 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. We are on a given Wednesday, Community Matters with our old friend Brett Opegaard, assistant professor in journalism in UH, Noah, what is it, the School of Communications. School of Communications. Thank you so much for being here, yeah. Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah, so important. We have to keep track of this because it's a moving target, you know. That's for sure. And we started out with, you know, with Trump's attacks on the press. It started immediately with the fake news, except, you know, it's something out of 1984. Some news is more fake than other news. And some, you know, sources of news are more the enemy of the people than other sources. George Orwell Animal Farm was an animal. Some pigs are... Yeah, some pigs are more equal than others or something like that. They're created more equal than others. So the whole thing is a mind, a mind is the word for that. Anyway, so now here we are, and there have been things you've been sending me, articles really worth looking at to see how all of this is going because it's dynamic. You know, the whole attack on fake news and enemy of the people and, you know, the war against the press, this is not static. This changes, it changes from what he says, it changes from the environment around what he says, and the context of, you know, people wondering whether what he says is accurate or not, and it changes because the press changes and journalism, people in journalism change. And so it strikes me from the articles you sent, we should discuss them one by one, you know, that we have a dynamic going on right now and it isn't what it was, say, you know, 18 months ago. It's different. The war against the press is different. The profession of journalism, isn't that amazing, is different. Yeah. It's rapidly changing. I was reminiscing earlier today about how big a news it was when Dan Quayle spelled potato wrong and how people went crazy and I was thinking, now it's like potato being spelled wrong 100 times a day and we never get to the original potato. So I'm starting, well, let's talk about the articles, okay? You sent me two articles, but it flowers out to more than that. One of them was about increased registrations in journalism programs. That is fascinating. Can you tell me about it? Yeah. We've noticed it on the ground at University of Hawaii in our journalism program. We have the only journalism major in the Pacific region and so people who really want to study journalism, they come to us and we've noticed in the last, basically since Trump was elected that there has been a kind of energy, a new energy and it's not a left or right energy, it's just a new energy about journalism and that energy is exciting people and engaging people and making people think about news and truth in new ways and that has led to a lot of people signing up for our classes, a lot of people taking them and a lot of people becoming journalism majors and there was a recent article in the Washington Post that basically went across the nation and found that to be true of programs across the country. Oh, so University of Hawaii is consistent with lots of other schools then. It's a national change here, a sea change. Yeah, it's not a isolated local phenomenon. It's a national change, I think, similar to what happened after Watergate. After Watergate you had this big rush of people wanting to basically do the kind of investigative work that happened there and to bring that kind of truth back to our country and I think the same, not exactly the same but a very similar energy is happening now. Yeah, well maybe it's really interesting to come to the nominate between Watergate and ours, Bob Woodward. Yeah, he's larger than life and now two huge scandalous administrations. Yeah, I read that story the other day, I said this is like the bookends of his career. You know, the first one started it. He was not a prominent journalist at the time. He was just kind of an everyday beat writer and this one now, you know what I say, it's the last big thing he'll do but it's, you know, toward the end of his career and he's did a monumental job on this story. Yeah, he's a perfect guy to have done it too because of what happened in Deep Throat and all that. And you know, when you face his credibility off against Trump's credibility there is no comparison. When he tells you he did this according to journalistic standards you believe it completely, I do. Yeah, he follows the ethical code, he records all his interviews, there's no shortcuts he takes as far as I know and, you know, his work speaks for itself. There's not really any question if it's true. You might not like what you read in it but it's, you know, as close to truth as a person can get. Yeah, I bought the book and I downloaded it from, this is an interesting piece. I downloaded it from Amazon in approximately two seconds for 14 or 15 bucks. Right. And that's, it's high news for me because it's drilled down in depth and it's from a respected journalist on a very acutely relevant issue right now. And furthermore, you know, it came what, a couple days before that remarkable op-ed piece in the New York Times. Almost simultaneous. Yeah, almost simultaneous. Yeah, yeah, the excerpts actually came out before the editorial and they were kind of working together for a while. Was that op-ed piece troubled you that it was anonymous? Yes. And, you know, I've talked about that here before that I'm not a fan of anonymous sourcing. I don't believe there was anything in that op-ed that we didn't already know. We didn't know it and the way we knew it. But I don't think, I wouldn't have traded the anonymity for that. I would have made the person go on the record. Or not publish it. Or not publish it. Yeah. I didn't think there was anything in there that was so groundbreaking that, I mean, yes, the hiding the papers from him. I mean, there's definitely some interesting aspects to it that were sort of, you know, new or sensational. But the fact of the matter was that you have an incompetent person in that job and that editorial basically just reinforced that in a way that we all, you know, basically understand already. So to offer anonymity to that person I think was really unfair to the American people who want to know. You know, essentially this person is admitting that they're undermining the elected president of the United States. Which to me is a very troubling thing. It doesn't matter who's in the office there that you have a staff doing secret deeds, good or bad. You know, like I don't want him to cause a nuclear war or anything like that. But good or bad, it doesn't seem right what happened there when people are secretly affecting the outcome of our country in ways that they aren't accountable to voters. There are such interesting issues raised by that. I mean, now the guy claims or women, we don't know, that he's protecting the public by removing letters and all that from Trump's desk. By standing between, you know, the presidency and Trump's impulsive behavior and decision process. So he's protecting us, he says, by doing that on matters of conscience, not on everything. So he doesn't take any action on those letters and those steps, but where he disagrees he's protecting us and he's doing it anonymously. Now if he came out of the other way, if the New York Times said, sorry, we're not going to publish this unless you identify yourself. And he did identify himself, if he did identify himself, then he'd be fired immediately. Trump would have fired him instantly and we would not have had, this is questionable, the benefit quote, that's in quotes, the benefit of this guy protecting us by being, you know, sort of a secret mole in the Oval Office, taking steps to protect us from some impulsive conduct, but not other impulsive conduct. It's a democracy better off if he stays in there and continues to do what he says he was doing. I don't think so. I think if he felt this way and was doing this kind of action, should sign he or she, could be Nikki Haley, it could be anybody, sign the editorial, fall on your sword, quit the job, probably would be a national hero, and then we'd be able to deal with the real problems, as opposed to this kind of back room, you know, sneakiness that, number one, I don't really believe that he or she is doing the good of the American people anyway. I think the editorial to me seemed like an excuse-making system for why these people are still in those jobs, and it gives everybody cover to be in those jobs, like, oh, they're protecting us, they're doing these sneaky things, so let's not, you know, question what they're doing, because what they say to the camera, they don't really believe that, you know, this is, again, part of this whole fake news idea that, you know, we don't really believe what the person says, we don't believe the documents, we don't believe what we hear, we don't believe what we see, because there's this whole subtext going on, where people are really doing the noble thing behind the scenes, it just, to me, it's just a horrific travesty of what our country was supposed to be. Yeah, well, I mean, hard, desperate times for desperate moves or whatever they say, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who would agree with you, and some who would disagree with you. They want to know what this guy was saying, and they would buy into his point about it's more important that you know what's happening than you know the source, but the source from a journalistic point of view is very important. You measure the credibility by the source. The source is everything. You measure the credibility, or measure the motives. I mean, every part of what you understand about a piece of information comes from the source. How credible, how not credible, how valid, how not valid. So, with the anonymous cloak on this editorial, I found it very troubling and I definitely wouldn't have published it if I was the publisher of the New York Times. And if you shake it and bake it, a lot of it is this guy trying to keep his job. Well, it's narcissistic. Like, only I can save you. You know, I'm the one in here. If I quit and they put somebody else in there, this person would be so much worse. You know, it sort of plays along the Trump pattern of, you know, savior. Yeah. And at the end of the day, this is an erosion of the system in general, to have somebody like that. It's a terrible erosion. And this is a slope that none of us should go down. I don't care if your person is in office or not in office, but to see that happening, you imagine, okay, if the tides were turned, would you want that to be happening? No. Because one person is getting the votes and one person is being evaluated publicly and all the other people basically are free to do what they want in this case and without any accountability. Circus. It's a circus. We'll be right back. We're going to do a short break when we come back. We're going to talk about the second article that Brett sent me. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. If you're not in control of how you see yourself, then who is? Live above the influence. My name is Stephanie Mock and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomei Weigert and we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on at Thursdays at 4 p.m. and we hope we'll see you next time. Okay, we're back with Brett Opegaard, assistant professor of journalism at UH Manoa. We so enjoy having him on the show. It's really core stuff for us. During the break, we talked about the distinction between this Obed piece in the New York Times and Deep Throat way back when. It's different, right? Big difference because Deep Throat was an anonymous source but not an anonymous source that appeared in the newspaper at all. No information provided ever ended up being printed, so Deep Throat was a source that basically pointed Woodward and Bernstein two stories did not actually appear in the stories. And then today we're having this like this conversation about an editorial, number one, so the person's free reign to say whatever opinion they wanted. That's way different. And then they could say it without, with anonymity and not have any accountability for what they said. Right. So it's a significantly different piece of journalism and I think a much worse piece. It's reminiscent to the whole thing about social media because you don't know where the social media is coming from. As hard as Facebook is now trying to search for fake news and the like. In social media, you can fake out who you are. You can fake out the source. You can be a Russian operative in a building in Moscow pretending to be a college kid in Cincinnati and nobody really knows the difference. And unless Facebook somehow is able to distinguish that, we're faked out by the source. It's really the same thing. And so you begin to get this really queasy feeling about where do I look? Where do I go? What is the role of the press? It's changing. The press is changing. The role of the press is changing. I understand why those kids are signing up to take these courses. This is a very interesting subject and perhaps more interesting than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago because there's no constraint on it these days. And it has a big effect. This goes to the second article. Why don't you talk about that? This is about registration forms to vote. Yeah, some media sources including the story focused on the Ithaca Times which is a small weekly newspaper in New York. Basically expanding its role to some degree of promoting democracy and journalism by instead of having a front page full of stories, their front page was a voter registration form and you could simply fill it out right on the top of the newspaper, tear it out, mail it in and you're registered to vote. And that's something that when you think about the money in politics, the money primary that decides our candidates, even if we get a Republican or Democrat candidate they've already been vetted by all the money people so they're sort of the same cloth anyway. How do you take that back? And it's got to start with putting into action your rights as a citizen. At the floor is voting, at the very bottom floor. You can't go any lower than voting. You can do more. You can run for office and you can raise community organized and do lots more. But if you don't vote, you're really in the basement of our society in terms of being a citizen. Society is going to come apart soon enough if you don't vote. Yeah, you're hiding in the basement. So come out of the basement. Even if you come out and you don't know all the candidates, fine, don't vote for the people you don't know, but if you support somebody, vote for that person and get your voice in there. And I think a lot about how disenfranchised I feel and probably everybody feels when senators and the House of Representatives are making these decisions that don't reflect our personal values. Anything like, what can I do in Hawaii especially since it's basically a one-party state and there's not a lot of choice in terms of your candidates, what can you do? And what you can do is start paying attention to local races. You can start voting on it. You can start being engaged, going to meetings, giving your voice to the environment and then seeing how that happens. I don't know why, but I'm reminded of the caucus before the last presidential election, the caucus here in Hawaii. 70% of the people in the Democratic caucus were on Bernie's side, voted for Bernie in the caucus. It's not an official thing, it's just a party caucus. But then the delegation went to the convention, they all voted for Hillary Clinton, even though 70% of the people here voted for Bernie. So it just ignored it completely and you could lose confidence in the system when you see that sort of thing happening. You definitely can and then there's all this corruption within the political system here. I read a story recently about how basically every politician in the state or almost every politician is ignoring the disclosure forms and the fines are so small that they just take out their big lumps of corporate money that they get and pay it off and they don't care. There's a lot of dysfunction and corruption that I think the change begins with the citizen who kind of stands up and says, I'm going to do my part and then if everybody does that, it actually will change. Well, I think the press is changing. The Ithaca Times reflects a possibility that any paper might consider taking an affirmative action saying here, you want to vote, this is what you do, it's right here. Cut it out of our paper or if it's a website then print it off the website and sign it and send it in. Or some of the papers in that article, we're just giving you a link. Press the link and you go in although I like the idea of having the whole form visible. On the front page. On the front page. Yeah, that's pretty exciting. It's really saying something. Yeah. So there's a lot of implications here about the Ithaca Times. One of them is that that's a proactive step, that's an affirmative action step and it means that the role of the newspaper at least in their view is changing. Would you say that's another sea change around the country if it isn't, should it be? And how do we achieve it? Well, it's part of the idea that newspapers and websites and magazines and television news and whatever, they're all in the same business and that's to promote democracy. And if you're not doing that, you're not doing your job. If you think you're in the business to sell car ads then you're in the wrong business. And people are fairly savvy. Each generation that comes through UH, I see they're more and more media savvy, more and more media literate is what we call it. And they can see when it's a shill type situation, when you're cooking on the TV and you're using all the products that are advertising with you and it's just basically a long infomercial or you have your Coke can sitting in front of you when you're talking to somebody, they see product placement and they pick that up now a lot quicker than they used to. So basically the people who continue to try to trick folks I think will wither in importance. Something you said really touched me though. You said that it's their duty. They exist to promote democracy. And I've heard it said for many years, I believe it's true, is that when the founders said we are separating church and state and we are going to make, we're going to give the churches a break, don't get taxed, they have all kinds of special privileges but they have to stay out of government. That's the price they pay. We give them a license but we put an obligation on the stay out of government. That's why it says the government shall not create a church and there will be a separation of church and state. The same thing kind of comes out on the First Amendment provision about freedom of the press. It says we are giving you license. Here's a constitutional provision that says you are free and you have a special blessing to go out and do it. And because of that you have an obligation to protect this constitution. It's inherent in the First Amendment. Just as you said, the press has an obligation to protect democracy because they have the special license inherent in the whole system. That's the deal. We don't have licenses and credentials. You don't have to take an official test like the bar to be a journalist. Your license is the First Amendment and all of us can do it. And that's what's so special about the United States. Anywhere else you go in the world, they're all envious of our freedoms here. And if we don't protect that, it will go away. And it's starting to be chipped away for sure with this attack on the media. Yeah, unless we forget the Secretary of Homeland Security is keeping a list on journalists. I don't know if we've talked about that. I don't think we've talked about that. She has 1,700 at last count journalists in her special list and her special list is a matrix which includes what you've said, what you've written, your propensities politically. That's in the list, too. This reminds me of 1934 that she should keep a list and she announced that. What Ubers to announce that she's keeping a list of you and your friends and your graduates and everybody in the press to find out what you've said because on Judgment Day, they may be knocking at your doorbread. This is very scary. Well, I hope there's a list being kept to people like that. They end up with their orange jumpsuits at the end when they're complicit on all this corruption and crime. We need to keep a list of the people keeping a list. Yeah, it's not just the person at the top that is doing this criminal behavior. It's all these totes and cronies that are enabling and being complicit and grifting. She can keep whatever list she wants, that's her right, but then we can also keep our own list. Yes, and we do and the press does. Happy to see that. I really love it when the New York Times comes out with all the lies and more and more I see that happening in the press and I see a sea change. I see, if you agree with me, a sea change where the press is sort of feeling that it's time to push back on some of this war on the press. It's time to take a stand like publishing the voter registration form. There have been so many attacks on voting in the past year and a half. It's incredible. Well, this is pushing back on it. But let me ask you, how far does that go? For example, I don't like the way a certain initiative is going in government and the Ithaca Times could publish a letter with the salient public officials listed and their addresses and emails and publish that letter on the front page and all you have to do is cut it out, sign it and send it in. Is that going too far? Not legally, but I think there's an ethical issue with that. It's in the realm of who is a public official that deserves public scrutiny. If you're sending it into their office and it's a premade form, they just toss them anyway. If you're sending it to their house and you got little voodoo dolls in the envelope and things like that, then that's where it does go too far. And they have, you know, on the internet that happens quite often where they publish people's addresses and phone numbers and people get harassed, including the woman who is accusing Brett Kavanaugh of trying to rape her. That woman, you know, she has her story to tell and before she even gets a chance to tell it, she's being attacked by trolls across the world trying to shut her down and scare her. Yeah, indeed they do that, but I have to say that they do that using the press. They use the press to make it hot for her, to make it impossible for her to intimidate her from testifying. And query, you know, where is that fit in the new press that we see evolving? Is it something where the press ought to reconsider making her a target, reconsider intimidating her or allowing other people to intimidate her? It has an effect for sure, and the effect is probably a bad effect, but where is the conscience of the press on that now in this most difficult time for the press in the 21st century? Well, each organization or individual have to figure out their line. We have a code of ethics that we follow. You know, people that are, you know, ethical journalists, we've come together and we've created a code of ethics, so we follow that. But in these kinds of cases, I think it's maybe wiser for everybody to just start thinking of themselves as a public citizen. You know, you have your public face and your private face, and when you're in the public sphere, even if you're a nobody from nowhere, there's a chance you get sucked into the vortex and have to be in this kind of stage, and you just have to be prepared for it, and you have to, you know, shield yourself however you want. But otherwise, we all sit in our house with our shutters drawn and cower under the blankets. I mean, there's just not... I've watched the democracy deteriorate. And you just do watch fascism take over. So there's not really a lot in between on that. It's just the way the technology works and communication travels and the ability to decentralize control systems. You know, there's always that fear. I mean, I've been attacked by troll armies for columns I've written, and you just have to kind of develop a thick skin about it to some degree. I'm not excusing it. I'm just saying it's a reality, and if you're a person that's not in the public sphere, it's a reality. And if you have the choice of either, I guess, not facing up or not coming to the place where you can talk about what you want or, you know, taking on this kind of wave that could come at you. And a lot of people actually live in this unreasonable fear that that's going to happen and it really doesn't happen. So it has a magnifying effect on silencing people where they think, oh, if I say anything to anybody, I'm going to have this troll army attack me. I'm going to have people like, you know, pipe bombing my mailbox or whatever. And those things do happen. I'm not saying they don't, but they don't happen as often as you might imagine and people definitely living in fear say less without, you know, cause. You're calling for courage. Courage. But you're calling for courage. Correct me if I'm wrong. You're calling for courage not only with the classical conventional members of the press, you know, in the conventional, you know, organizations of the press, but you're calling for courage from everyone who makes a public statement because the notion of making a public statement has expanded with the technology to everyone. I mean, there's so many. You can be a citizen journalist and you're still a journalist, aren't you? So courage, am I right? In your view, courage applies to everyone who speaks or can speak publicly. We're all international publishers with social media. And in that role, we have to be able to stand behind what we say. And yeah, I think courage is a good word for it. We have to figure out what we stand for, what we want to say about that, and then do it. Conscience and courage. Conscience and courage. Thanks for coming down, Brett. Always wonderful. All right, you too. See you next time soon. Okay, thank you.