National media’s love for the “Republicans pounce” trope is on the wane, says Commentary’s Noah Rothman.
“The phenomenon is real and reflects a once common bias that I think has been largely corrected by most in media,” he wrote on July 26. “Conservatives properly stigmatized it.”
Noah, I love you, but we’re going to have to agree to disagree. The press’ love for reframing stories to focus on “GOP overreach,” particularly after Democrats or liberals suffer a scandal or commit some minor outrage, is alive and well. Also, to be clear, the chief criticism of the “GOP pounce” cliche isn’t that newsrooms are writing right-wing reaction pieces. It’s that the right-wing reaction pieces are often the first time that major news events are mentioned at all by certain newsrooms. (See: here and here.)
Rothman’s comment was in response to an article I wrote about the Washington Post doing the pounce thing. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said that those who vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court would be “complicit in evil.” The Post responded to this ludicrous comment with a headline that read: “‘Get a grip’: Republicans seize on Booker comment that Kavanaugh supporters are ‘complicit’ in ‘evil.’”
There’s plenty more where that comes from, including two examples from this week alone (it’s not even Wednesday).
CNN reported Tuesday that, “President Donald Trump … again seized on what he called a ‘terrorist attack’ in London to call for tougher anti-terror measures, even though the incident was still in the early stages of investigation.”
The report added, “In addition to declaring the incident a ‘terrorist attack’ before officials in London, Trump said the perpetrators are ‘animals.’”
First, this isn’t even true. A car crashed into a barricade outside of the Houses of Parliament early Tuesday morning. The BBC reported at 5:36 a.m. EST that the Westminster “car crash is being treated as terror attack.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted later at 6:17 a.m. EST, “Police have confirmed that the incident is being treated as a terrorist act. All Londoners, like me, utterly condemn all acts of terrorism on our city.”
Trump didn’t tweet about the attack until 7:42 a.m. EST.
But second, come on. Is GOP or Trump “overreach” a necessary story in the immediate aftermath of a potential terrorist attack? For CNN, apparently it is.
“Trump’s response is not the first time the U.S. President has seized on an incident in the U.K. to call for a hardline response to prevent terrorism,” the CNN article concludes. There you go.
But wait, there’s more!
On Aug. 13, in a report about the FBI firing disgraced former counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, CNN reported that “his involvement in both [the Clinton email and Russia] investigations has been seized on by Republicans as evidence of anti-Trump bias in the bureau and those investigating potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow.”
The New York Times meanwhile took a gentler approach. The paper didn’t make “pouncing” the focus of its report on the Strzok firing, but it still included a line about Republicans “seizing.” In fact, it made it only one sentence before turning its focus to the GOP reaction.
“Mr. Trump and his allies seized on the texts — exchanged during the 2016 campaign with a former F.B.I. lawyer, Lisa Page — in assailing the Russia investigation as an illegitimate ‘witch hunt,'” the Times reported.
This comes after a separate Times article published on Aug. 10, titled, “‘Abolish ICE’: How Republicans Seized on a Liberal Rallying Cry.”
Bear in mind these examples come from the last couple of days. To be fair, newsrooms have published “seize” and “overreach” stories aimed at Democrats. But the trend still heavily favors the other political party.
I’ll give Rothman this: The phenomenon is becoming less pronounced over time, perhaps thanks to greater awareness. But I disagree with his assessment that it has been “largely corrected.”
Full disclosure: This author is a paid contributor with CNN/HLN.
