If the burning national question of the moment is whether Fox News Channel star Sean Hannity is a “journalist” or not, let’s use the long-held set of journalistic questions to investigate: The proverbial who, what, when, where, why and how?

First, the “who”: Sean Patrick Hannity is a cable TV conservative talk show host and best-selling author. Most recently he is said to serve as an unpaid advisor to President Trump — some say that relationship is so close that he “has a desk” at the White House. Hannity was born in New York City, and has spent much of his broadcast career there.

Next, let’s go to “when” and “where”: Hannity’s TV show anchors Fox prime-time lineup with an audience of about 3 million nightly. His syndicated radio show goes out via the web as well as on a host of radio stations. He spent a few early years at TV stations in Alabama and Georgia, before returning to that self-proclaimed urban liberal bastion of New York City to find conservative fame and fortune.

“How” and “why” generally are outside the realm of First Amendment consideration. The nation’s founders didn’t include any specific definition of a free press practitioner, and why Hannity — or any of us — speaks or writes about politics is none of the government’s business.

So, what about the “what”? Hannity said that he is a journalist in a 2016 interview with The New York Times — and said that he is not a journalist (“I’m just a talk show host”) in a 2016 interview with The Boston Globe. The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi just wrote that in an interview with the Times earlier this year, Hannity said, “I’m a journalist. But I’m an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.”

As it happens, the First Amendment’s protection of a free press covers any and all of those roles in terms of free expression. Objective or biased, nonpartisan or politically motivated: All protected.

But it’s trickier when it comes to the professional definitions and codes of journalism, where ethical standards come into play. And yes, journalism does have ethics — and most journalists follow them, despite some people’s claims to the contrary. Transparency about business relationships is a basic rule, along with the admonishment to avoid such complications if at all possible.

Did Hannity have an obligation to let viewers know of his connection to President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen — which for some as-yet unknown reason he and Cohen reportedly sought to keep secret? Yes, but not because of politics. In plain terms, we should just know “where he’s coming from.”

No one has been shocked that Hannity is highly critical of federal authorities who served search warrants at Cohen’s office, home and hotel room and confiscated records and computers, and that he defends Trump’s privacy and attorney-client privilege. But was that defense rooted in a personal matter? There were audible gasps in the courtroom, reports say, when Hannity was revealed during a recent hearing in New York to be a client of Cohen.

Was the non-disclosure in any way connected to the fact that Cohen’s two other clients (Trump and a high-ranking GOP official) apparently used the lawyer to broker financial deals with women who claim a sexual relationship with them? Or could it be just a simple defense of a friend, rather than one related to legal standards or constitutional concerns?

To some degree, the “Hannity Hassle” afflicts much of the cable talk show world, where the motivation seems focused more on generating chatter (i.e., ratings) than doing actual journalism. And then there’s the larger problem that reporters from news organizations so often now appear on such shows as pundits, while the networks’ hosts — often former politicians — claim at times to be reporting “breaking news.”

It’s not just on TV that the crossover duties have impact: In some large part, a push for a national shield law protecting journalists and their confidential sources has failed because of the difficulty of defining who is a journalist.

Making it harder for all of us to determine if the “what” we see and hear is fact or opinion, which damages the very foundations of self-governance.

When the nation’s founders protected a free press, they presumed it would be part of an independent system that would keep an eye on government and society on behalf of the rest of us — not just generate ratings or circulation.

We cannot make the required decisions of a self-governing society if the facts on which we base those decisions come to us via blurry “news” sources whose role and motivations are suspect — or worse, kept secret.

And that admonition does not just apply to Sean Hannity.

Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute. He can be reached at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

She taught the masters. She became one of the most famous, sought-after teachers of professional violinists in the world. Her name was Dorothy DeLay, and she came from rural Kansas. Thanks to K-State violin professor Cora Cooper for her help with this article.

Dorothy DeLay was born in 1917 in Medicine Lodge. Her parents were musicians and educators. She later described her upbringing as strict and religious. The family moved to Neodesha where her father became school superintendent, and Miss DeLay grew up there.

Her musical talents surfaced early. She began studying the violin at age 4 and did a recital at her church at age 5. She was so advanced that she graduated from Neodesha High School at age 16 and enrolled at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Miss DeLay later transferred to Michigan State.

Dorothy DeLay was an outstanding violinist. After her graduation in 1937, she moved to New York to continue her violin studies at Juilliard. She also formed a musical group called the Stuyvestant Trio. This consisted of a pianist, Dorothy on the violin, and her sister Nellis on the cello.

Dorothy toured Latin America as a member of Leopold Stokowski’s All-American Youth Orchestra. After that tour, on the cross-country train trip back home, she met a young writer named Edward Newhouse. Apparently it was true love. Four months later they were married. The marriage lasted 61 years until her death in 2002, but she was always known professionally as Miss DeLay.

As do many students, Miss DeLay pieced together a handful of invitations for part-time teaching and assistantship positions to support herself during school. She taught part-time at the Henry Street Settlement, the Juilliard School and Sarah Lawrence College. In the process, she found that she enjoyed teaching more than she enjoyed performing. After graduation, she accepted a full-time teaching position at the prestigious Juilliard School where she spent the rest of her career.

By the 1970s, she became a highly sought-after violin instructor. According to the New York Times, she became the first woman – and for that matter, the first American-born violinist – to be regarded as a master violin teacher in the tradition of the great ones.

Eventually she would teach and mentor at least two generations of students. Her pupils included such prominent violinists as Itzhak Perlman, Sarah Chang, Midori, Nigel Kennedy, Albert Stern, Anne Akiko Meyers, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gil Shaham, Shlomo Mintz, Cho Liang-Lin, and many others whose names I can’t even pronounce. Some of her pupils became founders of the world’s great chamber groups, such as the Juilliard, the Tokyo, the Cleveland, the Vermeer, the Takacs, and the Ying Quartets. Others became conductors or played in orchestras around the world.

In 1997, she was appointed the first person to hold the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair of Violin Studies at Juilliard. She also taught at Meadowmount, Aspen, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Cincinnati, the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, the New England Conservatory, and the Royal College of Music in London.

A 2002 book about Miss DeLay was titled “Teaching Genius: Dorothy DeLay and the Making of a Musician.” In addition to many honorary degrees, Miss DeLay received the National Medal of Arts, the National Music Council’s American Eagle Award, the Sanford Medal from Yale University, the Artist Teacher Award from the American String Teachers Association, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese Government. She was later named one of the great women artists who shaped music.

Dorothy DeLay passed away in 2002 at age 84. At the time of her death, the Juilliard faculty included 14 of her former students.

It’s an impressive record for someone who grew up in the rural community of Neodesha, population 2,319 people. Now, that’s rural.

She taught the masters. She was known as one of the world’s most famous teachers of the violin. We salute Dorothy DeLay for making a difference with her creative talents and with her teaching of the world’s best violinists.

And there’s more. A current music teacher in her home town is carrying on her musical tradition today. We’ll learn about that next week.