Jan 14, 2018 5 min read

In his Jan. 7 column on the Commentary page, Dave Ball extensively quotes two “real people whose lives are affected by government policy.” He does not identify these people, whose political views are, curiously, the same as his own and who voice the identical expressions Ball frequently uses in his opinion column.

The media, which the writer is so quick to demonize, has some rules and practices that he should consider following, since he is now part of it. One of those practices is to identify those who are interviewed and quoted. There are some exceptions, of course: Journalists protect confidential sources, and the identity of some of those interviewed is sometimes withheld because of special circumstances, which are always necessary to explain to the reader.

The consequences of not following this practice can be great and scandalous. Janet Cooke, a writer for The Washington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for “Jimmy’s World,” a portrait of an 8-year-old heroin addict. Problem was Jimmy did not exist; he was a product of her imagination. The problem of heroin addiction among the young was real, but Jimmy wasn’t. This and subsequent travesties caused considerable damage to the credibility of all media, and that is why writers and editors strive to assure readers that the people they write about are real.

Are the coal miner’s wife and the Peters Township business owner quoted by Ball real? Perhaps, but one has to wonder at the similarity of their words.

“President Trump has been delivering on his promises,” the miner’s wife says.

“He’s delivering on his promises,” the business owner says.

“We hope 2018 is another great year like 2017,” says the miner’s wife.

“By any measure, 2017 was a great year,” says the business owner.

“By any account, other than the mainstream media and the left, 2017 was a very good year,” writes Ball in his lead paragraph.

One has to wonder why 2017 was such a good year for the underground coal miner and his wife. The number of people employed in the coal industry continued to decline to the point at which there are almost twice as many people employed by Sears (140,000) as are working in coal. Sears is in trouble, too, but no one seems to be too concerned about those employees losing their jobs.

The Trump administration is rolling back regulations on the burning of coal, but those regulations are not the cause of the precipitous decline in its use; natural gas is killing coal. And Trump’s mining regulators are reconsidering rules meant to protect underground miners from breathing coal and rock dust. More profit for coal operators, but more black lung for miners.

One has to wonder if the woman’s husband is employed by Dana Mining 4 West Mine near Mt. Morris, which will close soon and put 370 miners out of work. It’s closing had nothing to do with “Obama’s war on coal,” but rather the age of the mine, poor geological conditions and competition with longwall mines.

At the moment the nation’s economy is doing quite well, and Ball gives all the credit for it to Trump, even though the long climb in the stock market and employment was well under way before his election. What will Ball’s (and Trump’s) reaction be when the stock market turns down, as it always does; when the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 3,000 or 4,000 points? (If anyone out there thinks that the market will keep going up and up and never come down, I have a bridge to sell him.) Will the collapse be the fault of the “anti-business Obama policies,” as Ball puts it?

After the Great Recession of 2008, the business owner says, “My clients were hurt badly. Some went bankrupt. Others were hesitant to spend money in the anti-business environment under Obama.” It is helpful to remember that the economy crashed before Obama was president, and that his “anti-business policies” included economic stimulus, propping up U.S. automakers and proposing a corporate tax cut to 28 percent that the Republican-controlled Congress ignored.

Ball writes, “2017 was a great year as judged by those who really lived it. They matter, not the media, not those who hate President Trump, not those in academic echo chambers.”

The media are hardly a unified force of the like-minded. Newspapers, radio and television stations, magazines and internet news services are not operated by government; they are independent businesses that suffer and prosper along with all other business and industry. And those who work in the media are real people who actually lived through 2017, as well. They are not anonymous. The names of those who own, write and edit the Observer-Reporter, for example, are published in the newspaper and on its website every day.

The past year was a good year in some respect, for some people. It was not so good for those living in Syria, Afghanistan or Congo, or in Houston or Puerto Rico, or for those thousands who lost their homes and businesses in the Florida Keys and fire-ravaged California. It was not so great for the families of those lost in the opioid epidemic, or for the millions of Americans still unable to afford or access health care.

So, was 2017 a good year? It’s all about the view.