Journalism: The Real Loser in the Presidential Debate
Of all the articles I’ve read since Tuesday night’s debate between Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and I’ve read a ton of them, the best one so far has been Roger Kimball’s piece in The Spectator. Instead of focusing on the sparring match between the two candidates, and opining on who won and why, Kimball saw an even more troubling issue on screen from the National Constitution Center: the biggest loser was the once-proud profession of journalism.
A century and half ago, journalism had a tarnished reputation and was justifiably held in low esteem. The standards of truth and style that the great publishers of the 18th century in both America and Britain had deteriorated. Benjamin Franklin’s Gazette and the original New York Post had closed. The New York Times was just a start-up. Publishers found that sensationalism sold papers more effectively than straight news. Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst competed for public attention with exaggerated headlines, and general disregard for the truth. Their goal was to incite and inflame, not to inform. It came to be known as the era of Yellow Journalism.
But just as many stage comedians yearn to be taken more seriously as Shakespearean actors, so the business of journalism began to clean itself up. Standards were established. Schools of journalism like the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the Columbia University School of Journalism were established to position journalism as a profession, just as law and medicine were considered professions. Journalism schools provided training and created standards. Journalism claimed that it upheld democracy by providing the information people need to be free and self-governing. That’s a lofty and noble goal, and although a certain amount of media bias has always and inevitably been present, journalism was held in generally high esteem. Remember when Walter Cronkite was called “The Man Whom America Trusts”? That’s gone now. The twin phenomena of 24-hour cable tv news channels targeted to certain ideologies, plus social media becoming a primary news source for many, have put us back on the road to Yellow Journalism. Tuesday night’s Presidential debate on ABC demonstrated that indelibly.
The title and subtitle of Roger Kimball’s article in The Spectator were ”ABC News is the big loser of the Trump-Harris debate. … David Muir and Linsey Davis, repeatedly pecked at one candidate and not the other.” He then provided these examples: “The evening was supposed to offer Kamala Harris and Donald Trump an opportunity … [to present] themselves to the public and explain their positions on various policy matters that are important to the public. [Instead] it was an event in which … David Muir and Linsey Davis, repeatedly pecked at and corrected, or pretended to correct, one candidate, Donald Trump, while passing over lie after lie after lie emitted by Kamala Harris.
Trump did not say “there were fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville. He did not “incite an insurrection” on January 6. He has not proposed instituting a nationwide ban on abortion. His tax cuts are not a “tax cut for billionaires.” He did not say that there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the election. He has not threatened to weaponize the DoJ to go after his political opponents: on the contrary, he has suffered from that very process, overseen and egged on by the Biden-Harris administration…
Kimball’s piece end with this: … I am not sure that there was a clear winner [in Tuesday’s debate.]. There was, however, a clear loser, and that was ABC News, which thanks to the performance of Muir and (especially) Davis, demonstrated once and for all that ABC is just a partisan propaganda machine in the pocket of the anti-Trump lobby.”
The lopsidedness of the moderation of that debate is the best rationale for a second debate, and the Fox News Channel is the proper host. They can either balance the scale with an equally partisan favoritism on the other side, or they can provide an example of how journalism should operate as a legitimate profession in the service of the public by asking follow-up questions and refusing to tolerate non-answers. Either approach would be better than the debacle we witnessed on ABC on Tuesday night.
(Colin Hanna is President of Let Freedom Ring, USA)
