Editorial rights purchased from iStock. Photo by Mihajlo Maricic.
Joy Reid was right. Years ago, when the lies of Donald Trump were inundating the airwaves daily, she admitted something troubling. In the quest for so-called balanced reporting, liars were getting the same news coverage as truth-tellers. And it’s not like the news anchors didn’t know the difference. They knew, but they were afraid. They were afraid of being labeled one-sided and of losing potential guests who might not want to be questioned.
Today we have the same problem. Yesterday I watched in horror as Jake Tapper allowed the top Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Mike Turner (R-OH), to claim that Biden and Garland were in cahoots to persecute Trump for political gain. Never mind that there has been no evidence in the past of either Biden or Garland using their powers of office to crush their political opponents. Never mind that Trump has been screaming “lock her up” to discredit Hillary Clinton since he announced his candidacy in 2015.
There are countless cases of Republicans using their political power to damage the reputation of Democrats. The Benghazi trial went on forever, and no crimes were ever found. Yes, it was tragic. And indeed, mistakes were made. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, and there is an enormous difference between doing your best and still failing to prevent a tragic event and a deliberate attempt to create death and chaos. I would argue that Ms. Clinton did the former, and Donald Trump has done the latter.
Then-Secretary of State and presidential candidate Clinton was grilled on live TV for over eight hours during the Benghazi trial. In contrast, when Donald Trump was recently deposed, he took the Fifth Amendment 440 times.
Likewise, Clinton’s email scandal was seemingly endless, yet no crime was ever found. Clinton, a middle-aged woman who grew up before the internet was invented, was skewered for using her home server for government business.
In contrast, Donald Trump used his personal cell phone for government business throughout his administration. He has even borrowed phones from White House aides to make unsecured and undocumented calls from the White House.
And now we know that when Trump left the White House and lost his security clearance, he absconded with presidential records and top-secret documents, which he hid in his basement at Mar-a-Lago.
There is no equivalency here. Any reporter, pundit, or news anchor who pretends otherwise is negligent.
Republicans rely on defense mechanisms whenever they are short of facts
The Republican Party has been relying on a handful of well-known defense mechanisms for as long as I can remember. Projection is one of them. It’s a simple concept — Liars think everyone lies. Thieves think everyone steals. Cheaters think everyone cheats. And Republicans think everyone uses their political power to punish their political opponents — regardless of whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. They believe this because that’s what they do.
Throughout Tapper’s interview with Congressman Turner, I kept waiting for Tapper to intervene. “What evidence do you have that this is politically motivated? Persecution is a strong word; how do you back that up with facts? How can you call this politically motivated when we already know Trump took the documents?” As you might have guessed, I was disappointed.
What I would have liked to hear Tapper say, but knew there was no hope for, was “WTF? Just because Trump operates this way doesn’t mean everybody else does.” But I would have settled for a simple question or a request for some evidence to back Turner’s preposterous assertion. Instead, Tapper sat quietly as Turner spewed nonsense. Meanwhile, I was shouting at the television, which has become all too frequent lately.
(Note: I couldn’t find a clip of this to link to. Interestingly, I did discover that one CNN anchor, Brianna Keilar, called Turner out for this.)
Journalism is not what it used to be
I realize television journalism it’s not the same as print journalism, but some of the basic tenets should still apply. When I interned at a local radio station decades ago, we were taught what was known as the Edward R. Murrow school of journalism. We asked questions. We applied critical thinking skills. If we made a statement of fact, we needed to cite our sources. These requirements were not optional — they were mandatory. No story would be published or broadcast without an editor ensuring our work was clean and honest.
Credible publications still do this. Fox TV does not. Nor does Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Telegram, or Instagram. And now, sorry to say, neither does CNN.
It’s okay to socialize on social media — that’s what it’s for. It’s not okay to get your news there. At least not if you want to be informed as opposed to misinformed. But what do we do about television news when so many rely so heavily on it?
How do we fix TV news?
I can already see the eyes rolling when I use the word “regulation,” but what other option do we have? Perhaps we can return to Edward R. Murrow for the answer.
Maybe it’s as simple as requiring that to use the news moniker; anything stated as fact must be sourced. And perhaps just as the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal publish corrections when they have stated as fact information since proven to be false, television news outlets must do the same — on TV, on the show where they initially presented the misinformation.
Maybe there’s a better answer that I haven’t thought of. But for now, shouldn’t we at least try to hold those responsible for keeping us informed to account for the information they feed us? They already lie to us with impunity via advertisements they use to support their programming.
Isn’t that enough?