“Bullying the Referees -The Attack on Journalists” (May 26, 2019 Radio Show)
Mike Stark is a “gonzo” reporter, blogger, political activist, and graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. Mike has been assaulted, arrested, and thrown in jail on three different occasions. His KSSs, come from direct experience as a freelance reporter attempting to hold power accountable to we-the-people (starkreports.com).
Mike’s Keep/Stop/Starts:
- Keep up the resistance. It is a long slog. Don’t let the resistance and indivisible fizzle. Keep going to political events. Keep holding folks accountable in your community. Keep being an engaged Citizen
- Stop being afraid. Fear doesn’t contribute at all to making anything any better. Even if you are afraid, act with courage. Just act that way. Nobody will be able to tell the difference. Don’t let what you see in the news every day stop you from being a citizen.
- Start being your own journalist! Anybody can be a journalist. All it takes is your cell phone and your voice. Start asking powerful people questions and record what their answers are. Hold them accountable and don’t let them lie to you. Don’t let them insult you by lying to you. If they lie to you, call them out in real time. Catch it on video and use that video. Hold them accountable!
Tony Russomanno is a two-time Peabody Award winner. His primary job for forty years was as a daily journalist, specializing in science, technology and environmental reporting at KGO-TV and the affiliated ABC network stations, and later at KPIX-TV and the affiliated CBS network stations.
Tony’s Keep/Stop/Starts:
- Keep being a free thinker. That means being skeptical in a positive way. It means being open minded and smart. Most people grow up learning how to do that in real life, but some people seem to have the mistaken belief that because social media uses a new technology, our existing social standards don’t apply. Technology is a tool, agnostic and apolitical.
- Stop sharing dramatic information online without making at least some attempt to see if it’s true. Stop before hitting share or retweet. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If your neighbor on one side of your house told you something really sketchy about your neighbor on the other side, you would probably get a thrill out of it, but would you immediately call every person you know and every person they know and repeat that exact same rumor? At the very least, think what that would do to your own reputation. And above all, stop sharing information you already suspect is a lie just because you think it’s fun.
- Start paying attention to your sources of news and figure out which ones to trust. That could mean The New York Times. It could also mean some kid down the street who has a blog with 20 followers, if the kid strives for accuracy and is trying to build a good reputation. Support good journalism. That may not count as “start doing” so much as “resume doing.”
