Obviously hypocritical

Want to Know Why Roy Moore Might Win? Blame the Media.

By MATT LATIMER

In the wake of the Roy Moore fiasco, a number of “hot takes” have made their rounds in the media. How obviously hypocritical it is, for example, for evangelical leaders to stand behind a man credibly accused of sexually assaulting a minor. The dim-witted tribalism of people like Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, who all but said she’d elect Jack the Ripper to the Senate as long as he pledged to overturn Roe v. Wade. How Donald Trump could spend most of the 2016 campaign and beyond reveling in accusations against Bill Clinton—that Clinton of course denies—while taking Moore’s own denials at their word. And more to the point, how the president, accused of sexual misconduct by far more women than Senator Al Franken has been, still couldn’t resist taunting Franken from his (undoubtedly gold-tinged) glass house.

All of these are deserving of comment, to be sure. But there is one hot take that the media seems to be missing—the one about the role it has played in creating this sad, sordid, sickening mess in the first place.

How have we reached a point in this country when nearly half the voters of a U.S. state so mistrust, and even revile, major media outlets that they are willing to brush aside credible evidence and elect an accused sexual predator simply out of spite? How have we reached a point where a president of the United States can just declare “fake” news he doesn’t like—and largely get away with it?

In at least one survey, trust in the media—the necessary vanguard of any free society—is even lower than trust in Trump, which itself is nothing to tweet about. How on earth has this happened?

It is easy, of course, to blame Trump himself—and his shrewd if unseemly campaign to delegitimize any and all media outlets that criticize him. It’s also easy to dismiss a certain segment of voters as simply being—er, deplorable. But that’s not the reason we are here—in an era where some 50 people can credibly report sexual misconduct allegations about a Senate candidate to a major newspaper and yet that candidate still has a chance to win. This despite the fact that the allegations are coming from the very same newspaper whose credible reporting once helped bring down a Republican president.

No, the real reason for a situation that allows the Roy Moores and Donald Trumps of the world to rise above mere laughingstock status is that the media has totally lost its connection with a large portion of the nation, almost all of them conservatives. Worse, the media has become what Trump and allies refer to as “the opposition party”—and, as such, a most useful foil for the Trump administration.

This problem is real. The anger against the mainstream media is deep-seated. And, as difficult as it is for many to accept, much of the anger is justified.

For many years, while Trump was still choosing fake apprentices on a TV show and Moore was still wandering in front of Hot Topic and Forever 21 at the local mall, the media—and by that I mean the major networks, most major newspapers and cable news programs outside of Fox—has displayed a vexing double standard against conservatives. Those in the media unwilling to even see that as a possibility—and I’m sure there are many—are hopelessly lost to their own biases.

Remember all of the hostile press conferences and exchanges that Washington reporters routinely had with the Obama White House, or when Obama’s daily utterances were challenged every day on CNN? Conservatives don’t. Although Obama veterans surely see it differently, the press corps offered largely favorable coverage of the Obama years—at least when compared to Republican administrations. Plenty of surveys bear that out. Such as this one. And this one. And articles such as this one. And this one—this one, too. Conservatives do remember, however, the endless attacks on Reagan’s mental abilities, on George H. W. Bush’s alleged out-of-touch elitism, and on his son’s various verbal miscues and alleged racial insensitivity.

And then there’s the media’s constant and well known distrust of Republican motives. While the bungled rollout of Obamacare, and its website glitches, did get its fair share of negative coverage back in the day, few if any prominent mainstream journalists ever doubted the president’s intentions or his commitment to helping improve the lives of his fellow Americans. Can the same be said of coverage of Reagan’s welfare reform program or George W. Bush’s effort to respond to Hurricane Katrina or the Republican Congress’ current tax cut plan? Conservatives certainly don’t think so.

Were there long, online trackers of Obama’s every “lie” or misstatement as there are of the current Republican president’s? Of course not. Trump is unarguably a special case when it comes to bending the truth, but all presidents stretch the truth from time to time—Obama included. As CNN’s own Jake Tapper recently noted, “President Obama said things that weren’t true and got away with it more for a variety of reasons, and one is the media was much more supportive of him.” I’m not by any means a defender of Trump, but it’s hard to argue the media is attempting to offer any semblance of balance in the light of studies, such as Harvard’s, that showed 93 percent of Trump’s media coverage has been negative.

Trump supporters—as well as conservatives who might not otherwise be inclined to support Trump—have noticed. And it means that today, many on the right simply have no use for the mainstream media. Fox News would have no purpose, no reason for being, if more conservatives felt that their views were getting a “fair and balanced” perspective on the major networks. Indeed, one year ago nearly half the nation elected as a president a man whose most important qualification for high office seemed to be that the media hated him.

For one, networks could end the customary two- or three- or four- on one panels discussing the news of the day where people like former Reagan aide Jeffrey Lord and/or some other person no one has ever heard of are the lone defenders of the “conservative view” against a slew of heavy-hitting liberals. For another, news organizations seeking to report on the issues affecting the entire nation in an unbiased fashion might want to hire more reporters who haven’t spent much of their lives in the Acela corridor, where the last Republican they voted for was Michael Bloomberg. (Hint for recruiters: If everyone you interview knows immediately what the Acela corridor is, keep looking.)

Of course the first step is for the heads of the major media outlets to actually care about the problem. Despite a few half-hearted efforts during the aftershocks of 2016 election to try to better understand the Trump voters that many reporters didn’t know even existed, it’s not clear that most really do care. There’s very little incentive in today’s tribal climate to try to offer a more balanced picture on various issues or to hear out the other side—to have a frame of mind that accepts that maybe tax cuts can help spur job growth, or maybe the Obama administration did make some mistakes, or maybe every single thing Trump does and says isn’t by definition an outrage requiring days of focus and attention, or maybe federal regulations have in some cases gone too far, or maybe there are other smart, well-meaning Republicans who aren’t Susan Collins or Lindsey Graham.

But the unwillingness to address this problem now could well lead to a second Trump administration—and all of the horrors that might be unleashed on the world as a result. And a reluctant-to-change media will be as much to blame for that anyone else.