Democrats’ Justified Growing Frustration with An Irresponsible News Media

“He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists
and criminals,” Beto O’Rourke said of Trump.

The mainstream media's false equivalency in news coverage during the 2016 presidential election helped elect Donald Trump.  Sadly, the problem continues and belatedly Democrats are beginning to call out lazy and irresponsible journalists and media outlets. There is ZERO equivalence between Trump/GOP lies and fact, data and science based Democrat  positions, yet one would rarely get that message from even outlets like the New York Times that fail to take on outright lies and/or continue to broadcast untrue propaganda.  If one is a responsible journalist, you do NOT merely parrot a lie or hate speech and never call out the individual lying or disseminating false and/or racist statements. The Founding Fathers saw the free press as the bulwark of protection against dishonest politicians and policies, yet too much of the media has failed to fulfill its critical role in safeguarding both the truth and democracy itself. A piece in Politico looks at the long overdue backlash against an often complicit media.   Here are excerpts:

A liberal backlash against the news media’s coverage of Donald Trump and the 2020 race was already brewing when the New York Times published a five-word headline Monday night summarizing the president’s reaction to the mass shootings over the weekend: “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism.”

“Unbelievable,” steamed Beto O’Rourke. “That’s not what happened,” wrote Kirsten Gillibrand. “Lives literally depend on you doing better,” Cory Booker tweeted.

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said senior editors quickly recognized problems with the original headline Monday night and rewrote it. “The fact that Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker didn’t like it didn’t influence me,” Baquet said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t need the entire political field to tell me we wrote a bad headline. It was evident.”

Still, the furious response capped an outpouring of frustration lately from 2020 candidates, Democratic strategists and left-leaning columnists over everything from CNN’s handling of last week’s primary debate to coverage of race and white supremacists to the years-old gripe that news organizations are too willing to amplify Trump’s words.

O’Rourke channeled that discontent best Sunday with an exasperated reaction to a reporter’s question about what Trump could do in response to the deaths of 22 people in El Paso at the hands of a suspected white nationalist.

“He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals,” O’Rourke responded. “Members of the press, what the fuck?”

Neera Tanden, the president of the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, told POLITICO that O’Rourke “spoke for millions of liberals” with those three words.

“If you’re thinking, ‘Can Trump make this better?’ you’re absolving him of his role in this, and it makes people think you don’t get it,” Tanden said.

Democrats and progressives expressed some frustration with the media in 2016, claiming that journalists neglected Sen. Bernie Sanders early on and that they were obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s emails. And Democrats are quick to distinguish their critique of the news media from that of the right, especially Trump’s attacks on journalists as “the enemy of the people.” O’Rourke, for one, has told crowds that the media is not the “enemy,” and nearly every Democratic campaign has vowed to bring back White House press briefings if elected.

Still, the critique of the news media is cropping up more as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, including during the primary debates hosted by CNN. And it has the potential to hurt the news business’ reputation with a large chunk of the electorate, just as Republican voters became less inclined to trust the mainstream media after years of candidates decrying what they viewed as liberal bias.

“A vast swath of Democratic voters are pretty angry at the media,” . . . . They see a media obsessed with Trump voters who like his rhetoric and little interest in those targeted by his rhetoric. I think Beto's comments spoke to a feeling that media as currently constructed is not up to the moment we are living in." Brian Fallon, who served as deputy press secretary for Clinton’s 2016 campaign and is now executive director of progressive organization Demand Justice, told POLITICO on Monday afternoon that “a lot of Democrats are understandably exasperated about the broken state of the media in the age of Trump.” “Instead of the media standing up against his lies, we get thought pieces about whether the truth really matters anymore,” he continued. “Instead of calling out Trump's racism, we see headline writers engaged in acrobatics designed to achieve some false measure of objectivity.”

On Monday night, Fallon was one of the prominent progressive critics to pounce on the Times’s initial headline choice about Trump’s press conference on the shootings. Editor Baquet "cares more about being seen as impartial by diehard supporters of Donald Trump than he does about faithfully representing what is happening in American politics,” Fallon tweeted.

Some liberal Times subscribers, however, disagree. The hashtag #CancelNYT was trending Tuesday morning. Adam Jentleson, who served as deputy chief of staff to former Sen. Harry Reid, said on Twitter that he was going to do just that.

“I resisted for a long time but I’m cancelling my NYT subscription today,” he tweeted. “Great reporters but terrible editorial judgment on headlines and social media, which is all most people read. It can’t be the paper of record anymore if it doesn’t accurately report the news.”

Appeasing Trump and/or his base is NOT what a responsible journalist does. Instead, exposing lies and racist and misogynist fear mongering is what needs to be done.

Don't be Duped by a Media Seeking Sensation and False "Balance" by Attacks on Northam

The media has engaged in an orgiastic frenzy over images from a 35 year old yearbook that outwardly depict Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a personal friend, in an unflattering way and designed to suggest that Northam is somehow a closet racist. These are my reflections based on the Ralph Northam I know and the knee jerk reactions of some “progressives” and members of the LGBT community who trash their strongest advocates in an apparent quest for perfection that Christ himself could not satisfy.  Meanwhile, why isn't anyone asking why Eastern Virginia Medical School allowed such content in the school's yearbook in the first place?

Sadly, it is part and parcel with the media’s desire to stir sensationalism – which sells publications and prompts page views on online sites –and an obsession for “balance” that is employed time and time again to support a false equivalency between the Republican Party –which IS a racist party – and the Democrat Party. The truth and surrounding circumstances truly do not matter as long as publications are sold and page views are generated.

Governor Northam has apologized for a “racist and offensive” costume seen on his 1984 medical school yearbook page (the photo shows a person in blackface and another in full Ku Klux Klan robes). The governor did not say which costume (if any) he was wearing. Northam, in a statement said the behavior was not in keeping with his values and he will work to heal the damage he has caused. I have known Northam since 2007 when he ran for the Virginia Senate.  We first met at a fundraiser at the home a mutual friend.  In that successful campaign, Northam defeated Nick Rerras who I had known since my days on the City Committee for the Republican Party of the City of Virginia Beach.  In that election, Northam’s opponent, Rerras was a religious extremist and, in my view, like most “Christian conservatives” in Virginia, basically a racist. Northam’s lack of prejudice and religious extremism is what helped him secure victory.

I note Northam’s history from 2007, because locally, one of the publications engaging in the effort to trash Northam - and no doubt boost its own flagging revenues is the Virginian Pilot. I know from firsthand experience from my own run for political office a quarter century ago, that the Pilot cares absolutely nothing about the truth if it interferes with sensationalism that might sell newspapers or, nowadays, generate page views.  In that campaign despite have been provided with information that my opponent had a fraudulent PhD, the Pilot sat on that information.  The Pilot also went on to label me “Christian Right” – time has shown what a lie that was.

But, back to the immediate controversy involving Governor Northam.  For regular blog readers, it is no secret that the mindless effort to present “balance” on the part of the media drives me to distraction. Here we have a yearbook page from 35 years ago that is seemingly being used to equate Northam with the overt racists of the GOP base and the occupant of the White House who described white supremacists in Charlottesville who rioted and murdered one woman as “very fine people” in 2017.  Then, of course, we had the racist GOP rhetoric in the 2018 midterm elections and the ongoing GOP effort across the nation to disenfranchise black voters, something Northam adamantly opposes.  There is NO equivalence between incidents 35 years ago and those that are happening today. Shame on the media by a slight of hand for trying to make the two equivalent.

The last things I want to say are my first hand knowledge of Ralph Northam and his wife Pam. Unlike most people, my husband and I know them well and have shared private moments most will never have the opportunity to experience. During the 2017 Democrat primary, our home was the Northam headquarters for the Northam campaign.  We were able to see Ralph interact with the campaign volunteers, many of whom were black.  Ralph was gracious, kind and displayed zero prejudice. Indeed, I have never seen him treat anyone as less than his equal or take himself too seriously.  When not in campaign mode, we have spent time with the Northams, spent the night in their home and talked and laughed over drinks and dinner and seen them as their true selves. Never, ever, did we see even a hint of racial prejudice.  

I sincerely hope that past Northam supporters will take a deep breath and NOT fall for the sensation that the media – and behind the scenes, the GOP – must be enjoying.  It is sad to see a very fine man being trashed for events from 35 years ago while the modern day racists all too often get a free pass. I stand by Northam without hesitation. 

In closing, I pose a question someone posted on Facebook: It’s also funny the same Republicans that want him {Northam] to step down are the ones that celebrated Confederate generals during the current legislative session. Why didn’t these Republicans get asked to step down?

Donald Trump and the Media's Phony Objectivity

I continually bemoan the irresponsibility of the mainstream media and it's insistence on engaging in "balanced" reporting even when the end product ends up more as fiction writing or GOP propaganda.  The GOP has benefited tremendously  from this refusal to admit that the GOP has ventured into the realm of insanity.  Whether the phenomenon is due to a desire to pretend that America still has a functioning political system or a reluctance to attack the GOP lunacy since much of it traces to the :godly folk" - the media never wants to paint the true picture of "conservative" Christian extremists - the end result is that the nation is being severely harmed.  As noted many times here, if the media had done its job and not become the simpering lap dog of Bush/Cheney, the Iraq War could have been avoided.   A piece in Salon looks at the consequences of the mainstream media not doing its job.  Here are highlights:

[I]f the media—especially the dominant elite media—really wants to know who’s responsible for Trump’s rise, one place they should start looking is right in their bathroom mirrors.

I know, I know. Trump is a clownish figure far removed from the sort of seriousness they strive to cultivate. Surely they can’t be blamed for him, right?

Wrong. Here’s why: As Congress returns, there’s a looming threat of yet another government shutdown. Once unthinkable, then disastrous when Gingrich introduced them, shutdown threats have become a part of normal politics in the Obama era, thanks in large part to “balanced” journalism, which has helped to reframe them as normal, if perhaps a little bit risky—and therefore, a bit titillating. With a large part of the GOP buying into this fantasy view of how politics works, they were at first content to vent their hatred primarily on President Obama and congressional Democrats, but now their anger has widened to the entire political class—which is actually well deserved, in a way. But it’s not just the GOP politicians who egged them on who are to blame—the “balanced” media played a starring role as well.

When the whole political system gets pulled for years in the direction of government-by-temper-tantrum—and the media treats it as perfectly normal—it really should not be so surprising when an intemperate blowhard like Trump suddenly shows up to steal the show.

The “balanced” media has promoted this dysfunction around government shutdowns in at least three distinct ways: First, the media presents the shutdown shorn of historical context, with no indication of how radical, novel or one-sided it is, or of how it relates to a broader range of related radical and novel right-wing strategies, or to the dramatic underlying rightward shift of the GOP in Congress . . .

Second, the media adopts a “balanced” approach to reporting on the prospects of a shutdown, and the shutdown itself. It seeks to place blame on both sides . . . regardless of how inaccurate this is. This falsely balanced reporting works in favor of the absolute worst actors—always giving them the “benefit of the doubt,” and against those who are most public-minded . . .

Third, the media “balances” any residual negativity that the shutdown perpetrators might be left with stories intended to cast the other party—the Democrats–in an equally bad light. The media’s months-long obsession over problems with the Obamacare website filled this function perfectly.

I wrote a story identifying “nine distinct bodies of evidence” contradicting the “both sides did it” narrative:

(1) The longstanding GOP fixation on shutting down the government.
(2) The GOP’s creation of the shutdown crisis by blocking the budget reconciliation process.
(3) The emergence and evolution of the incoherent Ted Cruz/Tea Party plan to force a shutdown over ‘Obamacare’.
(4) The record of prominent Republican politicians and others who repeatedly warned against forcing a government shutdown.
(5) The contrary historical record of some Republicans downplaying the severity of the shutdown.
(6) The record of drastic Democratic budget concessions embodied in the “clean continuing resolution” which House Republicans rejected.
(7) The polling evidence that only GOP base voters are opposed to political compromise—and are indifferent to crisis.
(8) Evidence that GOP base intransigence drives policy.
(9) The framework of American legislative history.

There were stories here and there in the press touching on all of the above, but because of the ideologically driven commitment to “balance,” they were kept isolated and atomized, never consolidated into a coherent picture of what was actually going on at the time. And for good reason: the GOP wanted a shutdown, and the public overwhelmingly did not.

[T]he GOP had severely damaged itself, and stood a very real chance of losing control of the House in the 2014 midterms. The shutdown strategy had proved itself to be a disaster. It should have thoroughly discredited all who had argued for it, and all the thinking that led to it. That’s the clear lesson that should have been drawn. But then the “balanced” media got to work, and all the the above was swiftly negated—not just forgotten—by media’s “balanced” shift of attention to the problems with the Obamacare website.

The short-term result of that was that it protected the GOP from suffering any consequences for the shutdown. In the 2014 midterms, this meant not only holding the House, but taking over the Senate as well.

Karma, however, is a bitch. The long-term results are now showing up in the form of the Trump campaign’s dominance, and the crumbling of more “mainstream” “responsible” conservatives—not just Jeb Bush, but the entire suite of governors and ex-governors . . . 

[T]his “balanced” coverage removed all cost for the GOP’s extremism: They didn’t have to be for anything, they could just be against, and not suffer any consequence for the pain they caused. But, at the same time, they didn’t accomplish any of the impossible things they had promised.