Readers may recall @HollyRFisher as the mom whose Facebook image holding a Chick-fil-A iced tea in front of Hobby Lobby made liberals’ heads explode in July 2014. Her stand for religious freedom made her the target of rape threats from “tolerant” liberals, and conservatives responded with the #IStandWithHolly campaign.
She was soon appearing on national TV as a conservative heroine. Suddenly being thrown into the spotlight was apparently a disorienting experience that nearly destroyed her family. Her personal problems were entirely private, however, until somebody decided that gossip should be news. For reasons known only to himself, Chuck Johnson of GotNews.com applied his skills as an investigative reporter to expose Mrs. Fisher’s affair with a videographer named Joel Frewa.
Really, Chuck? Was this necessary? Did this serve any legitimate journalistic purpose? At a certain level, I can understand the logic here. Democrats are the party of lies and perversion and, as antagonists of such evil, conservative journalists are quite eager to report the typical Democrat behavior of Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Terry Bean, Joe Morrissey, et al. So when we become aware of Republicans behaving like Democrats, conservative journalists are thrown onto the horns of a dilemma, faced with two choices:
- Do we report the story?
or
- Do we ignore it, cross our fingers and hope that the misbehavior of these Republicans doesn’t turn into a damaging scandal?
The answer is almost always Number Two, and we sometimes feel like awful hypocrites for staying silent. More than once, I’ve become aware of shady behavior by people on “our side” and kept it to myself, only to see the scandalous truth subsequently blazoned in headlines at Politico or some other liberal outlet. Well, OK, this is how the partisan game is played: Liberals expose Republican scandals and conservatives expose Democrat scandals, and it is not my job to help liberals do their work.
Is that cynical? Sure, but a certain amount of cynicism is necessary to be able to maintain your sanity in this crazy business.
The world if full of misery and wickedness, and if you let it get inside your head — if you start taking the news too personally — you’ll end up either in a looney bin or lost in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.
One of the best investigative reporters I ever knew drank himself out of a job and, after he’d wrecked his own personal life and professional career, he decided to blame his misfortune on his former colleagues. I had never thought of him as anything other than a friend nor ever did him any wrong, and I knew nothing of his problems (divorce, alcoholism, etc.) until he popped up on the Internet falsely accusing me of anti-Semitism (!!!) as part of his misguided quest for vengeance. My friends knew better than to believe that fool’s spiteful lies, but real harm resulted from his heinous libels against me and others.
Chuck Johnson’s erratic judgment reminds me of that guy, and also reminds me of myself. Having a “loose cannon” reputation as a journalist can be a lot of fun, and I know that one of the reasons this blog has been so popular (about 3 million page-views annually) is that gonzo factor: “What kind of dangerous craziness is McCain going to get himself into today?” When I dive into a whirlpool of insanity — the Kentucky census worker story or the Kaitlyn Hunt story — people know that I’ll not only find the facts, but I’ll report the facts in a way that is entertaining.
Chuck Johnson is an arrogant young hotshot, and I recognize something of myself in him, both good and bad. His story about Holly Fisher is the bad side, a serious error in judgment that a lot of people will probably never forgive. Here’s the key point: In the war of politics, Holly Fisher is a civilian volunteer.
Until July 2014, she was just a mom with a Facebook page. Thrust onto the stage in the middle of a national controversy, she could not have anticipated how the semi-celebrity world of political activism can make people think that the rules don’t apply to them.
Oh, the stories I could tell if I ever decided to start telling stories. Let’s put it this way: Drunk people act like drunk people, without regard to partisan affiliation or political ideology. Furthermore, the Law of Large Numbers applies here. If you send X number of political activists out on the road for Y number of days — traveling to conferences and campaign events, staying in hotels, going to bars and restaurants together — it is inevitable that, as the numbers X and Y increase, so also will the number Z, representing the amount of non-marital sexual activity. Avoiding temptation in such environments is an acquired skill and as for resisting temptation when people fail to avoid it? Oh, the stories I could tell.
BREAKING: REPUBLICANS HAVE SEX
Developing . . .
Fortunately, you’ll never click that banner link at Drudge and find my byline on the story, because my sources trust me to know the difference between gossip and news. There are stories that I can never report, because my sources swore me to secrecy. Gonzo journalism can’t work any other way. Sane people are always suspicious of reporters, and if you want to get close enough to the story to learn the real truth, you have to demonstrate to the people involved that you can be trusted not to report everything you know. There is an implied contract between a reporter and his sources in that kind of situation, as simple as four words:
NEVER BURN YOUR SOURCES.
If somebody is giving you the inside lowdown on a story, not only must you give them an ironclad guarantee of their anonymity, but you cannot report the story in a way that hurts your source. There are professors of journalism who would certainly be horrified at the kind of ethical compromises that are sometimes necessary to the day-to-day business of finding the truth, but to hell with professors of journalism. My sources quite often are also my personal friends, and my personal friends know that it’s against my religion to pay a bar tab.
Ethics, schmethics: As long as what I am reporting is factual, how I get the facts is my own business. It’s certainly nobody else’s business who’s paying for my beer, but if I have any say-so in the matter, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be gone before the bar tab arrives.
The journalistic ethics of free beer is, however, only tangentially related to the grievous wrong Chuck Johnson has done here.
As Donald Douglas says at American Power, “we’re all fallen. We’re human.” One thing that keeps conservatives from getting involved in politics is because they know that the liberal media will use anything — e.g., Michelle Duggar’s lesbian sister — to try to undermine the reputations of patriots who stand up for American values. Democrats have no compunction about using character assassination or terroristic intimidation tactics to silence their opponents. Should conservative activists also have to fear such tactics from Chuck Johnson?
Why on earth would a political “civilian” like Holly Fisher be considered a fair target of this kind of treatment? Ethics has nothing to do with this. Johnson’s story cannot be justified as journalism because it cannot be justified as morality. Who was Chuck Johnson’s source for this story? Who tipped him off? You can search Twitter and make a few guesses, but Chuck Johnson is obligated to protect his sources, which means that if anyone manages to figure out where Chuck Johnson got this story, that is also Chuck Johnson’s fault.
Once upon a time, I was on the phone with someone who asked my advice on whether they should publish a sex-scandal story.
No, you can’t report that, I told them, and explained why: It’s a one-source story. Even though you know it’s true — your source provided you with documentation that confirms their story — you can’t report it, because the person whose reputation you would destroy will immediately be able to figure out where you got it. Your “anonymous” source will lose their anonymity as soon as you publish this story. Unless you can get another source who is able to confirm the facts (and it would be helpful if at least one of your sources was willing to have their name in the story), you’ll just have to let this go. Such was my valuable advice.
Anonymous sources are a two-edged weapon, and reporters have to think very hard about these things. The more serious the accusation involved, the more important it is to be able to obtain independent verification of what the source tells you. And there are inevitably going to be occasions when you invest a lot of time developing a story — a story you know is absolutely factual — that you can’t publish because you just can’t get it sourced properly.
Now, some of my friends will criticize me for even noticing Chuck Johnson’s story about Holly Fisher, much less linking his story, but I’m going to link it here just once so that if readers want to go see for themselves, they can learn why you don’t publish a story like that.
Once upon a time, I had a story that was nailed down cold, but I never contacted the subject of that story until after I decided not to publish it. If I had decided the other way, the damage to this person and their family would have been irreparable, but I had the facts nailed down cold and I was this close to clicking the “publish” button when I stopped. I realized that as evil as this person was (and trust me, the left-wing evil was strong in this one), innocent people would also be harmed if I clicked “publish.” So I decided against it, and sent them an email explaining my decision.
What was the result of my kindness? This person told their friends that I had “threatened” them, when in reality I’d done them a favor and had offered them some friendly advice.
See, if I could find this particular set of scandalous facts — confirming the scandal so clearly that I didn’t even need to ask this person for an explanation — certainly any other good reporter could confirm it, as well. You keep doing what you’re doing, I told them, and somebody else is sure to discover these scandalous facts and decide to report the story. I didn’t click “publish,” because I’m a Christian. On the other hand, I explained, some people in this business are not Christians, and I sure would hate to get scooped on a story this juicy.
Not a threat, just an explanation. If the person on the receiving end of that email told their friends they had been “threatened,” so they could pretend to be a victim of right-wing malevolence, so what? Let them save face by claiming victimhood, because I knew the truth, and there wasn’t a damned thing they could do to stop me from clicking the “publish” button if I ever changed my mind. Plus, I know a lot of reporters who would have run with that story in a heartbeat if I had sent them my copious files of documentation. I’ve still got those files, and the draft version of that story I didn’t publish? Yeah, one click is all it would take.
The decision not to publish a story is one that every journalist must learn to make. It’s frustrating to spend hours or days chasing after a story and then have to decide that you’ve just wasted your time in pursuit of a story that either (a) can’t be properly confirmed, or (b) just isn’t worth reporting. Chuck Johnson made a bad decision on his Holly Fisher story. This is certainly not the first bad decision he’s made lately, but it’s likely to hurt him worse than any previous bad decision he’s made.
The world has gone crazy: Islamic terrorism in Belgium, civil war in Yemen, Miss Israel taking selfies with Miss Lebanon, and yet Chuck Johnson has nothing better to do with his time than to report on the private lives of Tea Party moms? Are you kidding me?
Holly Fisher writes about her experience:
My life crumbled. My marriage crumbled. I lost my faith in God. . . .
I have suffered from depression and anxiety most of my life, only recently telling my family about it, but after being at my lowest, my darkest, and literally about to end it all, my daughter started laughing. My sweet, angelic baby girl toddled into the room while I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and she was squealing with delight.
Right then and there I knew I needed to get off my butt and get on my knees. My daughter, along with God, saved my life. I regained my ability to pray after a few long nights of my husband squeezing me tight and helping me realize that we are a team, we are best friends, we are partners, and no matter how lost we’ve been in the past, we can survive anything.
God bless you, ma’am. And thank you for your graciousness as we are all reminded of some very valuable lessons about life.
