The past few weeks have been a real eye-opener in viewing the resident evil within the media. A young man, Kyle Rittenhouse, was “convicted” in the court of MSNBC and CNN for being a white supremacist and a murderer. The incident was described as racially motivated in spite of the fact that the defendant’s victims were all white.
Purveyors of hate such as the JNCD bunch (Joy Reid, Nicolle Wallace, Chuck Todd, and Don Lemon, to name just a few) all find it good for their brand to convey blatant misinformation. It is a true testament to their callousness that they probably all slept soundly at night knowing that their misinformation increased the probability that an 18-year-old would unjustly spend life in prison. Thank God that there were “Twelve (non) Angry Men (and women)” on the Rittenhouse jury. But make no mistake: Thanks to the JNCD mob, Rittenhouse’s life as he once imagined and hoped is now over.
The seeds for unparalleled media dishonesty were planted, or certainly amply fertilized, under President Donald Trump, when cable news and major newspapers found that divisiveness was good for business. Ratings and readership soared, not to mention acclaim. Pulitzer Prizes were awarded to the New York Times and the Washington Post for breaking the Russian collusion story. Maybe you know both publications from their respective tag lines, “all the news that’s fit to print” and “democracy dies in the darkness,” both fully on display as they ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Going forward, a lawsuit from Rittenhouse is no sweat for the media. In the worst case, MSNBC will shell out perhaps $10 million — a drop in the bucket for parent NBC Universal with $104 billion in revenue. CNN is part of Warner Media with $30B in revenue. Reckless journalism that stokes divisiveness is part of their business model. Any consequences for the JNCD? As implementers of the business model, they won’t miss a beat; maybe, they’ll even be rewarded.
My recommendation is that the courts not only award damages to victims such as Rittenhouse, but insist that they inflict pain on the actual people who are purveyors of hate. If NBC pays $10 million to the defamation victim, the courts should require NBC to fire the actual people responsible for the “white supremacist “defamation. In the spirit of eye-for-an-eye, the released employees should represent a payroll equal to $10 million in annual salary. Pun intended, in today’s racially charged world, it is time for the JNCD crowd to have skin in the game.
Long ago, young journalists at CBS looked to Walter Cronkite in developing their skills and methods. NBC junior reporters had Chet Huntley and David Brinkley to learn from. Yesterday’s Edward R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith, and Frank Reynolds bear no resemblance to today’s role models: the JNCD crowd. Even Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein don’t look the ’70s Woodward and Bernstein! Only by seeing a few big heads rolling will junior reporters learn why the Founding Fathers knew of the critical role that a free press would play in a republic.
As a former business school dean, I used my title a few years ago to write to 20 journalism deans, dean-to-dean, and implore them to undertake research projects that studied ethics and veracity in journalism. I noted that in 2018, the trustworthiness measure of journalists was fast approaching that of car salesmen and approaching the lowest group: members of Congress! I had witnessed the late 1980s when business schools began studying and teaching business ethics, now a mainstay of all curricula, and I volunteered to help inspire a similar revolution in journalistic ethics. Not one journalism dean chose to write back.
Only by insisting on personal responsibility in defamation suits will the courts serve as our last hope.
Frederick Winter is the former dean emeritus of the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.
