How Should the Media Cover the 2022 Midterms?

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/wait-what/62446e05199fdd0021429452/midterm-elections-2022-trump-media-bias/

How should the media cover the political landscape when one party has gone full arsonist? It’s a question that looms large as America struggles against the rise of the antidemocratic movement at home. The midterm elections are a little more than 220 days away. Republicans have already promised revenge if they win back the House—including removing some Democrats from their committees as a punishment for Democrats stripping QAnon-pushing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and white-nationalist-loving Representative Paul Gosar of their committee assignments—but it’s unlikely that would be the end of it. Senator Ted Cruz is already predicting President Joe Biden’s impeachment: “Yeah, I do think there’s a chance of that, whether it’s justified or not,” Cruz told the listeners of his podcast. Republicans are probably hoping that they can prevent Democrats from holding Donald Trump accountable for his failed coup through intimidation. American politics have been dysfunctional, but never has one party rejected democracy itself.

Reporters at mainstream news outlets puzzled over how to cover Trump. How do you report and contextualize the words of a politician who is not bound by the truth? How do you write about lies without seeming biased for calling them lies? And just when they started to figure it out—calling lies lies, for example—Trump was (temporarily) gone, and a sea of mini-Trumps also unbound by truth and Democratic norms flooded Washington, D.C., and statehouses across the country. If there were a useful litmus test for Republican candidates, it would be their ability to provide a factual answer to the question of who won the 2020 election.

Opinion writers like myself don’t need to worry about presenting a balanced view (or more to the point, maybe, the appearance of a balanced view). But what about reporters? They are supposed to invoke neither fear nor favor. How do they navigate the sticky wicket of a two-party system in which only one party seems to value the truth?

The Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, who has written extensively on this topic, has recommended the “truth sandwich”—the tactic by which a reporter properly quotes a lie by surrounding it with truth. Her advice for the media as the midterms approach? “The mainstream press (the reality-based press, to distinguish them from the right-wing press) should focus on what's good for citizens and not the horse race aspect of the midterms, and they should call out lies clearly.” She added that she’d also like to see “more focus on voting rights and gerrymandering.”

*snip*

[Wounded Bear]

1. I'd almost rather they wouldn't...

[bluecollar2]

2. How about they start by

Hiring professional journalists educated at proper universities and colleges?

It's a long shot, but worth a try.

[yellowdogintexas]

4. preferably journalists who graduated prior to the stealth takeover of journalism

programs by the #KochRoachBrothers.

[Iggo]

3. In a way that's miles better than the way they're going to.

But this is “wisdom to know the difference” territory.

And I got real shit to worry about.

[uponit7771]

5. K&R, M$M will go bothesides because they think they're safe from MAGA Facism

[Johnny2X2X]

6. Dems need to seize control of the narrative

The economy! Jobs, wage growth, and GDP growth should each be getting as much coverage as inflation, yet I rarely see Dems talking about them, why?

Ukraine! Dems are doing a piss poor job of reminding the country that the Republicans tired to hand Ukraine to Russia for 4 years and Trump was even impeached over trying to screw them over.

Covid! Dems are losing the messaging here too, the message needs to be that Dem initiatives are what got us mostly past the pandemic. Republicans were dead wrong on Covid and hundreds of thousands of people died because they listened to Republicans.