If you look at what’s on the shelves at airport bookstores, you figure most folks pick travel reading material that gives their mind a getaway, too. I wish I could be that person. But I inevitably find myself picking out something that I figure will help me catch up with what I should have learned a long time ago. Time away is a perfect opportunity for self-betterment, right?
So when we stopped into a bookstore last month on the first day of an overseas trek, I walked out with yet another 500-page volume of history. But this is a good one: a look at the golden ages of history over the past 3,000 years – societies where innovations changed the direction of humanity, where there was cultural creativity, scientific advancement, and economic growth that stood out from what came before or after.
The Swedish-born author Johan Norberg wrote about it all in Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages. I read about Athens, in ancient Greece, and the 500 or so years when Rome dominated the West. There was Renaissance Italy, the Dutch Republic, the British Empire, and more. And, of course, you can’t read that and not think about where we are just now: an era that has been dominated by a nation whose influence is fading, its society increasingly in turmoil. That nation being ours, America.
So you wonder: Are we witnessing the end of a golden age here? Are we complicit, either by what we’ve done or failed to do? And can we still change course, and save this golden age?
Norberg, the author, is no political liberal; he’s basically libertarian. But as he explores the failure of great societies, he clearly is pointing toward where Donald Trump is taking America. For example: Norberg’s study of history has made him an advocate of immigration – which he describes as “the quickest way of more brains…” . He says societies advance by being “inclusive” – one of those “DEI” terms that Trump considers evil.
Norberg writes that “civilization’s worst enemy” is “fear” – maybe, I’d suggest, like that created by masked federal agents in our cities – and he claims, in his words, “civilizations prosper when they embrace trade and experiments” – both of which Trump is attacking, with his tariff policies and his assaults on scientific research.
All of this seems so fundamental, understandable, sensible, that I find myself wondering why so many millions of Americans still back Donald Trump – even as he seems to be killing our golden age. And as someone who has spent a half-century in journalism – which tries to help people grasp what is true beyond what they can see for themselves – I wonder if we can blame what’s happening now in part on a failure of the news media. Have we journalists not done a good enough job informing people, so that they would understand the crisis of this moment? What’s our share of the responsibility for today’s crisis?
I’ve come to the conclusion that a problem may be found in journalism’s decades-long devotion to objectivity in reporting – an approach that was intended to make sure that we weren’t telling people what to think, but just giving them information. I’ve come to think that this well-intentioned neutrality has, in fact, failed our audiences.
Our job as journalists, after all, isn’t to be merely a dispassionate dispenser of facts, but rather to give people access to the truth. Absent context and history and critical analysis, facts can be distorted by bad players. Facts can get in the way of truth. In a recent Columbia Journalism Review article, Berkeley journalism professor Lisa Armstrong notes that Donald Trump “rarely engages in good faith,” in her words – he deflects and distorts and turns to personal insults. So journalism in Donald Trump’s America cannot be just a mirror, reporting what the president and his minions say or do; it must be a moral force, standing for the truth-telling that supports democracy.
This is harder work than just covering what happened today or yesterday. It requires clearly labeling lies as just that, and explaining the context of what’s seen. It demands that reporters become so expert that they can give news consumers the benefit of their breadth; and their storytelling must be compelling for each audience – whether they're watching a TV newscast or reading a political newsletter or watching a YouTube video.
I’m not shouldering the blame on journalism’s behalf for the current American crisis in its entirety. But each of us has to look at our role in how we got here, and how we might make things better. A lot of us are engaged in that conversation; more are welcome.
As Johan Norberg wrote in that book I traveled with: ”Every country, culture and government is capable of decency and creativity, and of ignorance and jaw-dropping barbarism.” I’d say that ignorance and barbarism is where we are right now; and that our golden age will indeed be over unless we return to decency and creativity. This is no time for cold neutrality; it’s time to bring the searing heat of honesty.
Rex Smith, the host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
