The Press: "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?"

At some point in the days of ancient Rome, in some context that is totally irrelevant to today's piece, an ancient Roman posed the curious question that will have relevance throughout time, as long as mankind dwells here by the grace of God.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It was said that way because, unlike the USA, they had a formal language back then in ancient Rome, and cared about it -- they had to, as Latin is a pretty complex language in its form.  I'm not much for Latin; to me, Caesar is a salad.  I'm not a fan of languages that have all manner of adjective declensions (English has none), lots of definite articles (English has one), and lots of indefinite articles (English has two, and no thought is needed to know which to use, except if you think "an historic event" is somehow right).

But I digress.  "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" translates, for all intents and purposes, to "Who will watch the watchman."  I think we know where this is going.

The press is a bothersome topic.  Journalism in the USA is a constitutionally-protected pursuit, and should be.  I have a lot of respect for true, fair journalism and for the people who practice it.  It means getting the story, developing sources of information, verifying their accuracy with adequate evidence, and having the literary capacity to represent what they have found fairly and without spin.  "Truth to power" is a not-insignificant part of that.

There are people with whom I may often disagree (I'm thinking Chris Wallace) whom I believe represent a true journalist.  When Wallace has a knee-jerk defensive reaction to criticism of the press, it comes of his and, for that matter, his father's, lifetime devotion to the profession.  I respect that, because I have no doubt that Chris Wallace knows what it means to be a journalist.

I do not respect those who allow their personal political view to influence their pursuit, and then create stories from unverified sources (or from thin air), claiming their rights to do so as deriving from the First Amendment.  As much damage to the evil and the too-comfortable as can be done by the proper practice of the profession, as much or more can be done to the nation by promulgating fiction under the guise of news.  When a professed journalist cries on national TV because an election doesn't go her way, well, it is a bit difficult to afford her credibility in reporting on it -- or on anything else.

For several weeks -- pretty much since the inauguration -- we have had a public battle between much of the press and the president.  The press, particularly the news departments of ABC, CBS and NBC and pretty much all of CNN and MSNBC (not sure if anyone is watching them, so I can't confirm the latter, but since we know Rachel Maddow cried when Hillary lost, someone must have recorded it), and several of the once prestigious newspapers, have been taken to task by President Trump.  He has excoriate their publishing and delivering stories without attribution that have, at least in certain cases, been shown to be completely wrong.

The president derides this as "fake news", and he has used his bully pulpit to pound that phrase to the point that most of the country has heard the term.  Much of the country has, accordingly, had whatever trust it once had in the press compromised, and certainly suspect the accuracy of almost any new story it hears.

I have watched the result of that very carefully, because there are "journalists", and there are people who claim to be, but are simply trying to press their view to an audience.  I will confess that, like Chris Wallace at Fox, there are a few people at places like CNN who do take their profession seriously.  Although they are quite politically at odds with President Trump, they do regard accuracy in reporting, and verification of sources, to be a near-holy obligation -- and I respect that.

Of course, if you are a senior reporter at, say, CNN, maybe in the White House pool, and you believe all that about your profession, but your own colleagues at your own network go to press with inadequately vetted, or simply made-up stories that share your politics but violate journalistic integrity, what do you do?

Right now, President Trump is rightly taking the press to task.  They are the watchmen over everything, reporting on the good and (mostly) the bad.  It is their job to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable", to make sure that our leadership are properly covered so that their power is not allowed to rise above its constitutional mandate -- a responsibility they abrogated for the previous two presidential terms.

But that job, done or not done, is compromised when "fake news" is brought before their public.  And while it is not a duty of the president to oversee the press, someone has to.  President Trump is doing that, but it is the responsibility of the news media themselves to do so.  The heads of those organizations need to start setting standards and tolerance levels and enforcing them.  Trust is first reestablished when the press show that they care about accuracy in the first place.

 Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It should not have to be the President of the United States.  But if the press won't watch over itself, someone has to.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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