Those Nasty Questions

 Sometimes, when its seems the world is going to hell, it’s hard to figure out what to look at first. With a pandemic killing well over 100,000 people, unemployment rates hitting levels haven’t seen in generations, race relations collapsing….well, just take your pick.

I will bet those nasty questions President Trump complains about all the time won’t be on your short list. Or on anyone else’s.

But here’s the funny thing. Sometimes, something that seems relatively trivial is really not trivial at all. It touches on a lot of problems, and illuminates others too often left in the dark.

So, I am devoting this blog to nasty questions. I’ll start by asking you one of them. And, I’ll finish the same way. See if you have a different answer when you finish reading this.

How come so few reporters and columnists are asking nasty questions, and why aren’t we demanding that more of them do it?

Now, what do I mean by nasty questions? Is my idea of them the same as yours?

Well, here’s a definition, courtesy of Merriam-Webster.

Nasty can be disgustingly filthy, like a nasty living condition. Also physically repugnant, mean, indecent or obscene. Even extremely hazardous or really unpleasant, like nasty weather, or hard to understand, like a nasty problem. My personal favorite is lacking in courtesy or sportsmanship, like a nasty trick.

You get the point. Nasty can mean anything you don’t like, for any reason. President Trump feels that any question that embarrasses him or that he can’t answer is a nasty one. A lot of his supporters seem to feel the same way.

So why do reporters ask them? Well, you can’t build a career as a reporter by being mean to people for no reason. You won’t last long that way working for a small media outlet, and not long working for a large one either.

On the other hand, unless you get to those nasty questions - and every story worth writing will lead to a couple of them - you just aren’t doing your  job. That’s because those questions usually involve facts. Prove what you are saying, or how does what you say square with other facts.

The only exception to this rule are the news outlets that play to people with closed minds, who enjoy watching cheap insults. Say whatever you want about the enemy. You know, people from that other party. Some commentators on the radio or TV can go a long way doing that, but there are only so many of those jobs available, and unless the audience can grow, it can get really ugly when advertisers start cutting back.

Now early in my career, on a small circulation daily in a small state, I learned quickly that most people I interviewed looked at questions two ways. The ones with answers that made them look good were good questions, while the ones that made them uncomfortable or look bad were nasty ones.

Ask a politician how they were able to cut taxes, and that is a good question. The “I’m glad you asked that” kind. But ask how that tax cut would impact road maintenance or new parks, and you’re just being speculative, or missing the point, or just being nasty.

As it turns out, the easy questions are the ones many people in the audience like. Any story that says taxes are going down is generally well-received. The qualifications down at the bottom of the story are easy to ignore.

But, when things go really bad, guess who gets the blame. The elected officials, of course, but also the media who didn’t warn their readers or viewers.

“How come my taxes are going up? Why didn’t you tell us about it?,” the readers will ask. Why didn’t you warn us about this health crisis any sooner? And, they are right.

Most reporters know from experience that nothing is as simple as it seems at first glance. Which means most stories need a lot of context or background. They also know when an editor says 500 words, that is all you are getting. When the B segment of the news broadcast has 90 seconds for your story, that is all you get before going to commercial.

So, reporters learn to skip the subtleties. If things are worth mentioning, you can get to them in the next story. Besides, the readers who complain that you didn’t tell them something important are the same ones who never read the whole story anyway. Sad, but often true.

Still, if you have to decide just what to put in those 500 words or those 90 seconds, you need to ask a lot of questions just to know what to leave out and how much weight to give to what you leave in. Inevitably, those are the things that get called “nasty.”

You say your proposed tax cut will mean an average reduction of $500 per family for our town, but how is that calculated? Do 100 families get $100 each and one family gets $40,000? Does it favor people who live in bigger houses and pay more in taxes? Just how is that tax cut written?

How about a big financial aid program the federal government creates, designed to help small businesses keep their workers. But a lot of companies already making millions in profits get the money before the small stores on Main Street.

What happened to the nasty questions about how that money was getting distributed? Some were asked, but too few and too late.

Now, we are talking about a vaccine for Coronavirus, and some reporters are starting to ask things like how much will it cost, who gets it first, how much will be available for distribution and how long will it take for everyone to get it?

If someone in government says there will be 30 or 40 or 50 million doses available early next year, maybe you should remember there are nearly 330 million people living in the U.S. and 7.8 billion people across the globe.

So, I’ll finish where I started. How come so few reporters and columnists are asking nasty questions, and why aren’t we demanding that more of them do it?