There is no question that Roy Moore’s candidacy for the Alabama Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions has tested conservatives, failing even to create clean breaks along the same divides that President Trump’s candidacy created. Writing in Vox, Jane Coaston sought to argue, per her Dec. 8 headline, why Moore “has conservative media on his side.”
How did the author substantiate such a sweeping thesis? I had to reread the article several times to be sure of this, but it cites only three “conservative” publications with pro-Moore viewpoints to broadly condemn the entire industry. Two of them are not conservative so much as they are pro-Trump — Infowars and Gateway Pundit. The third is Breitbart.
The article parenthetically describes Fox News as “largely supportive of Moore,” without offering substantiating evidence. Given Fox’s stature in the conservative media ecosphere, such a charge certainly deserves more than a throwaway generalization in parentheses, but that did not happen here.
Oddly, the author acknowledges more conservative publications and writers that have challenged Moore than have supported him, naming Jonah Goldberg of National Review and Jonathan Last of The Weekly Standard, and recognizing that “[o]ther conservative outlets, such as Commentary, and some writers at other popular conservative websites, like RedState, the Blaze and Townhall, have also rejected Moore’s candidacy.” (The article even links to my colleague Phil Wegmann’s widely-circulated interview in which Alabama’s state auditor invoked Mary and Jospeh to defend Moore, essentially using a tough report from a conservative editorial page, and one that’s been fairly critical of Moore, in an argument accusing conservative media of being pro-Moore.)
When pushed to explain that discrepancy on Twitter, Coaston replied, “Because as you’ll note, those outlets that aren’t supportive of Moore (or Trump) are being pilloried by the audience they helped to prime.”
Even if that’s true, it’s a critique of the audience, not the actors, so many of which have risked and weathered backlash from readers to publish fair critiques of Moore. So why, then, does “conservative media” deserve to be broadly depicted as pro-Moore? Three websites and an allegedly disgruntled audience?
If the evidence is more significant than coverage in Breitbart, Infowars, and Gateway Pundit (and even some from Fox and talk radio), why wasn’t it cited?
The article includes some interesting quotes from Charlie Sykes and Ben Shapiro, and had it explored pro-Trump websites without holding all of conservative media responsible for the editorial viewpoint of Infowars (for crying out loud), it could have been a worthwhile dive into their coverage. Instead, it’s another frustrating example of why conservatives in the media just can’t win. No matter how responsible their coverage is, outside observers will always find a way to discredit it. That’s okay, we shouldn’t grovel for the respect of our detractors, but those throwing stones from left-leaning outlets should recognize they are often doing so from a glass house of their own construction.
