The liberal media are freaking out over the possibility that Donald Trump might win the presidency.
They are denouncing their profession, decrying what
they see as a press corps that coddles Trump and castigates Hillary
Clinton, and demanding a change before it is too late.
Let’s take a deep breath and see if they have a credible case, or whether this is pure partisanship.
It’s been just 18 days since Politico reported that
Hillary Clinton’s advisers were telling her to prepare for a possible
landslide in the Electoral College. Now, with Trump pulling roughly even
in national polls and ahead or within striking distance in most
battleground states, a Trump administration is no longer some distant
mirage.
Some folks on the left are so convinced that Trump
would be a disaster, and so mystified why roughly half the country
doesn’t view him with the same disdain, that they are lashing out at the
media.
I would pose this question: Why do these pundits
think they’re so much smarter than everyone else that they can clearly
see Trump’s flaws but others are blinded by lousy media coverage?
I’d also pose this question: Can anyone seriously say
there hasn’t been an avalanche of negative coverage about Trump and the
birther issue, Trump and the Khan family, Trump and the comments about
“Second Amendment people” taking care of Clinton, Trump and the
Mexican-American judge, and on and on?
At the same time, I’ll confirm this point: Trump
creates so many serial controversies that it’s hard for journalists to
keep up with them all. He changes positions, such as on mass
deportations, with barely an acknowledgement. He backtracks, such on his
earlier birther crusade, without apology. I pressed him last week on
the lack of any public record for his contention that he opposed the
Iraq invasion. As reporters chase each story, other ones, such as his
refusal to release his tax returns, slip off the radar.
But it’s not like Americans haven’t had sustained exposure to Trump’s strengths and weaknesses for more than 15 months.
Perhaps the most vociferous plea comes from Nick Kristof, the liberal, Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist who often writes about human rights around the world. He thinks Trump is a “crackpot”:
“I wonder if once again our collective reporting isn’t fueling misperceptions.
“A CNN/ORC poll this month found that by a margin of
15 percentage points, voters thought Donald Trump was ‘more honest and
trustworthy’ than Hillary Clinton. Let’s be frank: This public
perception is completely at odds with all evidence....Clearly, Clinton
shades the truth — yet there’s no comparison with Trump.
“I’m not sure that journalism bears responsibility,
but this does raise the thorny issue of false equivalence…Is it
journalistic malpractice to quote each side and leave it to readers to
reach their own conclusions, even if one side seems to fabricate facts
or make ludicrous comments?...
“We owe it to our readers to signal when we’re
writing about a crackpot. Even if he’s a presidential candidate. No,
especially when he’s a presidential candidate.”
Kristof is among the journalists making the case for
false equivalence, that Trump is so much less credible than Clinton,
even though Clinton has had problems with her private email server and
family foundation. So it must be that the press is being too tough on
her and not tough enough on Trump.
Another liberal Times columnist, the Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman, asks: “Why are the media objectively pro-Trump?”
I’m not sure how “objective” a strongly ideological commentator can be, but here’s his case:
“It’s not even false equivalence: compare the amount
of attention given to the Clinton Foundation despite absence of any
evidence of wrongdoing, and attention given to Trump Foundation, which
engaged in more or less open bribery — but barely made a dent in news
coverage.
Clinton was harassed endlessly over failure to give
press conferences, even though she was doing lots of interviews; Trump
violated decades of tradition by refusing to release his taxes, amid
strong suspicion that he is hiding something; the press simply dropped
the subject…
“And I don’t see how the huffing and puffing about
the foundation — which ‘raised questions,’ but where the media were
completely unwilling to accept the answers they found — fits into this
at all.
“No, it’s something special about Clinton Rules. I
don’t really understand it. But it has the feeling of a high school
clique bullying a nerdy classmate because it’s the cool thing to do.”
Clinton has had testy relations with the press, in
part because of that whole no-press-conference-for-nine-months thing
(and her national interviews were rather infrequent). But is it really
fair to say that journalists are “bullying” her, and enjoying it to
boot?
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, in more measured tones that harken back to Spiro Agnew’s criticism of the press, says that Trump coverage has become “a new crisis of credibility”:
“There is the matter of Trump’s outsize access to
television time during the primaries that dwarfed the attention given to
his competitors. Liberals insist further that Trump is being held to a
much lower standard than is Hillary Clinton, which, in turn, means that
while relatively short shrift is given to each new Trump scandal, the
same old Clinton scandals get covered again and again…
“But the coverage of Trump and Clinton does suggest
that a media exquisitely sensitive to conservative criticism now
overcompensates against the other side…
“Journalists need to ask whether they have created a
narrative about Clinton that paints her as less trustworthy than Trump
even though the factual evidence is overwhelming that he lies far more
than she does.”
It’s worth repeating: The media may have covered too
many of Trump’s primary rallies, but the big imbalance in coverage was
largely due to his doing a zillion interviews while the likes of Ted
Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush were hard to get.
And have journalists really “created a narrative”
about Clinton that has made people distrust her? Isn’t this a problem
that has been building in the quarter-century since the days of
Whitewater and cattle futures, since she testified before a grand jury
as first lady? Doesn’t she bear some responsibility for a lack of skill
at defusing damaging stories?
Some on the left make their argument in more apocalyptic terms, such as Salon:
“According to what we’re observing online and via
cable news, Hillary Clinton’s negatives are eons more grievous than
Donald Trump’s missteps, even though they’re not, and even though this
disparity unfairly elevates Trump and his poll numbers. This is how
elections are titled toward despots and undisciplined strongmen. They’re
legitimized and humanized despite their long menu of unprecedented
gaffes, lies and treachery.”
And it’s not hard to see the way the tone has changed in news stories, such as this piece in the New York Times:
“Routine falsehoods, unfounded claims and
inflammatory language have long been staples of Mr. Trump’s
anything-goes campaign. But as the polls tighten and November nears, his
behavior, and the implications for the country should he become
president, are alarming veteran political observers — and leaving them
deeply worried about the precedent being set, regardless of who wins the
White House.”
There is plenty of room for debate about the quality
and thoroughness of Trump’s coverage. But if the media get blamed for
his recent surge, don’t they also get credit for his high negatives?
The fact is that Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and
George W. Bush all won elections despite varying degrees of
unsympathetic coverage from the press. The media need to be aggressive
in holding both candidates accountable. But they can’t be blamed for the
fact that tens of millions of American voters now favor the outsider
candidate that many commentators, on the left and the right, detest.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.
