Feedback to Beryl Love

by Dan Shatzer

9/28/2023

Regarding Beryl Love’s opinion piece on Constitution Day (“Let’s Get out of our Echo Chambers”, Sept. 17), I admit to suggesting that he write the column.  I thought his presentation to our club and the discussion that followed were indeed thought provoking.

As he said that night and I’ll quote from the article, “what keeps [Editor Love] up at night is the disconcerting loss of media literacy in our society and the blurring line between opinion-driven content and fact-based journalism.”  He went on to decry social media’s largely opinion driven bias.  He admitted that not every article in the Enquirer is perfect, but on balance they get it right.  They offer a widespread variety of content which reflects the variety of opinions, but at the same time the paper offers the facts surrounding an argument.  Mr. Love then went on to describe what he saw as the most serious threats to our democracy.  Again, quoting from the article, “when democracies fall, it usually means someone has taken control of the armed forces, followed by the press.”  When he spoke to our club, he used almost the exact same words.

I had pressed Editor Love on a specific article which I felt crossed the line into irresponsible journalism.  Specifically, I felt the May 10th article describing a meeting between Donald Trump and Margerie Dannenfelser was a case in point.  It was all opinion from the viewpoint of Ms. Dannenfelser and didn’t offer any resolution or even attempt to discuss the differences Mr. Trump and Ms. Dannenfelser had on the issue of abortion.  They were mentioned but not even addressed as areas of potential conflict.  The article just concluded by saying Ms. Dannenfelser described the meeting as “terrific”.

I don’t view that lack of depth in the article as an issue of just irresponsible journalism but as a threat to our democracy.  That one article had probably already been shared across many social media platforms before I even read it.  In fact, Editor Love admitted that’s how the Enquirer reaches a lot of people.  If you then add to that the timing of the article's appearance in the Enquirer, the day after a jury had found Mr. Trump liable for sexual assault, you can imagine the glee which was shared among members of anti-abortion groups throughout Ohio as it was distributed across social media.  In my opinion, the Enquirer needs to examine the balance of opinion and the facts offered in each article.

Another member of our club who had attended the meeting Editor Love described in his opinion piece sent me an article from the Atlantic several days after our meeting.  The Atlantic article was written some twenty plus years ago and described a talk show during which former television news anchors Peter Jennings (World News Tonight, ABC) and Mike Wallace (Sixty Minutes, CBS) described what they would do in a hypothetical situation.  Basically, they were each asked if they had obtained the permission of an enemy of our country to follow their troops on a mission, what would they do if those troops were about to get the drop on an American group of soldiers.  Would they put aside their journalistic ethics and warn the Americans, or would they maintain what was considered their ethical code?  Be quiet and not warn the Americans.  Simply cover the event.  To make a long story short, they both ended up saying they would have to maintain their code of ethics.  Now granted, this hypothetical situation is much more disturbing than what I suggested was irresponsible journalism in the May Enquirer article, but it bears consideration.  When is it your job as a reporter to support our democracy?  And to be fair, the ethical code followed by the Enquirer and its national affiliates does point out that such consideration is important.  I believe it was not considered in the May 10th article described earlier, and if you multiply that by additional examples, the irresponsibility can mount.

Finally, I’ll describe what “keeps me up at night.”  Margaret Thatcher is attributed with saying, “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families”.  I believe Ms. Thatcher is probably correct.  Democracy is a great social experiment.  We need not protect the rights of ourselves as individuals.  We need to protect the rights shared by all of us.  We need to protect democracy.