CNN’s Jake Tapper accidentally stumbled upon the issue at the core of Major League Baseball’s current predicament after pulling the All-Star Game from Georgia: the media.
In a Twitter thread, Tapper determined that there was no way for MLB to avoid this becoming a political issue. After all, “If MLB hadn’t acted, individual players would certainly have been asked from now until July whether they were boycotting or not,” Tapper said. “It would have — arguably — become a bigger issue.”
3/ If MLB hadn’t acted, individual players would certainly have been asked from now until July whether they were boycotting or not.
It would have — arguably — become a bigger issue.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 7, 2021
And he is right. Baseball players would have certainly been asked for the next three months about whether they would boycott. They would have been asked, repeatedly, by a media that was encouraging a boycott from the moment Georgia’s election law passed. They certainly weren’t simply reporting on the law or the boycott, because they were lying about the law or promoting politicians lying about the law.
Tapper is as guilty of it as anyone else. Tapper has had Stacey Abrams, who has spent the last two years lying about voter suppression in Georgia, on his show repeatedly to talk about voting rights. This includes on March 14, when Abrams called proposed changes by the Georgia Legislature “a redux of Jim Crow,” a talking point that made its way to President Joe Biden even after the most restrictive proposals were not included in Georgia’s law.
Abrams is most responsible for whipping up a frenzy over Georgia’s new voting law. She insisted that the 2018 race for governor was stolen from her, and, to this day, has not conceded that she lost. People such as Tapper continue to pretend that she is a reliable voice on voting rights, rather than a self-interested partisan actor, and refuse to hold her accountable.
Establishment media outlets offered only the softest of pushbacks to Biden’s lies about Georgia. ESPN offered no pushback during its interview with Biden and has continued to take whatever activists say about the law as fact. The Washington Post fact-checked Biden’s claim, saying that Georgia’s law would expand voting opportunities for most voters, and yet, that fact check was not blasted out by reporters who would have certainly pilloried the previous president for lying.
Tapper could have had a moment of introspection. He correctly noted that players would have been hounded about this issue for the next three months. But he ought to see the next logical step. They would have been hounded by the media, including many of the same outlets that refuse to hold Abrams and Biden accountable for their lies.
