Quote du jour | The Falsity of False Equivalence

If Donald Trump becomes president, the news media will bear a large share of the blame. I know some (many) journalists are busy denying responsibility, but this is absurd, and I think they know it. […] polls showing that the public considers Hillary Clinton, a minor fibber at most, less trustworthy than a pathological liar is prima facie evidence of massive media failure. […]

The media haven’t treated Clinton fibs as the equivalent of outright Trump lies; they have treated more or less innocuous Clintonisms as major scandals while whitewashing Trump. Put simply, until the past few days the media have had it in for Clinton; only now, at the last moment or possibly after the last moment has the enormity of the sin begun to sink in.

Aldus Paul Krugman vandaag in The New York Times.

Hebben Amerikaanse media er in het verleden met name een handje van gehad om – overigens volstrekt ontrecht – te zeggen “both sides do it,” de laatste tijd wordt vooral naar één partij gewezen als zijnde onbetrouwbaar. En dat is dan ook nog overduidelijk de verkeerde:

[…] the problem hasn’t just been the normalization of Trump, it has been the abnormalization of Clinton. Consider the AP report on the Clinton Foundation. An honest report would have said, “The foundation arguably creates the possibility of self-dealing and undue influence, but we’ve looked hard and haven’t found much of anything.” Instead, the report played up meetings with a Nobel Peace Prize winner as being somehow scandalous.

And it’s still happening, if not quite so relentlessly. We’re still seeing reports about how something Clinton did “raises questions,” “casts shadows,” etc. – weasel words that allow reporters to write negative stories regardless of the facts.

En bij het eerste debat tussen Clinton en Trump, dat vanavond plaats zal vinden, zal de moderator van het debat iedere opzichtige leugen van Trump dan ook gewoon laten passeren:

The head of the Commission on Presidential Debates […] Janet Brown said that it’s not the moderator’s job to factcheck. “What is a big fact, what is a little fact?” she said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

En dat is uiteraard precies wat Trumps campagne wil: “I really don’t appreciate the campaigns thinking it is the job of the media to go and be these virtual fact-checkers,” aldus Trumpwoordvoerder Kellyanne Conway.

Want waarom zouden we feiten een mooi verhaal moeten laten verpesten? Dáár zijn de media toch niet voor?