Multiple women have accused Eric Swalwell of all sorts of sexual misconduct, with incidents ranging from gross advances to obscene text messages to rape.
You could watch a lot of cable coverage, read a lot of articles, and listen to radio segments covering various women’s accusations against Swalwell and his defenses, without ever knowing that the man is married.
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Swalwell’s defense is that he serially cheats on his wife, including with women who worked for him. This ought to disqualify him from being governor of California, before we even determine the truth of the accusations.
But Swalwell’s marriage and his infidelity are often totally ignored by the media.
CNN, to its credit, included his marriage in the original report, but has omitted that detail from nearly all subsequent stories: April 11, April 12, April 12 again, and April 13. Watch this five-minute MSNOW report that discusses his defense, but never mentions that he is basically admitting to serial philandering. Reuters omits the wife, marriage, and infidelity from its stories (here and here).
Because Swalwell apologized to his wife in his denials of the assault charge, you actually see some of these outlets mention his wife and his marital status. But look at another current alleged infidelity scandal, and you’ll see the typical media omission of marriage:
NFL coach Mike Vrabel was photographed being very cozy with NFL reporter Diana Russini of The Athletic, which is owned by the New York Times, and hanging out alone together in a hot tub. Vrabel and Russini say there was nothing inappropriate, and they were hanging out as part of a group.
When the Times covers this Vrabel story, and the questions of journalistic ethics involved, it totally omits that Vrabel and Russini are both married, a fact that casts the hot-tubbing and hand-holding while on the road in a different light.
The news media often omit the marital status of men and women accused of sexual impropriety. It’s an odd tic grounded in the morality of the news media: “Everything is okay as long as it is consensual.”
That simplistic and inadequate belief system forces newspapers to use very odd phrasing.
Does the news media think that being obscene is a problem? Do the editors of major outlets value marital fidelity?
