! Camera! But not enough action in a fading and worried Hollywood. (WP)

• World's oldest boomerang doesn't actually come back (BBC)

• Tourists are trickling into Afghanistan and the Taliban government is eager to welcome them (AP)

• Gen Z, It Turns Out, Is Great at Saving for Retirement — They are contributing to their 401(k)s much earlier than millennials did, reports show, and young women in particular are being aggressive about saving. (NYT)

• Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos (Verge)

• Entitled Child Expects To Eat Lunch Every Day (The Onion)

 

The Strange Saga of J.T. LeRoy

My topsy-turvy career had plenty of low moments. Below is one of the most embarrassing of them all, but it was also funny is weird ways…

When we launched a new city magazine for San Francisco called 7x7 in 2001, we gathered a wide variety of talented writers to help carry out our mission, which among other things was to differentiate ourselves from the traditional genre as much as possible.

One of those writers was a mysterious and reclusive character called J.T. LeRoy, who penned short essays for us about his supposed adventures in the city.

His (published) backstory was intriguing -- a gay homeless abused kid from West Virginia who ran away to San Francisco, where he became a male prostitute and met various celebrities, closeted or out, as a sex worker.

His novels included “Sarah” and "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things," both of which had received critical acclaim nationally, and a number of well-known authors vouched for his credibility. 

His essays for 7x7 captured that certain oddity that has always struck me about this city — how many people here seem to be trying to reinvent themselves, some in outrageous ways, with varying degrees of success.

If there were a Harry-Potter-type fantasy land with witches and wizards and strange creatures at the bars, surely it would include some of the city’s haunts that J.T. described.

In my role as editor of the new magazine, one of my many tasks was to talk through the first draft of each essay with J.T. He asked that we do this by phone; I was busy so that was fine by me.

Part of his allure, I knew, was that he almost never showed himself in public, sort of like Thomas Pynchon.

Instead, we would have long rambling conversations on the phone -- his voice was high-pitched with an Appalachian accent -- and those conversations were delightful. He took criticism well and would make any revisions I requested without objection.

We had an understanding that we would eventually meet up in person as part of my due diligence but that never quite happened.

After a while, a woman he identified as his sister-in-law, Savannah Knoop, started showing up around town as his stand-in. He told me he chose her because he felt too crippled by social anxiety to come out into the public himself.

By this point, I wondered whether J.T. was toying with me, but we had bigger problems at 7x7 than ferreting out his true identity. After the 9/11 terror attacks, San Francisco’s economy had crashed; the tourist trade basically evaporated overnight. Local businesses wanted to advertise in our magazine but couldn’t pay for the ads until the economy rebounded.

In turn, the magazine had to defer paying me, so I was working for free. I took an equity loan out on our house, my marriage was failing, and I was meeting too many friends in too many bars. among other distractions. After a year of this, I left for a visiting professorship at Stanford. With that, I also left the unsolved mystery of J.T.’s true identity behind.

It was several years later when the truth came out in bombshell fashion. J.T. LeRoy was actually a writer named Laura Albert, and she had gotten some of the details of her supposed backstory by illegally taping phone calls to a suicide hotline for troubled kids. She was by then in France and had finally come clean in an interview with the Paris Review. 

Through mutual friends, she got word to me that she felt very bad that she had deceived me during our time at 7x7.

I was embarrassed about the scandalous nature of it and my failure to force out her true identity. The truth is that I — the well-known investigative reporter — had fallen for her hoax because I had fallen in love with her story-telling.

HEADLINE SAMPLER:

• What’s next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court’s ruling (AP)

• ‘No right is safe’: Justice Sotomayor dissents on birthright ruling (WP)

• The Supreme Court Put Nationwide Injunctions to the Torch (Atlantic)

• Supreme Court hands Trump a win on executive orders (Reuters)

• DOGE loses control over government grants website, freeing up billions (WP)

• Trump Says U.S. Ending Trade Talks With Canada (NYT)

• Trump administration plans to deport Abrego Garcia again (Reuters)

• States Fear Critical Funding From FEMA May Be Drying Up (ProPublica)

• Elon Musk and JD Vance Want You to Breed. A Lot. (Reveal)

• Iran holds first state funerals for military leaders, nuclear scientists killed in Israeli strikes (CBS)

• Russia will cut military spending, Putin says (Reuters)

• Free Buses and Billions in New Taxes. Can Mamdani Achieve His Plans? (NYT)

• When a Lumberjack’s Imagination Ran Wild, He Created More Than 200 Sculptures in Wisconsin’s Northwoods (Smithsonian Mag)

• Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers (New Yorker)

• In Pursuit of Godlike Technology, Mark Zuckerberg Amps Up the A.I. Race (NYT)

• Supreme Court Rules 6-3 To Open Evil Tomb Of Batibat (The Onion)

 

Green Fantasies

It sounds funny to say this but it’s been a relief to have Trump tied up in overseas adventures lately, rather than his usual preoccupation with dismantling democracy at home.

I know, I know — that’s a callous thing to say given the havoc he creates on the international scene but back here in the U.S. we badly needed a breather.

Our fantasy is that maybe Trump could relocate somewhere via Qatar Force One, like to Greenland where they could make him king. Better yet, he could take his entire cabinet with him.

Then again, that would be yet another case of U.S. toxic exports.

***

While there are studies on how virtually anything can affect your health as you age, I’ve never seen any evidence that gardening causes any harm whatsoever, apart from the occasional sunburn.

Besides the baby artichoke (above), we’ve got tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, basil, parsley, raspberries, sunflowers, plums, lemons and olives growing this year and tending to them is one of my daily activities.

And at least one large study recently found that growing food crops helps older people fend off dementia.

***

When people ask me if I have advice for surviving Trump’s depredations on virtually everything we hold dear, my answer is to keep doing the things we love, seeing the people we love, and supporting the resistance movement that is stirring around the country.

Most of all, we can’t lose hope. And that in the end, hope will prevail. over fear

HEADLINES:

• Coming Soon: A New Season of ‘Autocracy in America’ (Atlantic)

• Supreme Court tees up blockbuster final day of term (CNN)

• The U.S. Supreme Court is set to deliver six opinions on Friday morning, including on a case premised on Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of parents who are in the country illegally, which could have far-reaching implications. Earlier, the court dealt a major blow to Planned Parenthood. [AP]

• Obliterated? Damaged? Inoperable? What's known about Iran's nuclear facilities (NPR)

• She Delivered Intelligence Briefs to Trump. Here’s Her Reality Check on the Iran Strikes. (Politico)

• The U.S. DOGE Service has sent staff into ATF to slash gun regulations. (WP)

• Trump says US has signed a deal with China on trade, without giving details (AP)

• 'We are terrified': Trump's migrant crackdown has workers and firms worried (BBC)

• ‘We’re seeing the best of LA’: as Ice raids haunt the city, Angelenos show up for each other (Guardian)

• Justice Department says Kilmar Abrego Garcia will face US trial before any move to deport him again (AP)

• Exploding U.S. indebtedness makes a fiscal crisis almost inevitable (WP)

• America's older population is growing as its younger cohort shrinks (Axios)

• With Flu Shot Vote, Kennedy’s Vaccine Skepticism Comes Full Circle (NYT)

• Hamas is battling to survive as it faces defiant clans and doubts over Iran (Reuters)

• Scientists Are Sending Cannabis Seeds to Space (Wired)

• Bill Moyers, Presidential Aide and Veteran of Public TV, Dies at 91 (NYT)

• Another mysterious anti-Trump sculpture appears on the National Mall (WP)

• A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy (NYT)

• Cuomo Makes 11th-Hour Pass At Female New Yorkers (The Onion)

No Regrets

I once started a screenplay with the narrator saying: "I have two kinds of regret. Regret for things that I did. And regret for things I didn't do."

Perhaps another kind of regret is starting a screenplay but never finishing it…

When I started publishing daily essays on Facebook at the beginning of the pandemic, the most common feedback I received was that my memories resonated with people. But those memories were only one part of what I was trying to achieve.

My past, like everyone else’s, was littered with successes and failures, wins and losses, darkness and light. In retrospect, good and bad seemed roughly in balance over my 7.8 decades. You could say the two kinds of regret were also therefore in balance, I suppose.

Which brings me to the story behind Ricky Nelson's plaintive yet defiant ballad "Garden Party." The song recounts the night that the '60s heartthrob played before a packed house at Madison Square Garden while trying to make a comeback in 1972.

While he was on stage, Nelson thought the concert was turning into a disaster because the crowd seemed to be booing him off the stage whenever he tried to sing one of his new songs.

It later turned out that most of the booing was in fact directed at the security guards, who were roughing up some rowdy members of the crowd outside of the singer’s line of sight. But by the time Nelson learned about that, he’d already written and released “Garden Party.”

His assumptions about the boos may have been flawed; nevertheless he had a hit on his hands.

The key line in his song is "If memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck." 

That song turned out to be a very big hit, Nelson’s last in fact. Perhaps he regretted being wrong about the booing; or perhaps not. He died at age 45 in a plane crash on the way to a New Year's Eve concert.

Thursday Headlines:

• I just graduated with a philosophy degree. Here’s my message to the Class of 2025. (WP)

• The President’s Weapon — Why does the power to launch nuclear weapons rest with a single American? (Atlantic)

• World’s richest 1% increased wealth by $33.9 trillion since 2015, Oxfam says (WP)

• Hegseth says US strikes on Iran were 'historically successful' after ayatollah downplays impact (BBC)

• CIA says it has evidence Iran’s nuclear program was ‘severely damaged’ as assessments of US strikes’ impact continue (CNN)

• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will be absent when key national security leaders brief lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week after the president grew angry at her over her comments on Iran. [HuffPost]

• After stunning NYC mayor primary upset, Mamdani says Democrats need to focus on economic agenda (ABC)

• Democrats fret about national fallout after Mamdani stuns in New York City (AP)

• Europe placates Trump (Reuters)

• Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez at risk as Nato gamble sparks Donald Trump’s ire (Financial Times)

• Immigrants drive population growth in a graying America, census shows (WP)

• U.S. Is Creating 2 New Expanded Military Zones Along Border With Mexico (NYT)

• Senate struggle over Medicaid cuts threatens progress on Trump’s big bill (AP)

• RFK Jr. says US won’t donate to global vaccine effort (Politico)

• Within two weeks of President Trump’s return to the White House, U.S.A.I.D. was on the cusp of oblivion. (NYT)

• With federal cuts, the risk of civil rights stories being lost forever is growing (WP)

• America’s Incarceration Rate Is About to Fall Off a Cliff — Long sentences and recidivism kept prison populations high for decades, but prisons are now starting to empty. (Atlantic)

• A frothing-mad Trump administration, armed with allegations of "egregious" and "unlawful" behavior, has filed suit against every judge currently sitting on the bench in Maryland’s federal trial court, several of whom ruled against Trump in high-profile cases. [HuffPost]

• ‘Less Burnout, More Babies’: How Conservatives Are Winning Young Women (NYT)

• Two young bears escaped their enclosure and went straight for the snacks. (WP)

• Meta wins AI copyright lawsuit as US judge rules against authors (Guardian)

• Why Does Every Commercial for A.I. Think You’re a Moron? (NYT Mag)

• Pete Hegseth Vomits Out Of Tank Hatch (The Onion)

American Core

(With the 4th of July approaching, I decided to dip into the archives. Four years after I first posted this one on Facebook, it seems more relevant than ever.)

At San Jose's minor league baseball park, when the crowd gathered to watch an open-air movie and fireworks, country songs made up the soundtrack. One was Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American."

It occurred to me that I'm an odd mix of an openly patriotic person who can dig a jingoistic song like that, but still be fiercely opposed to what drove those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6th, 2021.

I'm sure many of the insurrectionists like that song too but we are polar opposites in other respects. So how can I explain this?

Well maybe I can't. Growing up in small cities in Michigan in the 50s and 60s, I did not identify with the coasts or with big-city life at all. My parents were naturalized citizens and we were not rich.

My taste in music was my always own -- my Dad disliked country songs and didn't care for rock 'n roll either. He liked Perry Como and Lawrence Welk. But it was the story-telling in country and the beat in rock that hooked me, along with the rebelliousness in both.

I was a sickly kid and for a crucial period I had few friends. For whatever set of reasons, I always identified with underdogs and outsiders. At the University of Michigan, thanks to a scholarship awarded by Republican Gov. George Romney's administration, I was first exposed to the burgeoning antiwar and civil rights movements.

I quickly morphed into a student activist, then a journalist. After graduation, I was ambitious but because of my political activism, which included an arrest, I couldn’t find a job in journalism in Michigan. So I headed west.

Moving to San Francisco in my 20s and developing connections in New York, L.A. and Washington completed my transformation into a midwesterner-in-exile.

By now you really can’t distinguished me from any other Bay Area progressive on the outside, but on the inside I’ve never lost my small-town Michigan roots. 

Fast forward to present tense, with a nation and a culture so divided it hurts, people like me actually carry around divided hearts. When it comes to specific political issues I almost always come down on the side of progressives. When it comes to the places I prefer to hang out, it's the big cities.

Meanwhile, I hate the right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists who have developed such a hold on some of the people whose lives I left behind when I moved away from the Midwest.

Most all of those back home are good people, patriotic Americans. They've been sold a bad line of goods involving a false sense of resentment, and a demagogue named Trump came along to take advantage of them. They also have had trouble letting go of their biases against the coasts and big-city life.

They need to get over that. Otherwise, our democracy is at serious risk going forward.

I hold out hope that enough of them will come to their senses and back into the great middle of our culture, reject extremism and embrace the true meaning of patriotism. That once again reason will prevail. Then maybe we can all sing Lee Greenwood's song in the same tune.

TODAY’s HEADLINES:

• NATO commits to higher spending sought by Trump and mutual defence (Reuters)

• A fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel gives rise to hopes for a long-term peace (AP)

• Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say (CNN)

• Damaged or destroyed - how much does leaked US report on Iran's nuclear sites tell us? (BBC)

• Why America's giant bunker-busting bombs may have failed to reach their target (NPR)

• The alarming rise of US officers hiding behind masks: ‘A police state’ (Guardian)

• Florida is building an “Alligator Alcatraz” for migrant detainees. (WP)

• The U.S. Is Going Backwards on Vaccines, Very Fast (Atlantic)

• Tucker Carlson has claimed that the Murdoch family, which owns Fox News among other media outlets, asked him to run against Trump in the 2024 presidential election. [HuffPost]

• What’s in and out of Trump’s big bill as Senate races to meet Fourth of July deadline (AP)

• Trump's sweeping tax-cut legislation would effectively transfer wealth from younger Americans to older generations, nonpartisan analysts say. (Reuters)

• Mamdani Stuns Cuomo in New York Mayoral Primary (NYT)

• Drone debris found in Ukraine indicates Russia is using new technology from Iran (AP)

• Tomatoes in the Galápagos are quietly de-evolving (Phys.org)

• Over a million people now have access to the gen-AI powered Alexa+ (TechCrunch)

• Federal court says copyrighted books are fair use for AI training (WP)

• At Amazon’s Biggest Data Center, Everything Is Supersized for A.I. (NYT)

• FEMA Head Under Fire After Accidentally Playing Porn On Emergency Alert System (The Onion)

APPENDIX:

When it comes to patriotism and democracy I strongly recommend these three articles listed below from The New Yorker from mid-2021.

* Among the Insurrectionists at the Capitol

* What We Get Wrong About America’s Crisis of Democracy

* This July 4th, Can We De-Adapt from the Pandemic and Trump at the Same Time 

'Try Again'

Journalists get portrayed in movies all the time. Some films get it right, some don't. 

"The Last Letter From Your Lover," a 2021 film, gets it partially right, although you may never meet a journalist exactly like the character Ellie Haworth plays in the film.

If you spend a lot of time around young journalists, you notice certain characteristics. Young reporters typically don't know yet what attracts them to particular types of stories, and that's just as it should be.

Some come out of such a specific background that they almost embody it -- a place, a race, a culture, a gender, a religion, an emotional or intellectual environment. And at first they tend to want to that do stories that conform with that background.

But anyone who goes into journalism and develops to any significant degree knows that while his or her background matters a great deal, it is hardly the end of the story. It's more like the beginning. We need to learn how to do stories despite our backgrounds as much as because of them.

I remember conversations I had with my late friend Raul Ramirez, a long-time news executive at KQED, the NPR/PBS affiliate in San Francisco, while he was dying of cancer. He wanted to establish a fund that would support diversity in journalism at San Francisco State University in his final days, and he did.

I promised him I would help supervise the journalists that got internships via that fund as long as I could, and I am still doing that 12 years later.

What Raul meant about diversity was in no way confined to representations of only certain ethnic or racial groups, sexual orientations, political perspectives or any of the other categories that divide us one from another.

In the movies and in popular imagination, reporters rarely appear as nuanced as the people Raul wanted to help break into our business. In film, we often are portrayed as heroes ("All the President's Men"), irritants ("Maid in Manhattan"), or naive idealists ("Almost Famous").

And there are many others: "The Post," "True Story," "Official Secrets," etc. 

What I like about the part played by Felicity Jones in "Last Letter..." is she is just an everyday person who makes mistakes, questions the stupid rules she encounters, and never gives up on her investigation. When at one point in the film she reaches an apparent dead-end in the trail, an older man and former reporter himself says bluntly: "Well, you're a journalist. Try again."

She takes his advice and makes the breakthrough that allows the film to reach its resolution. 

In the process, she finds out a lot about herself and also about something she didn't know she was searching for -- how to love and be loved.

That's about as perfect a conclusion as a journalist (or anyone in Hollywood) can hope to achieve. 

(I first published this one when the film was released in 2021.)

HEADLINES:

• Iran Confirms Cease-Fire With Israel After Trump Announcement (NYT)

• Israel and Iran agree to ceasefire, Trump says (ABC)

• Trump calls for ending war after Iran's retaliatory missile attack (Axios)

• Iran’s Missing Uranium Stockpile Is a Big Problem for Trump (Slate)

• Trump’s war with Iran signals perilous shift from showman to strongman (Guardian)

• Israel says it struck Tehran's Evin prison and Fordo access routes (BBC)

• Putin says US strikes on Iran are pushing world to 'very dangerous line' (Reuters)

• Can Ayatollah Khamenei, and Iran’s Theocracy, Survive This War? (New Yorker)

• How the ICE Raids Are Warping Los Angeles (NYT)

• ‘I’m scared to death to leave my house’: immigrants are disappearing from the streets – can US cities survive? (Guardian)

• Supreme Court lifts limits on Trump deporting migrants to countries not their own (Reuters)

• Sotomayor accuses Supreme Court of ‘rewarding lawlessness’ by Trump administration in fiery dissent (CNN)

• In West Virginia, Medicaid is a lifeline. GOP cuts could devastate the state. (WP)

• Elon Musk’s Lawyers Claim He ‘Does Not Use a Computer’ (Wired)

• Congress, Now More Than Ever, We Need Your Cowardice (The Onion)

Iranian Roadhouse Blues

When I first visited Tehran many decades ago, I was struck by the friendly, casual sophistication of the Iranians I encountered, as well as their good-natured tolerance of my broken Farsi.

Later on, after my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in neighboring Afghanistan, the urbanites of Iran’s largest city easily discerned that my Farsi had deteriorated (in their eyes) into the country bumpkin dialect known as Dari spoken by the Afghans.

Every Iranian in the big city seemed well-educated and well-informed about life in the U.S.

Back in the U.S.A., one of the first stories I wrote for our new magazine SunDance in San Francisco got me in touch with Iranian dissident students attending college here and protesting against the corrupt leader of their country, Shah Reza Pahlavi.

The Iranian leader was planning a visit to the U.S. and the students were making secret plans to embarrass him with protests. I made connections through my Peace Corps network and attended one of their planning meetings.

Everybody wore masks, hoping to avoid being identified by the Shah’s dreaded imperial police, SAVAK, which was known to have infiltrated some of the student groups in order to disrupt their actions.

And while in my piece for SunDance I was careful not to name any of my Iranian sources, I did name an American source who had witnessed some of the Shah’s authoritarian tactics when he had been a teacher at Tehran University.

That was a serious journalistic error, because the man thought he had been speaking with me off the record, though I didn’t find that out until some 20 years later.

On that occasion, I was just settling in for what was supposed to be a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, when the maitre d’ came over to reintroduce himself.

“Remember me? I’m Steve and I was working in an Iranian rug store when you quoted me in your article in SunDance. I lost my job because of your article. The owners fired me out of fear of SAVAK,” he said.

I was mortified and deeply embarrassed. Talk about a buzzkill.

“Man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—.” My face turned bright red.

He just grinned. “Don’t feel too bad about it. ‘Cause it’s all worked out for both of us. I’ve followed your career at Rolling Stone and so on; and as for me, I’ve got my dream job here at Chez Panisse.”

At that point, the night got a whole lot better.

My understanding source and genial restaurant host, Steve Crumley, passed away in 2023.

HEADLINES:

• Satellite images show the damage at Iran's deeply buried Fordow nuclear site after massive US strikes (Business Insider)

• Iran says US strikes betrayed diplomacy, warns of consequences (Al Jazeera)

• With His Eyes on History, Benjamin Netanyahu Aims for Political Resurrection (New Yorker)

• U.N. chief warns of ‘perilous turn’ after U.S. strikes (WP)

• U.S. Officials Say Strikes Caused ‘Severe Damage’ to Iranian Nuclear Sites (NYT)

• Iran condemns US strikes on nuclear sites as Trump talks of 'regime change' (BBC)

• Trump asks why there would not be 'regime change' in Iran (Reuters)

• The Dangerous Consequences of Donald Trump’s Strikes in Iran (New Yorker)

• Trump strikes Iran hard, and the world waits for what comes next (WP)

MUSIC:

Listen To Her Heart - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers