"If true…"

“If true…”
by David Benjamin

“ ‘One [option] is, try to figure out right this minute what the truth is, when you have no way of knowing. Or two, and both social media and cable news are a little bit at war with this: Wait a minute.’”
— Richard Tofel, president, ProPublica

MADISON, Wis. — Whenever the 24/7 news cycle suffers one of its periodic hiccups, I think of Alan Johnson, a fellow newshound from my bygone days.

The latest crisis for the all-news-all-the-time info-frenzy was BuzzFeed’s breathless dispatch last week that Donald Trump had suborned his erstwhile personal lawyer Michael Cohen to lie before Congress about plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow. This “bombshell” was swiftly defused — but not exactly denied — by Peter Carr, the usually mute “spokesman” for special counsel Robert Mueller. Carr called the BuzzFeed scoop “not accurate.”

Other news outfits eagerly disseminated word of BuzzFeed’s tentatively disarmed bomb but could not corroborate. They led their coverage of the BuzzFeed dispatch with a damning equivocation: “If true.”

Bob Woodward, whose Watergate coverage with Carl Bernstein had similar ups and downs — but finally nailed a previous corrupt president — lamented the current round-the-clock demands imposed on journalists. He told the Times, “I am thankful I don’t have to cover this story on a daily basis. The hydraulic pressure in the system is just so great. The impatience of the Internet — ‘give it to us immediately’ — drives so much, it’s hard to sort something like this out.”

I used to share with Alan Johnson the “press table” at public meetings in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Al covered the town for the Attleboro Sun-Chronicle, our regional daily. I ran the weekly Mansfield News. Al and I were collegial, more inclined to discomfit the members of the Health Board, School Committee and Board of Selectmen than to cut each other’s throats for “exclusives.”

Competition would have been silly, because Al beat me on just about every story I ever covered. I was shut out of the horserace ’til Thursday morning, when the News finally hit the streets. Despite the delay, folks in town depended on the News for the news because I had more of it. I had a couple of tools that Al could only envy. He had immediacy but I had time and space. Al had 15 inches or so every day. I had 16 pages every week.

For example, a typical Tuesday night Health Board meeting might dwell for two endless hours on the nitty-gritty of in-ground sewage-system percolation rates through shale, gravel, clay, sand, buried bones and the River Styx. Every approval granted by the Board earned exactly one sentence, in both the Sun-Chronicle (next day) and the News (two days later). But every meeting also brought the chance that Leon Grant would show up with blueprints for his latest wild-ass scheme to build a private empire in the local woods and squander the last few nickels of his family fortune. A Leon Grant sighting was almost invariably outrageous — especially to Leon’s long-suffering neighbors — and always great fun.

Fun for me. Given his fifteen column inches, Al could only convey to Sun-Chronicle readers the dry gist of Leon’s latest dodge, as though it was a serious development conceived by a sane man.

News readers knew there was more to come. They knew they’d get it from me, because I had two extra days to write it up and lots of space to fill.

The weekly News afforded me room to reveal every dubious detail of Leon’s newest crackpot notion. And I could quote him. He loved to talk. Once, eager to sell fill gravel for a big highway project, he began digging an enormous hole next to his garage. Rather than petition for the permits necessary to this epic excavation effort, Leon simply informed town officials that he was exempt from the usual hole-digging rules because he was a “farmer” fashioning a “farm pond.” This began a Town Hall battle, among Leon, the Health and Zoning Boards, the Selectmen and most of Leon’s neighborhood that went on for most of a year.

As Leon’s “farm pond” grew to cover the better part of an acre, penetrating deep into the porous glacial till that comprised his property, I began — in my humorous commentaries — to refer to “Leon’s Ocean” and to foresee the eventual launch of several ships. Leon responded by making mock captain’s caps bearing the legend, “Grant’s Navy.” I still have one.

Al had the story first, but had to skip the funny stuff. More important, he had neither the space nor the editorial freedom for details that suggested the devious twist of Leon’s mind. Nor could Al unravel, over seven or eight leisurely paragraphs — as I could — the checkered history of Leon’s shrinking legacy.

Al and I didn’t compete “head-to-head,” because daily and weekly journalism is so basically different. Al faithfully reported the facts, but that was as far as he was allowed to go. The facts are never the whole story. I filled in the stuff that Al’s editor cut. I expanded, explained, embellished and threw in a few jokes.

In the Sun-Chronicle, Leon’s naval battle with the town was a what-happened-last-night story. In the News, it was, “How long has this been going on?”

Regardless of our variant cycles, however, we were both in a hurry. The news is always rushed. Every night, Al had ’til 11 p.m. Each Wednesday night, I had to file copy on the Selectmen’s meeting and then make sure all my 16 pages were filled, straight, shot, plated and ready for print before the crack of dawn. If either of us, in our panic to print, got one thing wrong, Al and I were both in trouble.

Trouble happened because we were so fussy about accuracy — the word that Peter Carr threw at BuzzFeed. Because Al and I worked in public, for the public, and because we claimed a professional fealty to the truth, one mistake would stand out, naked, shocking and inexcusable. It was a violation of trust.

I had it slightly worse than Al, because I had more to do, more that could go wrong. I was both reporter and editor. I also proofread, pasted up, took pictures and worked the darkroom. Of course, I made mistakes. And I got in trouble.

Enough mistakes and you learn the power of apology. “Sorry” always works better than sticking out your chin and “standing your ground,” especially when you know you’re wrong anyway. Besides, I don’t have that much of a chin. But I also told my aggrieved and outraged victims that the news cycle cauterizes all wounds. “There’s going to be a new paper in a week,” I would say. “My mistake will be lining wastebaskets next Thursday. Two weeks from now, it’ll be in a landfill. The reason we call it ‘news’ is that it doesn’t last.”

Today, that goes far more than double. The 24/7 cycle isn’t journalism like anything Al and I ever did at the Town Hall press table. Because it’s so fast, it’s entertaining. Ideally, because the Web is infinite, it allows the detail and analysis for which there’s scant space in a daily newspaper. However, the speed-driven journalists of the 24/7 cycle rarely pause — nor are they asked — to analyze, explain, educate. They have no time to challenge lies. The next story is only minutes — seconds — away. History was ten minutes ago, and it’s already dead.

Speed kills. Speed also lies. Donald Trump, among others, has shown how to turn the 24/7 news cycle into a 24/7 propaganda machine.

Ironically, a single mistake from a normally factual outlet — like the BuzzFeed scoop (which might prove to be no mistake at all), or a discrete untruth from a normally scrupulous source — like Elizabeth Warren’s vague Cherokee genealogy, can grind the news cycle to a halt and bring down a torrent of righteousness and spite, all the more virulent from the least reputable of rivals.

Which reminds me, again, of Alan Johnson. Back then, when I screwed up for all the town to see, Al was the one guy I could count on for a little sympathy.