Multi-tasking, media don’t mix

SAN DIEGO — If my kids want to be successful and stay out of trouble, I’m ready with my best advice: Do your job. And don’t try to do someone else’s.

A lot of people can’t seem to stay in their own lane. Border vigilantes try to play cop, while cops try to play immigration agent. Teachers lecture parents on how to raise children, while many parents home-school their kids because they think they can be teachers.

And, of course, just about every football fan thinks he could do a better job of coaching his favorite team than the guy who has that gig.

But when you’re a journalist — or even someone who plays one on TV — it is dangerous to meddle in another sandbox.

It is not breaking news that these are troubled times for the media. The public doesn’t trust us, and our credibility is in shambles. But many of our wounds are self-inflicted.

For instance, we sometimes blur the lines as to who is doing which job. We get paid to cover the powerful and hold them accountable. To do that, we have to visit their world. But it is their world, and we have to remember that. We’re expected to be curious and stick our noses in other people’s business, but we can’t be careless and stick our fingers into everything.

According to a recent article in The Daily Beast, CNN’s Van Jones may have forgotten that rule. Maybe he was never taught it in the first place. A graduate of Yale Law School, and former special adviser on green jobs with President Barack Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality, Jones isn’t really a journalist.

Shh. Don’t tell CNN that. The network has spent the last few years elevating Jones into a role of greater prominence as a kind of pseudo-journalist who had his own talk show and news specials. That added to the confusion.

The camera likes Jones. But charisma is no substitute for credentials. And, to the best of my knowledge, Jones was never trained as a journalist. There are ethical boundaries in this line of work, and it’s possible no one at CNN ever took the time to explain them to Jones.

Allow me: When you’re a journalist — or in this case, drawing a paycheck as a contributor to a cable network that is supposed to practice journalism — your job is to educate, enlighten and sometimes eviscerate those who make public policy. It is not your job to climb into the arena and help make public policy. That’s the last thing you should do. It courts disaster.

Let’s pretend we’re making a cake. Reporters find out the ingredients. Analysts are the taste testers. Commentators might suggest their own recipe. Anchors can announce when the cake is ready. But, at no point is anyone supposed to go into the kitchen and start baking.

According to the Daily Beast article, the trouble began when Jones became chummy with White House adviser and First Son-inLaw Jared Kushner. The two were supposedly introduced by Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington Bureau Chief. The next thing you know, Jones is — according to a number of sources at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue who communicated with The Daily Beast — adding his two cents to both President Donald Trump’s executive order on police reform and the Senate bill, the so-called “Justice Act,” drafted by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.

A Scott spokesperson told The Daily Beast that “Van’s input was certainly a part of the process as we constructed the bill.”

In a series of tweets, Jones denied taking part in the process and called the Daily Beast article “false” and “sensationalist.”

In 2018, Jones was open about working with both the Trump administration and members of Congress to help push through the criminal justice and prison reform bill known as “The First Step Act.” He even attended the bill signing ceremony at the White House.

All this needs to be shared with the public whenever Jones proffers an opinion on work product that he helped create. According to the Daily Beast article, that didn’t happen with regard to the executive order. During recent appearances on CNN, Jones offered his assessment of the administration’s latest stab at police reform without revealing that he may have influenced it. Jones claims that he hasn’t been in the White House for the last few months, and that he hasn’t been part of any discussions on police reform.

This much we know: Back in the kitchen, baking the cake is someone else’s job. And when those of us in the news business forget that, and get our hands dirty, we create an ownership stake in the final product that makes it impossible for us to offer a fair assessment of how good it really is. Then no one knows what they’re eating.