Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
BAYEUX, France — I finally lost it after 15 years of seeing yet more names chiseled on marble steles at the Reporters' Memorial in this noble Normandy town, which puts its heart and soul into alerting a distracted world to the horrors of war.
A few of those names were friends. Others were colleagues who were killed for getting too close to truth, leaving stricken families behind. It is time to get very, very angry. When totalitarians come for the journalists, we won't know what happens next.
Each October, an international jury awards Bayeux Calvados-Normandy war correspondents prizes. At exhibits and panels, we talk with townsfolk, from school kids to elders who fought past wars. Thousands jam into a big tent for the final ceremony.
On late, lubricated nights, we exchange firsthand insights from far-flung places where smoldering embers risk bursting into flame. This year, alarm bells clanged like never before from the Middle East, Ukraine and most every corner of an imperiled planet.
But across the Atlantic, too many people tune all that out. Republicans pour money into close races to befuddle the gullible and suppress opposition turnout. Americans have only days left to grasp why the Nov. 3 midterms are so drop-dead crucial.
Jean-Léonce Dupont, president of Calvados département, summed up the Bayeux consensus on Donald Trump in two words at the awards ceremony: brutal and vulgar. Reporters who cover the impact of his depredations were scathingly specific.
Journalists are out there, whether noticed or not. One sentence stands out from all that was said in Bayeux. It was about a photo exhibit by a Palestinian who exposed what Israeli hardliners did not want seen in Gaza. But it applies to conflicts everywhere.
At the very least, the curator wrote in his introduction, no one can say, "But we didn't know."
PARIS — It's not complicated. Suppose you've laid out a family Thanksgiving table and come in from aperitifs to find raccoons headed for the turkey. Either you run them off fast or find some open diner and then return to a raided poop-fouled pantry.
All creatures follow their instincts, humans included, and we can't appeal to the better nature of those who have none. Racoons are bad enough. Rampaging elephants that trample everything in their path are a whole lot worse.
The world already suffers immeasurably from Donald Trump's high crimes at home and belligerence abroad. Only weeks remain for Americans to grasp the enormity in detail and to get everyone they can to the polls on Nov. 3.
This second Report on finding reliable news sources focuses on the wider world. Most American media reduce coverage to briefs, then "breaking news" when it is too late to react. Bear with me, please. This one is long but never has so much been at stake.
Democrats, principled Republicans and uncommitted independents can empower Congress along with crucial statehouses to hold faithless Republicans to account. If Trump's rogue Republicans keep a majority, expect the unthinkable.
Whatever the results, Trump won't go away. He wages war in plain sight on democracy and decency, aided by billionaires, ideologues, trigger-happy lawmen and an old maxim: there is none so blind as he who will not see.
He flips off the courts, ignoring constitutional safeguards by framers who did not imagine mass-deception tools in the hands of a deranged malignant narcissist. Too many legislators feed off the public trough, ignoring the citizens they represent.
Documented reporting exposes blatant war profiteering and secret deals that return billions to Trump's family and inner circles. Money buys residence permits, Mar-a-Lago access and, for $100,000 a month, advance notice of stocks about to soar.
Desperate, Trump promises to spend a trillion-plus dollars paying $5,000 to every adult "if and when" Republicans win the midterms. At one rally, he called those who opposed his partisans "dumb son of a bitches."
On Saturday, he harangued a crowd at an Ohio high school stadium. If they turn out to vote, he said, "We’re going to win, and we’re going to win big, and we’re gonna shove it up their ass.” That is America's face to the world.
After covering failed democracies since the 1960s, I have not seen one, large or small, collapse from sheer indifference. If midterms go wrong, the world risks a fate beyond what T.S. Elliot evoked in "The Hollow Men": dying with both a bang and a whimper.
