Ida Tarbell. Tucker Carlson. Elon Musk.
• The child of an independent oil worker in Pennsylvania, this person went on to make a name in investigative journalism.
• Another, after a mediocre media career, began a conservative commentary website in 2010.
• The last person’s rise to notoriety has come through investing, innovation, and recently social media influence. He has 170 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter.
While all have had access to journalistic platforms, only one is a journalist. She’s also the one you know least. The other two wield considerably more influence via today’s hijacking of the free press.
And this should make us pay close attention.
In 1872 Ida Tarbell, the young daughter of a small independent oil producer from western Pennsylvania, witnessed the threats to her father and his neighbors by the Rockefeller monopoly, Standard Oil. Thirty years later, she dug in and brought down this monopoly as an investigative journalist. The Constitutional Rights Foundation published an article in 2019 about Tarbell’s work, referring to it as “an exhaustive investigation of Standard Oil” and noting, “She read books and newspaper files on trusts and monopolies, studied reports of congressional and state legislature hearings, examined thousands of documents, and reviewed court testimony.”
Fast forward a century. Last week, Carlson interviewed a dictator who has committed war crimes during the past two years (rape and abducting children used to be considered atrocities, anyway). Tucker was seeking relevance, influence, and clicks in his softball pandering. Journalists after the truth who have tried to hold Vladmir Putin accountable are in jail in Russia or have died under mysterious circumstances.
As for Musk, no one can deny his innovative mind has impacted the world. But his quest for influence is now bordering on that of an entitled oligarch. He is using his media empire to call for the firings of CEOs, to promote content filled with antisemitism, and to state on his X (formerly Twitter) that undocumented people are being brought to the United States to vote—a proven falsehood but a baited conspiracy theory for the masses.
Unlike Tarbell, whose extensive research and work resulted in public awareness, Musk only has to type and click and sit back and watch the divisiveness grow on the issue of immigration by posting a lie, one which his 170 million readers will see within seconds.
Journalism is hard work. Hard work is how we find truth. Truth is the only thing that will save democracy, and right now it is threatened by people like Carlson and Musk.
If you grew up watching Walter Cronkite or reading Bob Woodward, you know what good reporting is factual and fair in its commentary and when needed, and unafraid in pointing out the things that need attention.
Beware the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Propagandists are not journalists.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
