Cleaning up
our ‘Dirty Laundry’

Ask your phone, smart speaker, or computer to play it, and it’ll sound dated — like a funeral organist trying to play to a disco beat. But a lot of people probably still share the views singer-songwriter Don Henley expressed when he wrote these lyrics in 1982:

I make my livin’ off the evenin’ news.

Just give me somethin’, somethin’ I can use.

People love it when you lose.

They love dirty laundry.

Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here.

I just have to look good; I don’t have to be clear.

Come and whisper in my ear.

Give us dirty laundry.

We got the bubble-headed bleached blonde, comes on at 5.

She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye.

It’s interesting when people die.

Give us dirty laundry.

Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet?

You know the boys in the newsroom got a running bet.

Get the widow on the set!

We need dirty laundry.

You don’t really need to find out what’s goin’ on.

You don’t really wanna know just how far it’s gone.

Just leave well enough alone.

Eat your dirty laundry.

Kick ’em when they’re up,

Kick ’em when they’re down,

Kick ’em when they’re stiff,

Kick ’em all around.

To be sure, our air waves have more than their share of Barbie and Ken clones, so blown-dry that not just their hair but also their brains are poofy. Still, most journalists share Henley’s disdain for an “if it bleeds it leads” approach to news.

Stories of that nature are popular. They’ll top the list of most-read items on our website. Facebook’s secret algorithm for how it decides what small percentage of postings to share with others gives exceptionally high ratings to such things — presumably because people want to read them.

Journalists, on the other hand, are in the business for a different reason. They cope with corporatization that has gutted respected newsrooms, advertisers who would rather pay social media influencers than help communities by supporting local news, and a postal service that annually targets news publications with 15% rate hikes for mailing.

They work for low pay — or, in my case, no pay — for obscene hours, constantly being yelled at by anyone who doesn’t want his or her misdeeds to be noted. Journalists do this not so they can feel important but so they can try to help their communities have the information they need to make democracy function.

The problem is, too many things journalists point out — and readers wholeheartedly seem to agree with — end up remaining unchanged.

We can report how city administrator and manager searches were conducted in public, not behind closed doors, in Atchison, Gardner, Junction City, Lawrence, Kansas City, Manhattan, Topeka, St. Joseph, and Wyandotte County, among many other places. But in one of our cities, the search goes on in secret.

We can note how budgets were set without detailed examination then were used as justification for across-the-board raises absent any sense of whether employees deserve them. Yet there’s no public cry that public employees’ performance should be better evaluated.

We can explain how the state screwed up by hiring a convicted financial felon to oversee grant programs and how another of our cities then made him interim city clerk, all without checking his background. Yet the same city then goes out and hires a police officer without a background check who turns out to be someone no one would ever want to work in law enforcement.

We can report how cops like this with bad backgrounds move from town to town because regulators hide behind privacy laws and won’t share information about the cops’ misadventures. Yet we learn that the latest developments here won’t be disclosed anywhere except in the columns of this newspaper.

We can write about how a taxing district conducts its elections in a manner more appropriate to a 4-H club than a governmental body, but two elections later, the voting will occur exactly the same way May 26.

We can try to get sponsors to help pay for such information to be provided to the public, but the only information they want to get out is about whether their employees’ kids or kids they hire play sports.

News is a public service more than a for-profit business. Its economics are fragile and constantly under challenge. Yet it won’t be technology or even corporatization that ultimately condemns the vital role news providers play in making sure our democracy functions. It will be unwillingness of citizens to have the courage to step up and demand actions they know our democracy needs.

As revered broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow said in quoting Shakespeare after exposing Senator Joe McCarthy, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.”

— ERIC MEYER