Forget Walz’s “Stolen Valor” – Think about JD Vance’s “Violated Trust”

This is personal as well as professional, JD Vance, and it deals with the trust that America places in its veterans and the members of the “Fourth Estate.” 

You and I, by oath, fit into both those domains. I earned my service stripes as a Navy journalist (1955-1959) decades before you as a Marine correspondent (2003-2007), but our heritage now as civilians is the same – to defend our country and its constitution and, in particular, adhere to truth and ethics required by our rarified “MOS” (military occupational specialty).

Nothing in our shared journalistic training could have prepared us for the level and amount of misinformation, disinformation, and pure lies that are being spread. Except that we are trained to counter propaganda with truthful reporting.

I would like to believe that you would share my belief that politicians and their sycophants and enablers are committing a monumental crime in their efforts to corrupt a free and honest press. 

Let me remind you how the Department of Defense (DOD) describes our purpose:

“The U.S. military journalist job, at the highest level of accountability, is defined by an obligation to fully inform the public without design…fight subjective policy, ambiguous definitions and conflicting doctrine (that is) designed to deceive the public with hidden political agendas.”

Consider this a “Come to Journalism Moment”

JD, let me establish our interesting commonalities and my legitimate role in putting you to question as to your approach to government and media. 

#1. We both entered the military after graduating from small-town high schools. Yours was in 2003 from Middletown High School, Middletown, OH (pop: 51,229). Mine was from Medford High School, Medford, OR, in 1955 (pop then: 20,000). 

#2. To earn our journalist classifications, we both went through rigorous schooling before being assigned to our duty stations. You know, the authentic representation of factual, verifiable news.

#3. You served between September 2003 and September 2007 and performed duties stateside and the Middle East. I served between September 1955 and September 1959 variously aboard a heavy cruiser in the Pacific, at a Naval Air Station in Hawaii, and at a Seabee base stateside.

#5. You rose to the rank of corporal (E-4). I reached the rank of Petty Officer 2nd Class (E-5). 

#6. We both received degrees in higher education. My BA from California State University San Jose. You have a BS from Ohio State University and a JD in law from Yale. 

#7. We both wrote a book. I co-authored End Medical Debt. Yours was Hillbilly Elegy. Mine has yet to be made into a movie.

#8. We each formed a charity. I co-founded RIP Medical Debt (Undue Medical Debt) in 2014. Over the past ten years, it has abolished over $13B in medical debt for nearly eight million Americans. It has a four-star rating and platinum transparency. In 2016 you founded Our Ohio Renewal as a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization focused on education, addiction, and other “social ills” mentioned in your memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. As Wikipedia describes it, “the charity closed after less than two years with sparse achievements.”

The worst journalistic sin ever is “making up” stories. Pet-eating Haitians? 

Grant you, few people confuse politics with truth, and you might be excused in your speeches and interviews for selective omissions and colorful artifice. Our shared code requires us to write and disseminate stories that are researched, verifiable, and come from trusted sources. Again, pet-eating Haitians. And worse.

This brings us to today and our mutual obligation to be held accountable for our words and actions. I’m doing my best to develop websites and actions supporting our veterans (www.VeteranMissionPossible.com and www.EndVeteranDebt.org) as well as promoting veteran-centered news at an online media center called Now Hear This.

Former military journalists speak out

Ron Brewington. host, producer, and writer of the internet television talk show, The Actor’s Choice, who reached the highest level of enlisted ranks as a Journalist Senior Chief Petty Officer (USN) to retire at that level after 22 years of service, judges your adherence to journalistic ideals harshly. 

“When you wear a uniform, you prepare to die if necessary to protect our country and its values. You don’t violate a code. You don’t change or reinterpret that code. Senator Vance does not know what a code is or its importance.”

Caron LeNoir, a member – as am I – of Military Veterans in Journalism* (MVJ) and an independent news producer, believes Vance to be “a disgrace to his time in service in the way he has disparaged fellow veterans and, most recently, women,” and adds, “I cannot call him a brother in arms, nor would I trust him with my life.”

One MVJ member, a Marine vet, found Vance’s complicity with and defense of Trump’s visit to Arlington to be “disgraceful” and further opined that “JD might have confused himself by acting as a PAO (Public Affairs Officer) instead of in the more rigorous role of a journalist.”

*For those unfamiliar with MVJ, it is an 800+ professional organization dedicated to securing greater employment for veterans within America’s media industry. One of its prime missions is to combat misinformation and propaganda. Fewer than 5% of America’s correspondents and broadcasters have service experience.

This is just the beginning of veteran call-outs

Between now and the election and beyond, a growing team of veteran and non-veteran journalists are committing to reporting on you and any failures on your part to honor our code. Whatever story we post will be researched, authoritative, truthful, and fact-based. 

We intend to reclaim the trust that good journalism has earned.

To do anything other than that would be…weird.