The media keeps making these cringeworthy mistakes
Opinion by
Columnist
September 30, 2020 at 11:19 a.m. CDT
In the
aftermath of President Trump’s unhinged, embarrassing and frightful performance
Tuesday night, we are told “the debate” was a dumpster fire, “the debate” was a
low point in American politics, “the debate” was incoherent. The worst
appearance by a U.S. president in history is magically transformed into a
non-personified event — the debate itself. Why do so many headline writers,
anchors and pundits fall into this trap?
This
poor sense of “balance” still afflicts too many journalists, who become nervous
that by reporting what is plain to see, they’re taking “sides.” But the only
side they would be taking is that of truth: The president lacks impulse
control. When threatened, he lashes out and blusters his way past scrutiny. The
president is a racist (telling a white-supremacist group to “stand back and stand by”
should be disqualifying in and of itself), an authoritarian bully (inciting his
followers to intimidate voters at the polls) and untethered to reality. He was
not “too hot” as Trump apologists claimed; he was too nutty.
If
false balance was the major defect running through post-debate commentary, it
was not the only one. Sadly, many of these media mistakes have gone unaddressed
since Trump rode down his fake-gold
escalator five years ago.
The
compulsion to attribute intentionality to Trump’s behavior leads to ludicrous
explanations. Pundits, for example, too often claim that Trump tries to scare
suburban women, a large and critical part of the electorate, so that he can
pump up his base — White males who have never abandoned him. This is
irrational, but worse, it is almost certainly false. Trump
does what he does because he cannot help himself. Does
anyone really believe that he looks at polls objectively? It seems he cannot plan
a day ahead — let alone a month ahead. He certainly cannot control the impulse
to insult and degrade others. His narcissism and lack of
conscience — not calculation — lead him to do things that are self-destructive. There
was no benefit for Trump in refusing to denounce white nationalists at
Tuesday’s debate. That moment was about Trump refusing to be told to
denounce racists.
Likewise,
many pundits were compelled to give former vice president Joe Biden the
nonsensical advice to not show up for more debates, even though his lead is
steadily building and instant polls suggest
he clobbered Trump. Granted, none of us wants to watch another debate, but that
does not mean it is in Biden’s interest to avoid giving Trump every opportunity
to offend voters and depress Republicans. It has become a running joke that
practically everything conventional-wisdom-spouting pundits say is bad for
Biden — e.g., Trump’s rushing through a Supreme Court nomination, Biden’s
decision to respect covid-19 precautions while campaigning — turns out to be a
positive for him. Polls show large majorities of Americans want the next president to nominate
the new justice, favor Obamacare (which
Judge Amy Coney Barrett has said is unconstitutional) and oppose reversing Roe
v. Wade.
As a
corollary to the habitual bad advice syndrome, I would suggest much of the
fault lies in the media image of “voters” as White men. The nondescript voter
in the Rust Belt or in suburbia is a woman, statistically speaking. Women will likely make up 52 to 54
percent of the electorate. Rather than ask how their prototypical White male
would feel about confirming a justice who would likely allow abortion to be
criminalized, they would do well to ask a suburban mom or a 30-something
single, working woman. It does reorient one’s thinking.
Finally,
as poll after poll shows Biden with a commanding lead in the three critical
Blue Wall states he must win (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) and stunning
success in states no Democrat has won in decades (e.g., Georgia, Arizona), the
best-kept secret in media coverage seems to be that the race is not close and
has not been for months.
Granted,
everyone is skittish after 2016, but when national polls, a wide array of state
polls, absentee-ballot requests, early-voting statistics and anecdotal evidence
(e.g., public vigils for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) all point in one
direction, it behooves the media to say so.
Trump
has been behind for months and has done nothing but alienate the groups he
cannot afford to lose (e.g., White women, college-educated voters, older
voters).
It is only
once one recognizes the near-certainty of Trump’s defeat that his plans for
disrupting and discrediting the election can be seen as the last gasps of a
desperate man who has neither the capacity nor the will to avoid proving his
own unfitness to lead.
The media’s
preference for a horse race needs to give way to a preference for the
unvarnished truth.
