The Comey Non-Story and the Problem of Meta-Scandals

Hillary Clinton has been the subject of many scandals—some legitimate, some with a mix of fact and fantasy. But last week a “scandal” emerged that was created by media entirely out of whole cloth.

On October 28, FBI Director James Comey dropped a “bombshell” on Clinton, informing congressional committee chairs that his agency had found more emails “pertinent to the investigation” of her private email server, and was looking into the matter. Just like that, chaos broke out, and the entire presidential election hung in the balance.

The broader issue of the Clinton “emails” is certainly a story worthy of coverage: It involves the mishandling of sensitive government information and an assortment of lies and half-truths advanced by Clinton for months.

But the Comey letter wasn’t a scandal; the letter didn’t actually say anything new, and certainly nothing damaging to Clinton. What emerged that afternoon and into the weekend was a textbook example of a meta-scandal: a scandal based entirely on a possibility of a scandal, without any actual substance behind it.

Here are a few examples of front-page headlines, illustrating how media covered the story:

• “Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign” (New York Times, 10/29/16)
• “FBI Opens Email Probe: In Manchester, Trump Pounces on New Clinton Controversy” (New Hampshire Union Leader, 10/29/16)
• “FBI Drops Email October Surprise” (Tampa Bay Times, 10/29/16)
• “Will the Comey Bombshell Really Shake up the 2016 Race?” (NBC News, 10/31/16)
• “How the Comey Email Controversy Could Poison a Hillary Clinton Presidency” (Wall Street Journal, 11/1/16)

Notice how the framing of these stories is based entirely on the existence of a scandal or “controversy,” without the messy work of showing why the Comey letter, as such, is scandalous or controversial. The “scandal,” such that there was one, was simply asserted by media, who breathlessly rushed to declare a crisis without pausing to examine how much it was a crisis of their own making.

Even the use of the phrase “reopening the investigation” gave the impression this was something beyond a question of thoroughness. The fact that the substance behind the letter was, at best, entirely unknown was buried in the weeds of the articles, and most readers were left with the impression something important was happening. What exactly? Unclear. But something important and bad and involving Clinton and emails and the FBI.

Then there were the meta-scandal takes: How will Clinton respond? How will this affect her in the polls? All reinforcing, either purposefully or incidentally, that there was something behind the latest dust-up.

But, as it turns out, there wasn’t. Days later, Comey released a statement saying the FBI had reviewed the emails, none of them were material and the investigation remained unchanged.

Many have been been severely critical of Comey for dropping such a sensitive piece of pseudo-information 11 days before an election, and they’re right to do so. But the incident had two parties working side by side: a reckless FBI and a media who responded to innuendo rather than evidence.

Indeed, if the FBI had something of substance on Clinton, the media would be right to respond in excited tones, but it didn’t. It had a letter about a future investigation that was entirely independent of Clinton’s own actions and words, but the 76-point font headlines about a “new controversy” gave the impression of new and damaging criminality.

A similar phenomenon, as FAIR has noted previously (11/25/16), happens with coverage of terrorism. A preponderance of terrorism coverage is about fake FBI plots, hypothetical terror attacks, and the mindless dissemination of ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda. This creates meta-terrorism, or the terror caused by terrorism coverage that never stops to examine the objective, real-world threat at hand.

Media don’t operate in a vacuum. High-stakes elections and highly volatile voters must be factored into their coverage. FBI looking into some emails is certainly worthy of mention, but when breaking the news and framing it, media ought to more clearly note that nothing new of substantive was actually revealed, instead of reflexively pulling out the “Clinton controversy” playbook.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.

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