An exchange on CNN this afternoon shows that the collapse of fact-based journalistic integrity continues its sad progression.
Even as the public tells researchers, rather passionately, that it detests the establishment media’s refusal to draw adequate, old-style distinctions between fact and opinion, the media continue to obliterate those lines. All day, every day, the evidence rushes in, so this particular example, at about 2:30 EDT, the above-noted date and time, is far more the rule than the exception. Still, it is instructive.
The segment was CNN Newsroom, hosted by Anderson Cooper. It’s one of the network’s supposedly straight-news shows. The interviewee was another CNN headliner, Don Lemon, listed on the screen chyron as a “CNN anchor” and generally treated by the network as an objective voice, believe it or not.
Yet, with Cooper nodding his head in apparently entire agreement, with not a hint of attempt by either anchor to keep things objective, Lemon let loose with the statement that President Trump “is a bigot, he’s a racist, he’s a hypocrite. That’s a fact.”
Read that again: “That’s a fact.”
How, pray tell, is that a “fact?” And how could Cooper let that statement go unchallenged, or at least uncorrected with even a fig-leaf statement such as, “Well, Don, lots of people believe that, and they present substantial arguments, but let’s let the audience decide that?”
I am not even saying that Lemon’s judgment is wrong. I happen to believe Trump is a hypocrite and, worse, a horrible bigot. In other places, I can provide plenty of reasons to support that opinion. Still, it is undeniably an opinion. The assessment, especially of bigotry, is debatable.
Different observers, reasonable observers, can easily interpret Trumpian statements and actions in different ways. Yes, it is possible to oppose illegal immigration on grounds other than bigotry. Yes, it is possible to warn of a decline in suburban lifestyle quality without meaning the warning to have racial connotations. And yes, yes, and yes, plenty of people can agree with individual Trump positions without themselves being racist, even if Trump’s notorious infelicity of language at least suggests ethnic bigotry.
Now, here is an actual fact: A statement whose accuracy can be debated by reasonable people is not a fact. It is, by definition, an opinion. To call the president of the United States a “bigot” and a “racist,” and to call that assessment a “fact” while on a supposedly straight news show, is to abuse both the English language and journalistic ethics beyond recognition.
This is why Trump is so successful when he responds to any inconvenient reporting by calling it “fake news.” This is why his supporters believe him. This is why he gets away even with the dangerously demagogic statement that the media is “the enemy of the people.” He strikes political pay dirt this way because the media has put its integrity in hock. The establishment-media labels rank opinions as facts, exhibits outlandish bias while feigning objectivity, and refuses to police itself.
If the media wants to lament the degradation of political discourse and the rise of political paranoia and wild conspiracy theories, it can easily find a prime contributor to its discontent by looking in its own collective mirror.
