Fresh off last week’s jeremiad against double standards and outright hypocrisy on the political Right (my own side), let it be said that the liberal media continues to demonstrate at least as much dishonest inconsistency as do the Trump cultists.
What is needed, from all sides, is a conscious, self-critical commitment to procedures or questions that will allow everyone to behave with consistency and integrity – especially in the news media.
Let’s start with two recent examples of rather obvious double standards by the establishment media, just in the last week. First was when the New York Times stood by its hiring of new editorial board writer Sarah Jeong despite a voluminous history – not just a few random examples, but plenty – of viciously racist anti-white tweets and other statements. As The Weekly Standard aptly noted, this stance by the Times was an obvious departure from its own prior history and standards when dealing with people not left of center.
Worse was the defense of the newspaper by leftist writers pushing the radical notion – one completely contradictory to dictionary definitions, but consonant with the teachings of black racist organizations for the past 30 years – that “racism” is by definition only something that whites can exhibit, because racism is not a matter of bigoted attitudes and actions but exclusively of power dynamics favoring whites.
This is of course a sick and vicious double standard, to the effect that the standards that apply to white people cannot apply to black people. Because nobody with a shred of real morality can possibly countenance such self-evident hypocrisy, let’s not belabor that point.
On Wednesday of this week, it was CNN’s turn to show, again, one of the most common double standards in establishment media. By now it is almost axiomatic, and widely recognized among conservatives, that when a conservative or Republican does something wrong, the wrongdoer’s ideological or partisan affiliation will be prominently included in a “news” story’s lead sentence or paragraph, but when the offender is a liberal or Democrat, the ideology or party won’t be mentioned.
So it was when Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., was indicted on insider-trading charges. Both in the headline and the lead sentence of its online story, and in the onscreen banner while the story ran on the air, Collins was identified as a Republican – soon followed, as it was, all day long, by rather irrelevant but breathless reminders that Collins was the first congressman ever to endorse Donald Trump. Never mind that the allegation against Collins had nothing apparent to do with Trump: The president somehow was portrayed as guilty (of who knows what) by mere association with Collins.
So I checked online for CNN’s coverage of the most recent major indictment I could remember that involved a federal Democratic officeholder. Sure enough, not only did CNN fail to inform its audience in its headline or lead paragraph that indicted Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was a Democrat, but it didn’t mention his party affiliation even once.
This habit is so pervasive that it must be a conscious choice. It is bias to an unconscionable degree.
All of us – “straight” reporters, columnists, activists (and, yes, just interested citizens in conversations with friends) – on all sides of political debates, ought to ask ourselves the following questions every time we report or comment on public affairs.
1. How did we report on or discuss the last similar situation? Did we treat people of the other party or ideology the same as we are doing now? If not, why not? Maybe there is a legitimate reason for apparently disparate treatment – but if so, we ought to be able to identify it concisely and cogently. If we are forced to struggle to explain the difference, that’s a sign that the disparate treatment isn’t defensible.
2. What was our own opinion/position the last time this subject came up? If our position has shifted, why? (Example: In the 1990s, Democrats complained vociferously when independent counsels took years investigating the Clintons, while Republicans said the evidence, not artificial time limits, should determine the length of the probe. Now, we often see just the opposite, from both sides, with regard to special counsel Robert Mueller.)
3. Are we being empiricists, letting the facts lead to any conclusions we reach, rather than deciding our “side” first and then finding reasons to justify or defend the conclusion we want to reach? If, more than 95 percent of the time, one comes down either for or against a party or president, we should seriously doubt our own intellectual consistency.
If we can’t self-police ourselves, and apply the same standards and practices to those with whom we disagree, then shame on us. Anyone for whom this is the case should withdraw, for a while, from the fray.
Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner, and is the author of “The Accidental Prophet” trilogy of recently published satirical, literary novels.
