Rex Tillerson’s flight from democracy

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson needs to understand that his new job, unlike his old one running ExxonMobil, is a public office, and he owes something other than hard work to the people who pay him.

It’s called transparency, a basic value that democracy requires and commerce prefers to manipulate. Thus, as President Trump’s billionaire appointees take over the major departments of government, Americans can expect to know less and less about how things are going for the government they elected.

Independent journalism, to the occasional discomfort of every holder of public office, is part of the governing dynamic in a free society. Without professional news organizations gathering facts, asking questions, looking into unlit corners, exploring dark corridors and passing it all along to citizens, democracy slowly dies.

So if, as announced, Tillerson leaves Tuesday on a major diplomatic mission to Asia – China, Korea, Japan – without an accompanying corps of reporters and photographers on his government airplane, a little piece of your freedom will be chipped away.

The unprecedented banning of the media from the secretary’s flight is not surprising in the first weeks of an administration that unilaterally declared war on legacy journalism – that is, journalism produced and carefully mediated by large, long-standing newspaper and broadcast organizations such as the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, etc.

But the break from normal practice should be worrying to every American. Without those legacy organizations, the foreign ministries of the visited countries will control what words American citizens – and the world – read and what pictures they see of Tillerson’s efforts supposedly on their behalf.

It’s popular in certain quarters to mock the “lamestream media” and declare that there are many new places to get “my news” these days. But that naïve view misses a basic reality: virtually none of the thousands of recently developed digital “news” websites and millions of blogs do their own, at-the-source reporting. Instead, they aggregate (i.e. steal) the news gathering and investigative efforts of legacy journalism organizations, apply their own factual standards and ideological spin – and make money off their consumers’ gullibility while spending nothing on the raw information.

Meanwhile, legacy news organizations invest multi-millions doing what a conscientious citizen would do given the time and money.

The expenditures include very large amounts trailing presidents and other high government officials all over the globe. Contrary to what you can read on right-wing websites this week, journalists aboard Air Force One on presidential trips pay first class airfare for tiny seats jammed into the rear of that Boeing 747. Overseas trips with cabinet members in lesser airplanes, including food and lodging, can cost news organizations $50,000 to $100,000 per reporter or photographer.

So why don’t journalists plan their own trips?

▪  Scheduled airlines don’t necessarily go where and when the official’s dedicated plane goes.

▪  For overseas trips, visas can be a problem if you’re not in the official “traveling party,” as can on-the-ground transportation, particularly in repressive places such as China.

▪  Traveling alone can be iffy, as you would not be guaranteed access to whatever was going on in official buildings and hotels

In short, if your government officials don’t want you to know what they are doing, they have ways of guaranteeing that happens, starting now.

Provided you allow them to do so.

This story was originally published March 14, 2017 at 5:01 AM with the headline "Rex Tillerson’s flight from democracy."