‘No Comment’ is De Rigueur These Days

by admin | May 16, 2025 9:17 am

One of the infuriating non-responses I hear while listening to NPR or come across in the dozen or so media outlets I read daily is a version of this: “Sen. Doofus declined to comment.” From the Oval Office to a local constabulary, it appears the entire government apparatchik has decided the best response to inquiries from members of the media who are not brown-nosing toadies is to ignore them.

I would peg the percentage of stories, many of which are of major import, that end with the beleaguered journalist saying “no comment was available” at roughly 80 percent. Few folks in public life feel obligated these days to keep the public informed by answering questions asked by journalists.

I am a dinosaur, a relic of the mainstream media. I spent more than 50 years working for newspapers, doing my level best to fairly report stories for whatever audience was paying to read what we printed. I am not finished yet, though my work these days is far from full-time. Still, I love it and do my best to fairly report the news through the Capitol Highlights column I write weekly for about 100 Texas newspapers, the occasional freelance piece, and opinion pieces for a recently launched Substack column. Plus, there is this space you are reading now, which I have been writing weekly without fail (but often failure) for nearly 43 years.

Being old-fashioned at least in some ways, I believe folks who make their living off taxpayer money or have decided to enter public service, even if unpaid or given a tiny stipend (school boards, city councils, etc.), are obliged to answer questions that folks for whom they work are asking. A key service journalists provide is to ask the pertinent questions so the answers can be widely distributed by the media outlet for which they work. It saves individual citizens from having to take the time to do so, though they certainly can and should. When members of the public do so, they often raise points overlooked by the media.

This process doesn’t work so well when those being asked the questions refuse to respond. That is increasingly the norm. Whatever fresh outrage comes out of the current administration, and there is a firehose of outrages spewing forth, nearly all the time, the response is some version of “Screw, you buddy. Not answering that.”[1]

In the decade or so that our democracy has been dismantled by the present occupant of the Oval Office and his minions, we have witnessed trickle-down stonewalling, a more effective version than trickle-down economics ever accomplished. (Face it, folks. That whole tax-cut thing doesn’t help those who aren’t in the top 1%.) What seemed to start at the top has filtered down to where small-town police departments work to encrypt scanner communication, public boards regularly ignore FOI and open-meeting laws — daring anyone objecting to file charges or sue — and public records are routinely withheld.

This is one of the ways that democracy dies. Add to it the emasculation of a branch of our government, which is a Congress that seems afraid to assert its right to hold the purse strings and stand up to a president who prefers executive orders to getting legislation passed.

Thank goodness the judiciary is largely pushing back against the more egregious edicts from this administration. But the Fourth Estate, with notable exceptions, keeps trying to cover what is happening everywhere, from the Oval Office to city council chambers, as if things are still normal. In other words, report “both sides” and lay it all out for the readers.

That doesn’t work anymore. Neither does simply acquiescing when an elected official at any level or a publicly paid official declines to answer a question to shed light on an issue or story.

I will end my time on the soapbox with a dinosaur journalist story. In July 1982, I went to work as managing editor of the San Augustine (Texas) Rambler. This was an inflated title since the only person I was managing was myself. At the first city council meeting that I covered, the council went into executive session to discuss an item not on the agenda. I publicly but politely asked them how they could legally do so under Texas FOI law. (No, it wasn’t legal.) The city attorney, with whom I later became close friends, blew off my question. So, my first editorial for that tiny weekly was titled “No One Knows What Goes on Behind Closed Doors,” quoting Charlie Rich, the silver-haired fox country singer.  To my knowledge, the council never again broke the Open Meetings Act during my five years there. That was the only time I quoted Charlie Rich in my career.

There is not enough outrage these days from the media about getting blown off when asking legitimate questions about policy actions at every level of government. Folks, do your job. Print the news and raise hell. Again and again. What choice do we have? To quote the present occupant during his campaigns, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Just our democracy, if we don’t push back.

Source URL: https://garyborders.com/pages/no-comment-is-de-rigueur-these-days/

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