Rep. JT Wilcox leads the House Republicans in Olympia.  He posted this statement to social media on Sunday regarding his experience with the press.  This followed comments made by Rep. Matt Shea calling the press “dirty, godless, hateful people.”

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I’ve had a lot of press contact in both my private and public career. I thought I’d share my experience with my friends. Thanks goodness it’s only local and Capital press experience, nothing national…

First, I share the same frustration with the national press, especially the video press that almost everyone else has. I quit watching most TV news years ago and I’m deeply concerned that there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of nearly all national coverage.

Second, I’ve had an almost uniformly good experience with the press in Washington. Sure, sometimes I don’t like their choice of what to cover, or their choice of headlines, but I can’t remember ever being badly misquoted. Sometimes I haven’t liked the quotes they gave me, or I think they sound awkward, but when I think hard about it, I’ve always decided that’s probably pretty close to what I’ve said, awkward or not.

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I’ve talked to reporters and columnists a lot on background, when they just want to understand my perspective. I’ve also learned a great deal from them. Some are from my generation and we have some surprising things in common. Others are from a younger generation. Melissa Santos and I, for example have had some conversations that really helped me understand the perspective of a younger, urban generation that I just didn’t get on a particular issue. Walker Orenstein, who just left Washington, is a deeply sincere young man who once asked me about an aspect of his coverage that perhaps was troubling to him. I will never forget that.

I really like doing editorial boards. Not many papers have them anymore, but it is a rare chance to have a discussion with deeply informed people who normally are not in gotcha mode. Sure, you have to be on guard, but I enjoy the cat-and-mouse aspect and I have learned a lot from them at times.
I don’t really like the side-by-side endorsement interviews. I think it is unfair to most challengers. The incumbent is a professional politician and has has been getting the equivalent of a Masters Degree on current affairs every term. He or she is also normally much more comfortable with the press. Only a very unusual challenger can match that and there are plenty of good people who would make great Representatives who struggle with a side-by-side. That said, I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve done when I’ve been opposed and I’ve normally tried to start a relationship with my challengers during the process. Some have become friends.

I’m aware that almost all the the local press corps is politically to the left of me. That’s pretty natural because the Puget Sound urban areas are farther left too and every daily in the Puget Sound area depends on urban residents for survival, and they are all acutely aware of their survival challenge now. That actually gives them a lot in common with the rest of the private economy.

Because of my political position, I’ve had an unusual chance to evaluate the accuracy of lots of coverage. The Capital press corps is covering the issues and events that I’m an inside player on, after all. I’ve found the news coverage to be remarkably accurate on the facts. Of course, they are often wrong on speculation. When I speculate, I’m often wrong, too. I also know that sometimes minor trivia gets covered when there is plenty of real news that goes uncovered.

There is an immense amount of misinformation that gets passed off as news. I think the root of the problem is there is no way to label the various kinds accurately. I work with the capital press corps on an almost daily basis during the session and I sometimes have to ask if we are talking about news or opinion. I also see blogs that many people think are news seamlessly weave fact and opinion and fantasy. I’m often involved in the issues they are covering and it’s amazing to me how wrong the conclusions are. Sometimes it’s just honest people expressing a mistake, other times, and this is the most damaging part of what journalism has become to the average reader, it’s shameless partisans who want to weaponize everything. The average reader has no way to distinguish one from the other.

We are all in the middle of History moving fast and part of our challenge is to figure out how to overcome the collapse of trust. I don’t know that I have an answer yet, but what I do try to do is limit my opinions to what I have some background knowledge of and avoid the practice of politicizing every convenient current event. I also believe that I should try hard to be an example of worthwhile behavior and that praising my own side and calling the other guys out all the time is bad for all of us and deeply corrosive to those that practice it. Am I consistent with this? No, I’m sure that there are all kinds of exceptions in my own posts, but I try to keep this as my general guideline.

I think my kids’ generation will figure this crisis of trust out, but it will be rocky until then. Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1540’s, just a few years after Luther posted his 95 theses the old-fashioned way and the Reformation accelerated and centuries of turmoil followed. It’s no surprise that the invention of the internet has helped create the turmoil we are living through now.

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