Telling the Truth in a Trump World

Twenty-two hours ago (at the time of this writing), President-Elect Donald Trump tweeted something that has been nagging at me as a journalist with 27 years of experience in both newsrooms and the freelance magazine landscape:

"If the press would cover me accurately & honorably, I would have far less reason to 'tweet.' Sadly, I don't know if that will ever happen!"

Initially, I freely admit, I took offense. My knee-jerk emotional response was, "You are the President-Elect, and critical press coverage is part of the package."

I covered politics for The Associated Press in the Pennsylvania Statehouse from 1995 to early 1999, during the governorship of Tom Ridge, who eventually became known in the aftermath of 9/11 for heading up the Department of Homeland Security. And I should first say this about politicians, and it is meant as a sincere compliment: They have really thick skins. I can remember chasing stories that would have raised the ire of the gentlest of souls, and yet every politician with whom I ever came in contact always treated me with grace and respect. You have to understand that my office was right in the center of the Capitol, too -- right at the top of the sweeping marble staircase of the Rotunda. I was *in* and *among* these politicians, hour by hour, day after day. I saw them at committee meetings, at lunch counters, in hallways, even in my office. Regardless of the political party, regardless of the story I was writing, they were always courteous. Of course the things that I wrote made them angry, when I was revealing something they didn't want revealed. But they never complained about my objectivity and never gave me pause to think that they held personal ill will against me for just doing my job.

Now let's speed up to Trump's tweet yesterday. Given everything I've just told you, you might understand why I would initially feel that he needs to man up and learn his new role as Commander in Chief and how the press corps figures into that relationship.

But as I contemplated it some more, the fairness that dictated my life during those days at the AP also must apply to Trump.

So to be fair to him, you have to look at the history of what has happened in the past 12 months leading up to that tweet:

First of all, Trump needs to not be so disingenuous by ignoring the fact that he was given unprecedented favorable coverage for his rallies during the months leading up to the primaries. Anytime I turned on any news station, they were rolling those rallies in their entirety. I have never seen anything like it. While networks cut away from other candidates mid-speech, Trump commanded the air waves night and day, and many of the rallies were broadcast without interruption.

I also would point out that there were many times when Trump's surrogates were allowed to spew falsehoods -- sometimes unchallenged by the broadcasters who had them on their shows. And one network -- CNN -- even hired Trump's former campaign manager. Tell me that isn't favorable coverage.

However, we saw the tide start to turn when the Access Hollywood tapes emerged. By this time, even those who had been favorable to Trump changed their coverage approach.

What we saw in the few short weeks between the release of that tape and Election Day was definitely an all-out assault on Trump. Every news outlet, with the exception of Fox News, threw everything they had AGAINST him.

Regarding print media, the only outlets I saw that consistently were negative in their coverage were The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek.

I have to approach this topic with two personas: my journalist persona, and my "private American citizen" persona.

As a private American citizen, I was thrilled with the aggressiveness demonstrated by The New York Times, Washington Post and Newsweek. I follow their reporters on Twitter and heavily retweeted their stories, in the hopes that it would be enough to defeat Trump.

As a journalist, however, I have to admit to you that Trump is correct -- currently. In the beginning, he was treated as the golden boy, and now he is definitely being held up for as much public ridicule as the media can throw at him.

Now why should this matter to those of you in the profession? Just this thought: The overwhelming bias for Trump in the beginning of 2016 ... and the overwhelming bias AGAINST Trump at the end of 2016 has severely curtailed the trust the public now has in what you are reporting.

The problem now is ... even when Trump is engaging in terrible conflicts of interests, rocking the boat with China, appointing questionable mentally-balanced individuals to his Cabinet ... you as journalists have lost public trust to believe your stories, based on your performance in 2016.

And you may wonder, "Well where were YOU, Heidi Lynn Russell, in 2016, if you're such a great journalist?"

I was staying away from writing about politics. I knew I had zero objectivity to be able to cover anything fairly. So I stayed with my military stories and my business stories. As an American citizen, I was vocal against Trump. As a journalist, I didn't write one piece about anything he was doing on the campaign circuit. I didn't feel that with the training and experience I'd had, it was morally or ethically right for me to throw my hat into the ring on that front.

Going forward, I really don't know what the future of our profession will be. It seems that Trump is laying the groundwork to go after the First Amendment, and we already see disturbing actions and words concerning the press. However, to re-win the public's trust in your coverage, you're going to have to fairly cover ALL of Trump's actions -- both negative and positive. For example, I did see a couple of Cabinet appointments that aren't all bad. And despite that phone call with Taiwan, as a private citizen, I wondered if it wouldn't be so bad if China knew they couldn't push us around. But I didn't see any news coverage that looked at this angle -- rather, everything I saw bashed Trump. In every story we cover, there is always a nugget of the other side of the story, and in all of the coverage, I didn't see that "other side" reflected.

The bottom line here is that if you got into this profession to tell the truth, then tell the truth. Cover every single story as if you're an insect on the wall, observing it impassively. That's what we're paid to do. Let the public draw their own conclusions.

Your job is to solely present the facts.

And if you do that, then Trump will not ever be able to tweet again that you're not playing by the rules.

Why I Won't Write Political Stories Anytime Soon

Dial back in time to 1996.

Bill Clinton was running for his second term, and I ... I was second-guessing a decision I'd made as a cub reporter back in 1988.

So let's amend our little time capsule and dial back further ... to 1988.

I was one year out of college, still green and hungry to make a name for myself in the world of journalism. At age 23, I was working at a tiny little hole-in-the-wall paper called "The Coatesville Record" (now defunct) in south-central Pennsylvania. One day, Dave Lanute, one of my two editors called me over to his terminal.

"Are you registered to vote?"

"Yes."

"What party?"

"Democrat."

"Change it."

I blanched. "Change it to what, Dave???"

"Change it to Independent. You don't ever want anyone knowing which way you lean politically. Ever. They will use it against you and claim that your news coverage is biased. You don't have to do it. It's not a prerequisite for working here. It's just some friendly advice. It will save you headaches down the road. OK, that's all I wanted to tell you," Dave said, and then turned back to his computer screen like we hadn't even been having a discussion.

I changed to Independent that same week.

But when 1996 rolled around, I was hankering to register Democrat so that I could vote for Bill in the primary.

By this time, I was a "newswoman" (yes, that was my actual job title) for The Associated Press, covering Pennsylvania politics in the state Capitol, Harrisburg. If you visited the Capitol, you'd go straight up the sweeping marble stairs in a blindingly beautiful Rotunda, then hang a left through the door at the top -- and you'd be in the AP Bureau. And you'd see me sitting at a desk in the left-hand corner, busily calling people for quotes and pounding at my keyboard.

It was mid-winter, so about three months before the primary election. Three Republican staffers, all young guys, came into our bureau. Simultaneously, all five of us looked up. One of the GOP staffers started laughing.

"What do you want?" my bureau chief asked.

"We don't want anything. We're here to tell you that all of you are going to love what's coming out soon," replied one.

"And that is?"

"That is ... We have gone through voting records of every reporter who works in the statehouse and are listing their political affiliations so that lawmakers will know how biased they are when they report on their bills."

The room was silent.

"Good luck with that, jackass."

(Yes, that comment came from me ... sitting over in the left-hand corner.)

They all looked at me, and one raised his eyebrow, smirking. "Oh we don't need luck, we already did it."

"Then if that's the case, you'll find that those of us with two brain cells ARE REGISTERED AS INDEPENDENTS. Now go away, I have a story to write, and my deadline was five minutes ago."

They stood in the doorway with their jaws agape. I looked up from my keyboard. "Go bother someone else, I said! We're busy! Get out of here!"

I had a lot of fun that day, throwing that in their faces. I thanked my old editor at the Coatesville Record with every breath as I smiled to myself while they slunk away.

But now let's speed up in time ... to 2016.

I have been a full-time freelance journalist since I left the newspaper industry 15 years ago.This morning, I was on Twitter, bouncing private messages with a friend who had known me during the time I worked for the AP. He brought up an important question:

"You are so biased! Reporters need to be neutral, right?"

See, he was referring to my penchant for tweeting heavily about my views against Donald Trump. Today, not only am I registered Democrat, but I hold nothing back in my political viewpoints on social media.

So this needs to be addressed, both for anyone who wonders about it and for those of you who are just starting out in your professional careers as journalists:

Yes, I'm a reporter. Yes, I have covered politics in the past.

But you will not see me writing political stories anytime soon. In fact, if you dig through my social media posts, you will not see me posting any opinions about any of the topics on which I write.

I refuse to take political assignments. I am at a point in life where I can pick and choose the types of clients for whom to work. My clients are either military magazines or business magazines. I stay away from reporting on daily news -- and I definitely stay away from politics. I'm a political junkie at heart, and I loved (loved!) covering politics 20 years ago for the AP. But that was a different lifetime. And I've decided that it's more important to me personally to be able to present my views and objections to political happenings that I feel are putting the country at peril.

In my former life, I was required by my employers -- news organizations -- to shelve my views in order to try to give each story as much objectivity as I humanly could. Does it mean that reporters are objective? Of course not. Notice I said, "humanly." We're all humans, and if someone tries to tell you that they're an "objective journalist," never read anything they write again, because they're a big liar.

However, we are to maintain the appearance of propriety as journalists, and as much as it depends on us, report stories with as much fairness as we can muster.

It wasn't always easy for me. I can remember one specific story in Elkton, Maryland, when I sat across the table from the Grand Dragon of that state's Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was passing around leaflets near public schools, to recruit teenagers. I can tell you that I honestly wanted to lunge myself across the table and choke the smile off of that monster's face. But I wrote a story from the interview -- an objective story -- that laid out the facts about what the Klan was doing and how school district officials were combating it.

No, the Grand Dragon did not like that story at all -- and it's because he thought it would be a puff piece. That's how well I masked my feelings.

But back to politics. I think that in this era of social media, it's very important for young journalists to realize this:

If you're going to be on social media, keep your political views to yourselves. Register as Independent. Go after every story as if you were covering a nebulous PTA meeting. And you already know this, but it bears repeating: Do not allow your views to taint your coverage.

When I know that my views on an issue or a subject are so strong that it prevents me from doing my job, I back off. I refuse the assignment.

Now there is an exception here. There are times when your past experiences or who you are as a person will contribute to the story. For example, I am a former Army wife, and my ex-husband went through three deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving me home with a newborn infant, three weeks after this child was born.

Obviously, I am going to have strong views about the war.

However, I do have the perspective about how military life affects military families. So my stories will focus on how to help your child cope with deployments. How to reconnect after you're reunited. How to deal with PTSD.

What you will NOT see me write about, however, are stories about the political decisions shaping our troops. I do believe that the war was an illegal war. As a result, I would not write stories about pending legislation on war efforts, for example. You would not see me doing a profile story on a Congressman with a Hawkish view.

Here's another example: I'm a single mom, and as a self-employed writer, I pay for my own health care insurance policy. You would not see me write stories about Obamacare, however. You would not see me write stories about the insurance industry.

But you might see me write stories about how to shop for insurance plans ... or how to cut your home budget to make room for health care expenses.

Do you see the difference?

So.

Back to my friend's original question about my political tweets and my anti-Donald-Trump stance:

I would never take an assignment that would involve Donald Trump or his shenanigans. I would never accept a story about a political rally, an anti-immigrant campaign or even on the plights of immigrants.

However, you will definitely see me tweeting about it. You will definitely see me exercising my free speech right as an American to vociferously shout down hatred and bigotry.

And as for the rest of the stories out there ... oh, there are so many stories! ... You will see my silence on issues where there is a chance that my byline may be linked to them.

There are plenty of stories from which to choose. So choose wisely ... and wisely conduct yourself so that no one can say you acted with impropriety.

And when in doubt ... register Independent. And keep your big mouth shut about it.