Holding Journalists To Account For Normalizing Right-Wing Lies
Let’s face it, Republicans are a radical, anti-democratic party with little in the way of policy besides lying. Mainstream media can’t seem to keep from enabling them. If we want government to work for the American people, activists must do something about the 4th Estate’s addiction to normalization.
American democracy has a huge problem most citizens aren’t talking about or are even aware of. It is the scourge of media normalization that takes a radical Republican party and makes it seem normal. Based on a lie they collectively told, 147 Republican members of Congress voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election (the most secure election in history according to Trump’s own DHS) after Donald Trump fomented a coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol. Had the coup attempt been successful we would now live in a dictatorship. In spite of this, mainstream media has already begun reporting on these Republicans as if their behavior then, and now, is acceptable.
Republican politicians and party figures lied for months (really decades considering the GOP’s history of pushing the lie of voter fraud) in a sickening display of anti-democratic behavior, and are now aided by journalists who uncritically pass their lies on to the American people, with the result being worse outcomes for all of us. By uncritically platforming lies, inaccurately describing reality, forgivingly framing abhorrent ideas, and limiting the scope of what is presented to us, major news media routinize deviant behavior in a process called normalization. It happens every day in digital and print media and on TV. Hidden in plain sight, normalization creates a warped understanding of the nation and manipulates the beliefs we have about political parties and their policies. Normalization is societal death by a thousand euphemisms and regular Americans must do something about it.
Mainstream journalists rarely attend to one of their main job descriptions, holding those in power to account. Here’s a great example from last weekend:
No rebuttal, no fact check. Here’s the clip if you’d like to watch. Allowing GOP representatives on air to continue to lie about the election has been happening a lot on the Sunday “news” shows:
By bringing the GOP on their shows to lie and by patiently listening to those lies while offering no push back, journalists help the GOP erase its history of anti-democratic behavior and manipulate national opinion by passing along party propaganda. Alex Shephard wrote in the New Republic last week:
The Sunday shows are not designed to inform or educate. They are barometers of what representatives from the two parties think is important. The goal is not to understand an issue, let alone divine the truth, but to broadcast what Democrats and Republicans care about at that moment. They are vehicles for talking points rather than works of journalism.
We’ve long known that the Sunday shows overwhelmingly book conservatives, a majority of whom now lie to the American people. With their prestige and journalistic sheen, these weekly vehicles for conservative talking points take the abnormal (lying about voter fraud, a secure election, and a coup attempt) and launder it into an acceptable set of beliefs any American could feel valid in holding. This is true for newspapers and digital media as well, which often uncritically pass along the same lies in print form.
Are journalists doing this on purpose? Mostly, no. Normalization often occurs under systemic pressures that no one person is controlling, but rather are the result of capitalistic forces, newsroom paradigms and a large, insidious coterie of so-called “elites.”
One such newsroom paradigm is avoiding the perception of “liberal bias.” Liberal media bias is a myth pushed for decades by the Right with the result that today’s newsrooms cater to conservatives, even now when mostly all they do is lie. In this way Republicans have successfully “worked the refs,” getting favorable coverage and space to lie on a daily basis.
On the press side of things are overworked reporters contending with increasingly shorter deadlines and less pay. This private equity induced nightmare forces weary newsfolk to rely on the formulaic at the expense of nuance and proper context. Tasked with producing multiple articles during the same work week, reporters are often forced into taking sources and public relations materials at their word. There are currently more than six PR professionals for every one journalist in America.
Capitalistic normalizing pressures stem from every corporation’s imperative, the profit motive. Remember the image above of Jonathan Karl just sitting there, taking in Steve Scalise’s lies? Mainstream news orgs are part of giant corporations that have one goal, profit. In as much as it has one at all, mainstream media’s bias is towards making money for themselves and the conglomerates of which they are a part. Corporate media responds to advertisers and shareholders before considering romantic notions of properly informing the public. Media formats are designed to create a buying mood amongst their audience, attracting consumers with inoffensive or sensational fare so as to deliver the most eyes and ears possible to advertisers. Republican voters watch ABC-Disney, as do Independents and Democrats. Jonathan Karl is part of a production meant to appeal to as many of those viewers as possible. Ever wonder how in spite of a “career average approval rating…the lowest for any president in modern polling,” over 3,700 conflicts of interest, and serial lying, media (looking at you, CNN’s Dana Bash) fell over themselves to tell readers and viewers that any day now Trump would “change his tone” or “pivot” from unpopular policy and bad behavior? There are millions of Trump supporters who want to read about him and watch TV segments on him and these humans buy things, just like the non-Trump supporting humans who also buy things and might be attracted to the sensational aspects of Trump coverage. Trump is a ratings and profit bonanza and so mainstream media, conforming to the profit pressures upon it, must normalize him at all costs to democracy.
Capitalistic pressures that create normalizing news coverage intertwine with the interests of society’s so-called elites. Wealthy and powerful people network and work together in ways that increase each other’s wealth and power, as the above example of Trump and Jeff Zucker reveals. How many Americans who repeat the GOP propaganda line that CNN hates Trump are aware of this connection? How many of them are aware of how favorable CNN’s coverage of Trump has been overall?
When it comes to information, supply creates demand — people grow accustomed to what they receive from media and simultaneously don’t know what they’re not receiving (debate, expert opinion, a variety of perspectives, context, truth, accuracy, knowledge of behind the scenes relationships that shape coverage) — this creates a reverse pressure, an audience of American voters that isn’t clamoring for normalization to end.
The process of normalization should piss you off. America is a meaner, more dangerous, less healthy, less fair place to live because of it. Yes, orgs like Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, Breitbart and the Daily Caller will always act as a right-wing disinformation machine, pumping our information ecosystem with disinformation in service to the conservative oligarchs who fund them, but perhaps more pernicious to our society is the process by which the blaring, radical propaganda from the Right is laundered by mainstream media in such a way that lying and corruption and coup attempts become acceptable.
Countenancing lies about the election with credulity, uncritically passing along propaganda, presenting bad faith arguments as one half of two equivalent sides (bothsidesism) and confusing neutrality for objectivity leads to political outcomes that most of us don’t want — and can literally kill us. Consider how historically climate change has been presented in media as up for debate in spite of 97% of climate scientists agreeing that humans are responsible. NYU journalism professor, Jay Rosen, aptly refers to this persistent media behavior as providing “symmetrical accounts of asymmetric realities.”
Normalization leads to a minority of the country dictating outcomes for the majority. Republicans no longer offer anything in the way of policy or legislative solutions for America’s problems — recall that the party did not issue a new policy platform at the 2020 Republican National Convention but instead issued a one page statement boiling down to “We support Trumpism!” In statehouses across the country, Republican legislatures are currently capitalizing on media’s normalization of the Big Lie by pushing a swath of voter suppression measures which will lead to further minoritarian rule by Republicans. By converting GOP radicalism into something palatable, mainstream media normalization results in more Republicans in government, leading to insufficient action on Covid relief, paid maternity leave, government funding for childcare, boosting the minimum wage, tuition free public college, some form of a Green New Deal, barring government officials from owning stocks, capping credit card interest rates, seats for workers on corporate boards and other policies that a majority of Americans belonging to both parties support and that Democratic policy makers advocate for.
While you are raising your kids, working your ass off at your job and just trying to Netflix and chill in whatever time you have left to unwind, these forces of normalization act upon our discourse. How we vote is ultimately shaped by the ideas bouncing around from person to person in our society. The things you and your neighbors know, and believe, about the wider world are told to you by strangers at newspapers and on TV. The pressures in newsrooms combine to create a national culture that understands anti-social GOP behavior — lying, corruption, incompetence, brutality and white supremacy — as normal, acceptable, even inevitable. By lessening the average citizen’s ability to recognize unacceptable behavior, and by focusing outsized attention on the rich and powerful, normalization preserves the status quo, creating a society more tolerant of bad behavior and unsatisfactory outcomes and often unaware of widespread problems. How many Texans were aware they were on the brink of disaster? When media consistently ignores factual stories that are negative or potentially upsetting to the powerful, and especially when it launders reputations and lies, we all suffer.
What on Earth can we do about any of this? Normalization goes on every single day in ways big and small. Most citizens, if they are aware of the problem at all, are not inclined to ignore their existing responsibilities and passions in order to start a major media company that promises no normalization. Where would they even start? How effective would that even be in a sea of disinformation?
Currently there are efforts underway to tackle the problem of disinformation injected into our discourse by the Right. UnFoxMyCableBox.com reminds citizens that their cable subscription automatically puts about $20 a year in the Fox Corp coffers. Sleeping Giants pressures companies that advertise via hateful, disinformation spreading outlets. And a few independent and mainstream journalists like Judd Legum at Popular.Info and Ryan Mac at Buzzfeed expose the links between Facebook and the right-wing propaganda machine. But what can be done about the ways in which mainstream media launders that propaganda for the masses? How can we take on major corporations like CBS-Viacom, ABC-Disney or CNN-AT&T?
A collective understanding of truth is essential to democracy and, as we have seen, a major source of truth decay in our society is mainstream media’s incessant normalization of those who lie. Because calling Jeff Bezos at home and gently reasoning with him is not an option, we must apply pressure to the normalizers in newsrooms in an attempt to change the culture from the bottom up. We must make things uncomfortable for the reporters, editors, producers and publishers who traffic in normalization. Yes, it is not always their fault, but something must be done to build a culture within newsrooms that is intolerant of normalization. We must directly let them know their behavior is unacceptable. It must become embarrassing to normalize. It must become a nuisance to normalize. It must become costly to corporations to normalize. They must change their ways or lose readership. We will not threaten with anything other than the removal of our readership and the exposure of the damage they do to our nation. We will not doxx or harass. With desperation for the survival of our country in our hearts we will demand a truth based society. All citizens must become activists in the fight over reality.
We have decided to focus on a particularly egregious bit of normalization for our first action. The Washington Post decided to launder Ronna McDaniel’s reputation following the Capitol insurrection. Why? We don’t know. It feels particularly egregious. We’d like to provide a little context, introduce the normalizer and then provide you with contacts and a letter you can use if you like for your outreach.
Meet Josh Dawsey, as introduced by his bosses at the Washington Post to potential advertisers. Remember, at news corporations revenue takes precedence over properly informing the public:
You may remember some of the examples from this post that reference McDaniel, the current head of the Republican National Committee. Ronna has a long history of lying to Americans about voter fraud to delude them into voting for her party. She did this as chair of the Michigan GOP:
And she did it in coordination with Trump to sell his Big Lie:
And in spite of all of that, the editors at the Washington Post worked with their writer, Josh Dawsey, to completely erase her active assault on the American public and fashion her a PR piece in the Lifestyle section on January 29th, 2021:
While reminding you that this was written three weeks after McDaniel’s coordinated lies led to a violent insurrection, shit-smearing and death at the U.S. Capitol, we invite you to read the piece for yourself. It’s truly unbelievable and should dispel a common myth amongst liberals that mainstream media somehow represents their interests. But we also invite you to write to Josh and his editors about how angry you are that they would do public relations for someone in a position of power who regularly lies to Americans. You can copy and paste the letter we have written or you can write to express your own feelings of disappointment at their actions.
Contacts for Washington Post normalizers for this action:
Josh Dawsey, Reporter
josh.dawsey@washpost.com Twitter: @jdawsey1
Matea Gold, National Desk Editor
matea.gold@washpost.com Twitter: @mateagold
Greg Barber Director, Newsroom Product
greg.barber@washpost.com Twitter: @gjbarb
Dear Josh, Matea, and Greg,
We are writing in regards to your article for the Washington Post, “RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is trying to hold together a party that Donald Trump might want to tear up” which appeared on January 29th, 2021.
You damage our discourse when you launder the reputations of those who have abused their positions of public trust. For months, Ronna McDaniel abetted Donald Trump’s lies, and lied herself, about the integrity of the 2020 election. Sickeningly, this Big Lie led to the incitement of an insurrectionist mob, resulting in the deaths of 5 people and serious injuries to responding police. We find it bizarre that, rather than print an apology to the American people on behalf of McDaniel, the Post produced for her a redemptive puff piece that bolsters the position of public trust she violated.
You are well aware of the decades long propaganda campaign waged by the GOP regarding voter fraud, a phenomenon so vanishingly rare as to be considered non-existent by experts in the field. To keep this anti-democratic lie alive, the GOP gins up controversy by forming commissions to investigate voter fraud, as did George W. Bush in 2005 and Donald J. Trump in 2017. These commissions are covered with unabashed credulity by mainstream media despite the assertions of experts that they are meritless. Donald J. Trump baselessly called into question the integrity of the 2020 election throughout his campaign, with no pushback from the RNC chair. It is upon this framework that Ronna McDaniel built her own lies about the 2020 election.
On November 6th, McDaniel was telling Fox News anchors to “give us time” to drum up evidence of voter irregularities. On November 21st, she baselessly attacked the integrity of Michigan’s election while simultaneously and absurdly celebrating a congressional victory in the state. The next day, she further aimed to purposefully delude the public by promising to “run down every irregularity.” You point out in your article that “McDaniel allowed two Trump attorneys — Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani — to use the RNC’s lobby for a news conference in which they spouted discredited claims.”
In spite of this you saw fit to abandon your role as journalists and don the cap of Ronna’s head of PR. After noting that she pushed for investigations into the (baseless) voter fraud allegations, you hasten to give her credit for stopping “short of endorsing many of Trump’s most outrageous and unsupported assertions.” Things go downhill from there.
Inexplicably, you describe her as facing “the unenviable task of steering a Republican Party that will have to reckon with Trump and the divisive and uncivil legacy of Trumpism,” as though she was not Trump’s close partner in shaping that “divisive and uncivil legacy.” Indeed, it is her legacy as well.
Engaging in a classic media failure of our era, you absolve her of bad behavior with the trite “critics say” device. To you, McDaniel’s silence in the face of Trump’s “incendiary comments on race, disparagement of women’s appearances, promotion of policies that separated the children of undocumented migrants from their parents, and labeling of the news media as an ‘enemy of the people’” is not reprehensible behavior tantamount to abetment, but rather something she has done “according to her critics” only, thus freeing her from the responsibility of her inaction.
In the sanitizing wash of your rhetoric, she is no longer an anti-democratic liar, but “unfailingly amiable.” Despite years of partnering with Trump and enabling his lies she remains to you both savvy and innocent, choosing “her words carefully…a partisan stalwart clamped in a vise” between those seeking her public acknowledgement of Trump’s role in the insurrection and those who would have her stay quiet. You left out that it’s a vise of her own making.
You uncritically quote her propaganda: “…if the Senate convicts him, the Republicans who vote for it will be letting down the 74 million who supported President Trump and the Republican Party.” The Senate would be convicting Trump based on lies about the election meant to delude those 74 million. Trump and McDaniel are responsible for those lies — and the violence and assassination attempts those lies fomented. Journalism requires that you provide this context.
To hear you tell it, McDaniel is not a liar atop the Republican power structure using her position to attack democracy, to you she’s a humble “mother of two,” a “wife” and an “outsider.” During her rise to becoming the RNC chair, “she cut an unthreatening figure, with a glistening, ever-ready smile and a penchant for modest attire with an off-the-rack feel.” She must be harmless because, since she’s a nice Mormon lady who doesn’t drink, she replaced Reince Priebus’ tradition of “Pints with Reince” with “Milkshakes with McDaniel.”
Lest we start to disbelieve any human could be as utterly wholesome as you depict McDaniel to be, you make sure to further distract from her egregious lying and misrepresentations by noting she indeed has a vice, “casino gambling.”
“I don’t want you to say that!” she said with an embarrassed smile and a self-conscious laugh during the interview. “We’re really good Mormons!”
As you bend over backward to bury her lies beneath a pile of euphemism, seemingly in strict coordination with her team, you characterize her as a capable woman enduring the classic feminist struggle against a patriarchy bent on defining her:
With Trump’s election, McDaniel had arrived. She was at the top of the Republican Party, selected personally as RNC chairwoman by the new president, a perch nearly unfathomable just a few years earlier when she was a homemaker. Still, she couldn’t shake that problem of being defined by the men in her world.
Photos of McDaniel smiling alone or in family photos are nestled among quaint anecdotes, like the one about her organizing her high school squad to cheerlead for George H.W. Bush — anything to distract from the reality of who she is now and the disgusting acts of betrayal to American democracy in which she has engaged.
Journalists are outnumbered 6 to 1 by PR professionals in this country. Certainly stories similar to yours were manufactured in 2017 when McDaniel first took over the RNC. The public has already had the opportunity to read of Ronna’s talents as a mom, her human need for love, and her “she’s just like us” personal style. The only possible interpretation for such “reporting” now is an effort at redemption coordinated with her office. It is abhorrent enough that you would engage in this exercise, as such redemption is wholly unwarranted, but even more disgusting that the Washington Post would allow it. You and your bosses provided her a public relations bonanza that is out of touch with the reality of her role in ushering along Trump’s Big Lie — which threatens our democracy itself. It is hard enough for overworked American citizens to come by accurate representations of powerful figures who behave badly. You do your readers a great disservice when you manipulate their opinions by white-washing Ronna’s deviant behavior.
Because media often produces stories that make bad behavior look okay, while avoiding many stories that, while factual, are negative or distressing to the rich and powerful, as a society we tolerate bad behavior and unsatisfactory outcomes and are often unaware of widespread problems. You engage in such gross acts of normalization at the peril of our democracy.
Please consider your role in undermining truth in our country. Spend some time reflecting on how platforming lies and liars leads to worse outcomes for your fellow citizens. Certainly there are pressures that exist within your newsroom that compel you to normalize deviant behavior, but perhaps you can consider how your efforts lead to a more hateful, more dangerous, less healthy and less fair country for all of us.
E pluribus unum,
New Press News
