 to the planet of the courageous. I'm Dr. Dean Nelson, host of Planet of the Courageous. This planet is spinning and hurling through space at 67,000 miles per hour. It takes courage to not slip into fear and collapse into anxiety, and one can find many justifications now for selfishness and prejudice. But we do have two years to listen to one another, and we have one heart that can provide a common ground, but this takes courage. We chose the right planet for the opportunity to learn courage and try to solve so many challenges. Today I get the delight to interview a friend, David Butts, a member of a slightly maligned profession as of late. He's been a career journalist and is presently the business editor for the Honolulu Star Advertiser. Previously he worked in Japan from 1985 to 1998, first as a Tokyo bureau chief and later managing editor for Bloomberg News in Asia. In this job, he managed and built the area staff from five to 150 reporters, covering 18 different locations. On a personal note, he met his wife, Casio, while in Japan and has been married for 37 years. He has two stunning sons and two way above average grandchildren. As a friend, I know David to be a man of high professional integrity and success, but I'm suspicious that he may rate playing with his granddaughter and being in the ocean as a hire calling even than his work. Aloha, David, thank you for coming on. Hello, Dean, thank you for having me. OK, you're not going to start chewing gum and start yelling at me right away, are you? I'll get the back to that later. I hope you get the reference. I also need to cover this. You don't work for one of those false news channels or stations, do you? You work for a real news station, a real news newspaper? That's a good question. What's your answer? You read the Star Advertiser. I work for the Honolulu Star Advertiser. And the readers get to judge whether we're false news or real news. Yes, yeah. I would say. You know, speak of the mechanics, though. You've spoken at times of news agencies, newspapers that you really feel are high in integrity. You've mentioned the New York Times to me. You've mentioned BBS. Walk through the mechanics of how news gets reported and how the spin on it at least gets diminished. Well, spin is an interesting question, of course. And that gets to the point of objectivity. But for the most part, what you're looking for in a news organization, what you're looking for when you hear anything new to you is what's the source. And if it's a source that you can believe, and generally speaking, I think we can believe when the New York Times reports something, when the Washington Post reports something, when Breitbart News reports something, I think you have to go back a little further and see where they got it from and keep your eyes open on that. I hope that the Honolulu Star Advertiser has won the trust of most of the readers, and they can believe where we're getting our news. When we hear information, when I'm on the desk at the advertiser and a reporter comes to me and says, they've got this new information, the first thing I say is, where did it come from? And then you want to question the credibility of that source. And then you want to question the motives of that source, because it could be coming from the governor's office, it could be coming from a respected organization, but they could have an axe to grind, they could have a dog in the fight, and they're just pushing this information forward to project their point of view, in which case we may not choose to reprint that bit of information. And so what are the checks and balances? It comes to you, it gets balanced up, it gets balanced around, it gets leaned into, it gets... Well, we do, you generally, at our newspaper and most across the country, the reporters are the line of contact with the community. And when they bring us a story, they bring it to the editors. I'm the business editor. Then above me, there's a managing editor, and then there's the editor, Frank Bridgewater. And if there's a question about the credibility of the story, I'll take it up to my managing editor, and I'll take it to the editor, and we'll discuss it, and we'll talk about it with the reporter, and we will do our best to verify that it's true and that the person presenting the information isn't doing so just to benefit themselves, or to sway public opinion, although that does happen quite a bit, of course, so they have some interest in presenting it. But there's a process to go through, and generally, we think that's pretty solid. Then, if we make a mistake, the process at the advertiser is to correct it. We have a space on page B2 every day that runs corrections. We try to correct them as fast and completely as possible. You know, you've been in this your whole life. Right now, how does it feel like, literally as a human, and also as a reporter, to be told to kind of shut up and listen right now, or that it's kind of a, you're being maligned that you're not really reporting truth. You're reporting a constant spin or a constant half-truth. Yeah, well, it's gonna be. Or there's actually a White House now that's actually saying we get to say what the truth is and you fall in line behind that. Yeah, they're actually saying that. Ignore the media and just take what the White House tells you. That's a little frightened. It's extremely frightening. And it's up to the public to make that decision. Do they wanna just listen to the White House, or do they wanna listen to the news sources that have hopefully won their trust over the years? There's two things that spin off from me or that make me think, one is kind of how fear is sold and how that fear itself kind of works against an intelligent examination of viewpoints or of facts altogether. It just makes you kind of what's called reptilian right. And the other one that I would kind of like to hear you speak about is I actually wanna kind of quote the Dalai Lama, it has to do with responsibility of what you call the fourth estate, the free press being the fourth estate of a democracy, this fabulous experiment that we get to live in. So I wanna quote on that. He wrote that the power of the media is a real power which acts on us directly or indirectly and modifies your behavior, taste, and probably our thinking. Like any authority, it can be applied at random. It gives journalists a responsibility comparable to religious and political leaders. In their way, they are contributing to the establishment and maintenance of a human community. And the well-being of that community should be their first concern. In light of that and the principles of journalism, he talked about the responsibility of the press. I would love to hear you speak about that. Well, it is a very interesting time to be a journalist. It's a very interesting time to be a consumer of news. It's important, I mean, we have a president who's challenging the news, the fourth estate and trying to get people to ignore it. And it becomes, as your quote mentioned, it's the responsibility of the reporters, the editors, the news organizations to deliver daily the information that people can trust and verify and balance what's happening elsewhere and offer the context. When you talk about the responsibility of the media, the responsibility basically is to report accurately and fairly to put it in context. Fear has always been, you mentioned the media using fear or the media profiting from fear. And that could be the case. I mean, certainly more people are paying attention to the news now than they were before Trump was elected. And you could say they're profiting from fear, but the responsibility of journalists is to put it in the context and to make people understand what is really a danger and how it ranks. I mean, you take a local story like Genki Sushi and the Hepatitis A outbreak. Right, right, right. If you play that up big and it can scare people and people stop eating sushi all over the town, or you can balance it with a little context, the number of people that got sick, how often this happens, what Genki Sushi and other people are doing to prevent it from going any further, to assure people that it's not a danger that they are imminently threatened with Hepatitis A. Right, so we're back again a responsibility to the community, to uplift the community. And that's kind of like a calling you could almost say. I mean, do you see yourself in that sense trying to uplift the community? It's actually a conscious thing of not letting the society degrade into reptilian reactive brain, so to speak. Well, I'm not sure the responsibility of the media goes quite that far. I mean, we provide the information, we wanna provide credible information. And we wanna provide, and I do believe it's a positive force in society. I certainly believe that's the case. I take another local issue. There was the next era's attempt to buy Hawaiian electric industries. Yes, right. And the advertiser put a reporter, almost full time on that story while it was going on, who did a lot of reporting on what next era did in Florida. Yeah, what was about to remember that quite well. Yeah, and how limited the use of rooftop solar, for example, is in the next era coverage area in Florida. We exposed a lot, and I believe it helped add to the discussion that was going on at the time. It was a good community investment, you could say. Yeah, we did the same with rail, early on with rail, the early coverage out of the advertiser, discussed a lot of the issues that are still coming up now, whether it should be elevated or on grade, the cost. Sandwich Isles, another example of good reporting that we've done to expose a group that was taking money from the government and basically using it for personal reasons. Let's go into the kind of we versus them or the kind of split in the news altogether. We're listening to two different sources. By that, I mean, I'm wondering if it's almost as a citizenly responsible to spread where we're getting our news sources from. We should almost be obligated to watch a little CNN, obligated to watch Little Fox, obligated to read a little newspaper because it just seems like the different news stations are actually just keep preaching to their choir, to their church members, and we aren't literally not hearing each other's news. We're not hearing each other's facts or the approach. Again, how do you see the news media and helping that discussion of listening of actually not being threatened by someone other's point of view? Right. Well, yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that because that's the job of the media is to present all points of view. That's why if you look at our editorial page, we have the op-eds written by people who oppose, favor, every issue that we come across. Yeah, it's so wonderful, yeah. And the idea is we wanna be inclusive and we wanna listen to the other points of views. The stories that we write, we wanna interview all sides that have an interest in the story and present the best arguments that they have. We don't wanna cheat them and that is what we do. Oh, thank you so much. I mean, this is a good start on what we're gonna chat about today. I'm just totally gonna go away for a break. Thank you. Yeah. Aloha Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. And we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end of life care. Aloha. Hi, I'm Jay Fidel. That's Ted Ralston. You know, Ted is the host of Where the Road Leads. It shows every Friday from 4 to 5 p.m. It's about technology. It's about how people collaborating and solve problems with modern technology. It's Where the Road Leads. We all know that. We should all be listening. Join us there, 4 to 5 p.m. every Friday. Now, what about that you agree with? All of it. I knew we'd say that. Aloha. Say Aloha. Aloha. Thank you, Ted. You know, while we turn to that listening skill set that we seem to need as a country in order to move forward right now, the polarization that's happening in our country. Not just the sense that one person is getting information from this source, one person is getting the information from that source, but also almost the obligation to get it from another source and to actually drop down. We have two years. We have one heart. We can actually kind of relate to another and listen. On the other hand, I heard I did watch a 60-minute piece before the election. And it was a very, very skilled survey taker. And one of the things that he pointed out was just how reactionary anybody is. It's almost like two words don't get out of one's mouth before you're conjuring how smart you're going to put that other person down. Again, I just want you to kind of elaborate on how everything can be toned down a little bit and communication can be toned up. Understanding, listening to other can be toned up. How could the media help with that? Well, of course, in the media, it's reflected in the balance of stories, the balance of editorials and editorial pages, the balance of the story selection and things like that. And you've seen with Fox News and with MSNBC, the success of media that speak to one group that basically favor one point of view. And then you, as the viewer, can switch from one to the other and try to get different points of view. And then CNN tries to stick to a more balanced view. CBS, NBC, the more traditional news sources do that. I think what we're talking about really goes beyond the news media. In our personal lives, if all of our friends are the same political view, who look like us, who think like us, we have the same views like we do. And when we meet somebody who doesn't, we kind of let them drop off of our list of friends. To maintain that is a real sad. Yeah, a gift service to this great spirit. Of course, yeah, it is. If you're not including others and listening to others and finding the common ground you have with others, even though you may disagree on political issues or whatever it might be, there's really little hope that we'll pull it all together. You must be trained somewhat in that as a reporter. You're trained to not get blown away by, I've watched you in discussions where you filter information real quickly and come back with a prodding question that kind of opens things up. There must be some training that you actually have in that. Well, through interviewing a lot of different people, and some of them, let's say if I were to interview somebody who's building a nuclear power plant, and I'm not generally in favor of nuclear power plants, but I can see what their understanding of their purpose in life is. I can see that they've been brought into it. Maybe they're just making a lot of money off of it, and that's the main thing, but usually it's not. Usually they have a real belief in what they're doing. But you're saying you see their point of view. I see their point of view. You get in their shoes. Exactly. Before you don't get in their shoes. I remember interviewing the developer of the houses in Eva Beach once, and I really am not a fan of all the housing going on, on farmland in Eva Beach, or the general area. But I could definitely feel the intensity, the integrity of the person who is building them, and understand where he's coming from. People want to, his point of view was, it's the American dream. Are you going to deny that? To how? You could see their intensity. You could see their integrity. You could see their logic. You weren't threatened by it. Right. It was okay to listen to this. You may not still be a fan of a lot of houses on Eva Beach Plain, but there was some sense of communication going on that didn't just turn into a tussle, you could say. Right. It's a lot more valuable for us to find, you know, we're all human, and where we... Common ground. Common heart. Exactly, what we share rather than what we differ in. There's another thing I kind of wanted a chance to talk to you about, and that's the broad sweep that's going on in terms of newspapers just not being where we're going to get our news. For instance, you said something about the New York Times and, you know, the amount of integrity that the posts have. If they aren't selling newspapers, how do they have the money to actually do the checking, to do the facts, to do the reporting, to get people out there actually pounding on doors and saying, is this true? Do you see this as a factor in our news right now? Oh, absolutely, it's the number one threat. Greater than Trump, the Trump administration, to the news media right now is the death of newspapers, the slow death of newspapers around the country because of advertising shifting to online and then shifting to the major online advertisers, Google and Facebook, not to the local newspaper as an advertiser. It's a threat to the television media. So all these people that have over the past decades been providing news are no longer able to make a living at it, at least not in the numbers that they were before. And that's caused a big drop in the number of journalists. In this city, you can see we went down from two newspapers to one. So move me forward on this one. Now, this isn't going to go away. I mean, the internet's not going to go away. We've got some, it seems like, somewhat responsible media internet news agencies like I think Marketplace is doing a pretty good job, but they almost unabashedly are also saying they're coming from point of view. Mike is seemingly doing some good things. How do you see what's going to come down? How they're going to have the money to do the checks and balances, pay their people, pay their staff? I mean, it all runs somewhat on enough money to do this. So give me a view of this thing. What do you see coming down? Unless you want to have a bunch of independently wealthy people as journalists, you have to find a business model where you can pay journalists to do their job. And everybody's searching for that business model right now. One of them is to have subscribers, direct subscribers to the news that you put out. One of them is philanthropy to have a wealthy Jeff Bezos of Amazon bought the Washington Post. And he'll keep it going longer than probably somebody who needed to make money off of the Washington Post. Pierre Omidyar started Civil Beat. And he'll keep it going probably as long as he can, as long as he wants to. So there's a search for the correct model, for the new model that will result in credible journalism continuing. And there is a little bit of issue there, a file of the money, whether that be advertising now or a philanthropist who can afford to see that the news comes out. There's still an objectivity that you're going to have to challenge, in some sense. Right. And following the money is important. And you need to do that. It was also the case with newspapers. They have advertisers. And it's often the case that newspapers won't attack their largest advertisers. So you have to, the philanthropist that's paying for news is probably not going to be attacked in his own news service. So you have to judge. Again, it goes back to what I said at the very beginning. When you hear news, ask where it came from and ask the motives of the person who gave it to you. And I'm also going to underline, I think, a beautiful point is, see it from that person's integrity or point of view. It just seems like that's part of the lesson that we need to learn as a culture right now, is to actually get less reactive, less fear and reptilian brain and actually lean into, I'm curious about you, lean into curiosity. That seems to be one of the things you bring to the table as a reporter all the time. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, if you just discount as not credible everybody who doesn't follow your point of view. Right. They're stupid, they're this, they're this. Almost like a third grade name calling kind of thing. It's just not benefiting us now. Right, you're going to die of loneliness. Speaking of loneliness, though, let me spin another way or go another direction. I guess spins my favorite word of the day. You're 60 years old. In Chinese medicine, I have helped you celebrate your birthday. In Chinese medicine, at 60 years, you've been through 12 of the zodiac signs, the 12 animals. And you've been through five elemental influences on those 12. I'm kind of curious now, how are you looking back on life? What do you see as a man, as a very successful career of having good life? Share some personal thoughts about what it is right now to be a man. Well, I appreciate my friendship with you, Dean, and the fact that you are a thinking, sensitive, feeling man. And that's a rare animal in our culture. Most men are trying to mimic what they see on TV. They're going to think I said you up on this here. You didn't set me up on this. The strong silent type. Men don't wear pink. Men don't cry. Men don't feel. Men don't think. Men don't hurt. Men don't, except fill in the blank, right? And so if there's one thing I've learned in 60 years, it's to give that up and to accept that we are feeling thinking beings. And it's important to acknowledge it and discuss it and be open to it. And don't wait until the last couple weeks before you die to decide you want to have a real relationship with people. Can you just think of how much is lost by men not being willing to really be soft and open their hearts? And we're kind of designed to pretend we know everything. News flash. We don't. Or run the other direction if the conversation starts with feelings. Yeah, that's a real shame. Give me your favorite Hawaiian saying. Aloha. Yeah. How come, my friend? Can't be love, hello, goodbye, breath. It's got it all, all encompassing. I love it as a sign-off on emails. And you can use it in almost every occasion. Yeah. David, I want to thank you so much for being on the show and sharing the depth now just from a professional point of view, but allowing us to go also into some depth about what it is to be a human being and to awaken and try to benefit our societies. I'm going to sign off. Same-to-same sign-off that I have. Be kind, be courageous, do some good, and mostly also have fun. So thank you so much for tuning in and much Aloha, look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks. Aloha.