A couple of messages land in my email every morning that are intended to teach me a new word. Now, I know this sort of content is really just a vehicle for sending me advertising – like a baked potato is mainly a butter-delivery platform, right? But I like the potato, too, and I also sometimes get a new word from that “Word of the Day” advertising vehicle. So it was in that vein the other day that I encountered “ultracrepidarian.” Which I do not wish to seem to be.
An “ultracrepidarian,” I learned that day, is a person who expresses opinions on matters outside the scope of their knowledge or expertise. I don’t know how I have gotten by this long without that word. I must say that we Americans are awash in ultracrepidarianism. We are beset by balderdash, bunk and bull; we’re roiled by rot, rubbish and ridiculousness, tragically transfixed by trash, tripe and twaddle.
It's not just the politicians – though they tend to be the ultimate ultracrepidarians. In fact, I confess to engaging myself on occasion in ultracrepidarian undertakings. I speak from a career in journalism, and I concede that it has long been a journalistic skill to gather information quickly – we call it reporting – and to then synthesize it and present it to an audience with some degree of authority before moving on to the next topic.
It was long, in fact, a journalistic job requirement: In the 1950s, the managing editor of The New York Times, a fellow from Mississippi named Turner Catledge, said, “You could take a good general assignment reporter and place him on the face of the moon, and he would file a decent story for the 5 o’clock deadline.” That requires some reporting skills, some self-confidence and, yes, a bit of ultracrepidarianism.
But. The essence of ethical journalism is in reporting what is known – and no more than that. There is an essential humility in good reporting, revealed in the struggle to find what’s true, rather than what’s simply sensational or popular with those in power. It is what we might call anti-ultracrepidariansim, and it’s what sets apart real journalism from what you encounter from digital influencers, or on social media, or what Fox News and its lesser imitators present.
There is a devotion to ferreting out truth and uncovering important facts, to digging deep, in what today we have to call reality-based journalism – a term we use to distinguish it from the media sycophants in Trump’s America. So, I speak today in support of those people who day in and day out are doing their best to set the record straight amid the flood of falsehood that flows from the passageways of power in Washington and elsewhere.
It is because of reporting by the mainstream media that we know about plans by appointees of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reshape childhood vaccine policies without regard for best scientific data.
It’s reporting by the establishment press that uncovered the potential war crimes in America’s attacks on unarmed civilians in South American waters.
It is reality-based journalists who give us stories about Americans’ struggles with high prices, and their pessimism about the state of the economy.
Closer to home, it is reality-based journalism that has tracked the staffing and brutality crisis in New York prisons, and the apparent misuse of rank in the State Police, leading to top-level resignations recently.
These stories are not unusual – in fact, they’re simply the work of the day for a free press in this country. But independent reporting is now threatened by a president who lobs vicious personal attacks on reporters – especially women, by the way – and who uses the power of government regulation to target news organizations that displease him. He is empowering influencers and propagandists who pose as journalists, and he daily launches a crock of claptrap on social media that’s usually divorced from reality – like the evening last week when, between 7 p.m. and midnight, he let loose with 160 posts (that’s one every two minutes) featuring far-right conspiracy theories, vows to deport or jail members of Congress, and outrageous claims about his predecessors and their wives and such.
Donald Trump is, indeed, our ultracrepidarian-in-chief. His blather knows no bounds. And that is one reason why I am so grateful for a free press, which can contrast the truth from its mangling at the pinnacles of power, and that can serve as a check on those who claim more knowledge than they really have – people, that is, who lack the integrity to admit what they don’t know.
So, anti-ultracrepidarians, unite! Join me in supporting honest journalism. It has never been needed more.
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.
