The line between set­ting high stan­dards and bul­ly­ing is nigh on impos­si­ble to dis­cern in today’s hyper-sen­si­tive world. Since step­ping over it costs jobs and rep­u­ta­tions, I sug­gest those who would pass judge­ment con­sid­er this thought from the 1908 nov­el  “The Magi­cian” by W. Som­er­set Maugh­am: “It’s a fun­ny thing about life; if you refuse to accept any­thing but the best, you very often get it.”

The best proof of that I ever met was Wal­ter Cronkite.
The anchor­man before whom even pres­i­dents were known to quail con­sid­ered that his job, and that of his news broad­cast was“… only to hold up the mir­ror — to tell and show the pub­lic what has happened.”
Insist­ing, nay demand­ing, that the mir­ror be held accord­ing to his stan­dards was what earned him the man­tle “The most trust­ed man in Amer­i­ca”, and made his net­work num­ber one.
His tag line: “And that’s the way it is”, summed up both the anchor­man and his newscast.

No pos­tur­ing or pos­ing. No fake, forced or face­tious facial expres­sions (gen­er­al­ly no allit­er­a­tion either).
In a piece to mark the 40^th anniver­sary of Cronkite’s last CBS Evening News sign-off, Prof Jef­frey McCall of DePauw Uni­ver­si­ty wrote: “He imposed strict stan­dards for accu­ra­cy and objec­tiv­i­ty into his broad­casts. Every writer and pro­duc­er on his team knew the perfectionist’s expec­ta­tions and knew not to stray into per­son­al bias or activism.”
These days, so-called “snowflakes” (defined by the Urban Dic­tio­nary as: “a very sen­si­tive per­son. Some­one who is eas­i­ly hurt or offend­ed by the state­ments or actions of oth­ers”), of whom there seem to be many, might con­sid­er “the perfectionist’s expec­ta­tions” bullying.
To them I say, you should be so lucky.

                           SUCK IT UP AND LEARN

My jour­nal­ism career began under sev­er­al news edi­tors who had nei­ther the time nor the patience for report­ing they deemed infe­ri­or, Some of the ways in which they point­ed it out would cost them their job today.
But back then, there was no run­ning to an HR depart­ment whose default set­ting is to favour the eas­i­ly offend­ed. No doubt there were occa­sions when a lit­tle more deco­rum wouldn’t have gone amiss, but in hind­sight, I realise even the harsh­est crit­i­cism was to main­tain stan­dards, and in so doing, make bet­ter jour­nal­ists. And, I sus­pect, weed out the dross.
That’s not a defence of phys­i­cal abuse or vin­dic­tive behaviour.
But how did it come to pass that what used to be called a “thick skin” was admired, and is now con­sid­ered a sign of weakness?
What’s the dif­fer­ence between bul­ly­ing and insist­ing on cer­tain stan­dards being maintained?
That was more or less the defence offered by the now for­mer British Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Dominic Raab, who was fired after com­plaints about how he behaved towards his staff dur­ing three high lev­el gov­ern­ment posi­tions. Sup­port­ers said Raab was robust, expect­ed the very best, and con­ced­ed that he could be demanding.
Raab decried what he called  “activist civ­il ser­vants” who could not cope with being told that their work was not up to the stan­dard he expected.
Some of them, in turn, alleged­ly “suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive impacts on their psy­cho­log­i­cal wellbeing”.
I am in no posi­tion to pass judge­ment either way, but it seems to me supe­ri­ors in the work­place have a right and duty to insist that doing a job means more than show­ing up on time and then choos­ing your own lev­el of accept­able, nev­er mind excep­tion­al, performance.
Noth­ing of con­se­quence was ever accom­plished by any­one who thought meet­ing min­i­mum require­ments was more than enough, or by stan­dards set at a lev­el that can be met by medi­oc­rity, rather than mer­it, per­se­ver­ance and resilience.
 As Charles Dar­win pos­tu­lat­ed: “The more effi­cient caus­es of progress seem to con­sist of a good edu­ca­tion dur­ing youth whilst the brain is impress­ible, and of a high stan­dard of excel­lence, incul­cat­ed by the ablest and best men, embod­ied in the laws, cus­toms and tra­di­tions of the nation, and enforced by pub­lic opinion.”
The antithe­sis of that is (or was) Tuck­er Carl­son, a per­son with a good edu­ca­tion who chose not just to abjure, but to den­i­grate any­thing approach­ing any stan­dards worth men­tion­ing or wor­thy of the name.
It is both iron­ic and poet­ic jus­tice that he and his net­work have been shamed because of  embrac­ing ver­sions of  bul­ly­ing, and not meet­ing what pass for stan­dards of any kind.
Nor should it come as a sur­prise if he rein­vents him­self as a vic­tim of a ver­sion of the very thing he made his FOX “News” career by being.
Mean­while, and in per­pe­tu­ity, it is a news­man who set and remains, the bench­mark for insist­ing on, and hav­ing, high standards.

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