Major media organizations have suddenly discovered a passion to act as a check on the powerful.
“One thing is certain in the presumptive era of President Trump. Journalists are going to have to be better — stronger, more courageous, stiffer-spined — than they’ve ever been,” wrote the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan.
A few weeks later, the New York Times announced the formation of a new investigative unit to cover the federal government. Many in the press cheered the development as a good first step in establishing some sort of media “oversight” for the incoming Trump administration.
Calls to action are noble. Holding the powerful to account is the reason the press is in the First Amendment, and the power that needs the most scrutiny and skepticism is our federal government. So, cheers!
But where has this fire been for the last eight years? The corollary of the creation of the Times’ new investigative unit is that it didn’t exist during the presidency of Barack Obama. It’s not as if President Obama and his administration have been the most transparent in history, to coin a phrase, somehow obviating the need for press scrutiny.
In fact, it has been the opposite, according to the Society of Professional Journalists, which sent a letter to White House press secretary Josh Earnest in September listing specific ways in which transparency has gotten worse under Obama.
Officials have blocked reporters’ requests “to talk to specific staff people,” the group said, imposed “excessive delays in answering interview requests that stretch past reporters’ deadlines,” and “officials convey information ‘on background,’ refusing to give reporters what should be public information unless they agree not to say who is speaking,” Additional grievances include, “federal agencies blackballing reporters who write critically of them” and a “continued lack of meaningful visual access to the president by an independent press pool.”
The letter doesn’t even get to the details of the 2013 scandal in which the Justice Department was found to have secretly obtained at least two months worth of office and personal telephone records belonging to Associated Press journalists.
The letter doesn’t discuss the DOJ using the Espionage Act of 1917 to name Fox News’ James Rosen as a “criminal co-conspirator” in an investigation involving leaked classified information.
It doesn’t even get into the fact that the Obama White House set a record in 2014 for denying the most Freedom of Information Act requests of any administration.
The SPJ isn’t alone in highlighting the Obama administration’s treatment of news media. Many in the press, including those at the Post and the Times, agree that it has been less-than-stellar.
But it is only now, now that Republicans are to retake the White House, that newsrooms are recommitting themselves to their mission of holding the powerful to account?
It’s good that the press appears now to be interested in treating the subjects of its coverage with skepticism, its eight-year hibernation notwithstanding.
Nobody should fault the major media’s new zeal, and we welcome it. But it would be nice if one could be confident that it was not the result of simple left-liberal and Democratic partisanship. It is a good reminder of one major source of media bias: editors and reporters are more skeptical toward some subjects and politicians than toward others.
That skepticism gap has been glaring in recent days. Compare coverage of terrorist attacks
In the aftermath of deadly attacks on civilian targets, many of which turn out later to be coordinated terrorist attacks, it is usual to hear media cry, “Wait and see!” But when it comes to alleged hate crimes, especially if someone claims they may be connected to Trump, newsrooms rush to judgment, publish and are properly damned.
Media incaution in reporting alleged hate crimes makes its caution after terrorist attacks looks like what it is, politically correct cowardice.
The skepticism gap also reveals a stunning level of naivety, which should be deeply embarrassing for organizations charged with the task of discerning fact from fiction.
There was a rush to repeat the unverified claim of an 18-year-old Muslim woman who alleged that three Trump supporters bullied her on a New York City subway. Her story was a lie, and she was arrested later for filing a false report.
Reporters were also left looking foolish after they suggested that an arson attack on a black church in Alabama was racially motivated. The perpetrator scrawled “Vote Trump” in graffiti on the church wall. Journalist leapt to the conclusion that the perpetrator was a Trump supporter. But eventually the man police arrested for the crime is both black and a congregant.
It’s good that newsrooms want to hold the president-elect accountable. It’s good that the press seems excited about rooting out corruption in Washington.
But it would have been nice to see more of this since 2008. The problem isn’t the major media skepticism toward some subjects, it’s the lack of skepticism toward others.
