13 June 2024 — Yesterday I wrote about the loss of Françoise Hardy, whose music had quite an impact on my life. And now I’ve lost another of my icons this week, Howard Fineman.
The past week has been a concatenation of events – the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the rescue of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, multiple acts of Russian sabotage across Europe, and a Far Right swing in European parliamentary elections. This afternoon, and over the next week, I am returning to all of those topics, a multi-part blog series in progress.
But first a few words about Howard since he was integral to my writing on all of those topics.
Howard was special. He was only 2 years older than me, but a legend in journalism who affected me as well as most in our profession. What a contrast from the clowns and fools in media today, and so many other news hype-masters. A calm, observant and dignified journalist, he seemed to elevate any news show he was on.
When I lived in D.C. I was a neighbor. Ok, I lived 12 blocks away but we frequented many of the same restos and shops. I once boldly approached him, seeking some advice on writing. He was totally open to my intrusion. He cautioned:
“Do your own homework. Read everything but don’t trust it – check it. Source it. Then think about it some more. And get out there and talk to people, meet the people in-the-know. And even those who say they are but really aren’t, just so you get a feel of what is being said and propagated”.
While I was doing my blog series and my film series on genocide, I read his NYTimes Op-Ed on the massacre at the Tree of Life Synogogue (October 2018) in Pennsylvania, his brilliant explanation of how it (and other events) were a sign that hatred of “The Other” was poisoning our public life. He cited what were then other recent tragedies (Charleston, Charlottesville) and laid the blame on right-wing extremism generally and Trump specifically. While journalists now routinely call out Trump, following Fineman’s lead, he said the danger was we would become inured to Trump’s trumpiness and thus forgot what a danger he is to America, and the world.
That opinion piece took me down the rabbit hole of dehumanization.
And Howard warned about social media’s effect on the profession which allowed everybody to call themselves a “journalist”. The more “real” people hold themselves out to be reporters, the less “real” journalism seems at all. The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, myth-making, and self-interest. The biggest problem is journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. As a real journalist you need to battle that circle.
And one of his last Tweets:
“I am watching cable as it keeps toggling between Gaza and Trump’s hush money trial as though they’re two different stories. They’re not. They’re both the result of the ruthless, decades-long manipulations of Vladimir Putin: the stinking fruit of a poisonous tree of terrorists, hookers and bribery”.
There is a very good obituary in The New York Times which you can access by clicking here. It was free to read when I wrote this. If you are blocked by the NYT pay wall you can read it on my Slideshare by clicking here.