Blame the Media

Nov. 13, 2015

Presidential candidates from both parties are doing a lot of whining about the media. The Republicans a bit more shrilly than the Democrats, but everybody seems to have a complaint.

This is not new nor news.

Candidates have been lodging similar complaints since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had at each other via scurrilous newspaper attacks when competing to be our third president.

There was a fairly long modern period during which the media pretty much stayed out of the private lives of our presidents and presidential candidates. That Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t walk was rarely mentioned. Harry Truman’s colorful language was not quoted. JFK’s alleged numerous dalliances took place while reporters looked the other way.

Things began to sour during Lyndon Johnson’s turbulent tenure in the White House, at least in part because he believed the media had fawned over Kennedy…and that they were starting to seriously investigate our mess in Vietnam.

Civility left the building altogether during the Nixon Administration and the relationship between the media and politicians became fully adversarial.

It’s not as if reporters of half a century ago ignored real stories. There was plenty of first-rate investigative reporting on Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban missile crisis and our disastrously increasing involvement in Vietnam.

Our obsession with private lives and scandal had not yet fully blossomed. The means of perpetual intrusions had not yet been created.

There are still plenty of real journalists doing important work on important stories.

Their budgets have been slashed and their time or space cut, but they are still doing the hard work.

There are also now two entire cable networks, Fox News and MSNBC, dedicated to little more than blasting away at their political opponents. They do it all day every day, a relentless assault on the senses, including common sense. There are radio programs listened to by millions that do little more than perpetuate rumors and half-truths all the while pummeling their target of choice.

Not to mention endless numbers of websites full of polemicists and attack dogs of various stripes, both amateur and professional.

Anyone running for president in 2016 surely knew this was the environment they were entering; warm and cuddly it ain’t. They must have known, or at least have been told by someone, that every single word they’ve ever uttered or thing they’ve done in public, and likely things they’ve done in private, will be dredged up and discussed ad nauseam.

Hillary Clinton has been complaining about the media and their role in her “vast rightwing conspiracy” since she was First Lady.

She reminds us of her misgivings occasionally but she’s an old pro who understands the futility of this fight.

On the other hand, blaming the media is a well-used page right up-front in the GOP campaign playbook. The liberal media, the left-wing media, the ultra-left media, the lamestream media, the radical media, blah, blah, blah. When in doubt, blame the media.

It is especially amusing that Donald Trump, who needs attention like the rest of us need air and water, is complaining. He wants to control the questions he’s asked, who’s asking the questions, and no more of those mean questions, either. Attention without scrutiny is what he likes best but he’s unlikely to get it.

The loudest of the complainers so far has been Dr. Ben Carson, the current Iowa front-runner. Carson seems genuinely stunned and appalled that reporters are digging into claims he made in his autobiography and questioning several other past statements.

Every detail of his life is not necessarily useful information. But some of us are interested in Carson’s claims that our earth is only 6,000 years old, that evolution is a trick of the devil or that the Egyptian pyramids were actually grain storage facilities.

Journalists aren’t engaged in “gotcha journalism” here; they’re just reporting what he said, and his statements are sufficiently daffy they bear repeating. Nor did the media create stories from Carson’s past no one seems to be able to corroborate — Carson did that.

As a friend of mine pointed out, we’re now witness to the quite bizarre spectacle of a presidential candidate trying to convince us that, yes, he did make a potentially deadly knife attack on another young man. Committing assault with a deadly weapon wouldn’t normally count as a plus in a presidential election, or any election, but Carson wants us to believe he did it.

The painful irony here is if reporters really wanted to “get” the current crop of candidates they’d just ask them simple, boring policy questions. That would embarrass them plenty since no one seems to have ideas that make much sense, and the GOP frontrunners — Trump and Carson — don’t have any at all.

I’m pretty sure they blame the media for that.