For all the dangers the rise of Donald Trump poses—to vulnerable communities, to world peace, to the planet’s ecosystem—the one silver lining of Trump’s candidacy is that it has completely exposed the limits and ideological impotence of established media’s “objectivity” myth. Faced with a unique and unprecedented threat in Trump, attempts to find “balance” between Trumpism and wholly unrelated phenomena to its left were tone deaf, and at times bordered on apologies for fascism. Here are some of the worst examples:
1. Clinton’s Emails vs. Trump’s Sexual Assault Allegations
The general election was a tale of two scandals, often lumped side by side: the ongoing FBI investigation into Clinton’s mishandling of government emails and Donald Trump’s ever-expanding list of alleged sexual assault victims. While Clinton’s email scandal was certainly newsworthy (most FBI investigations of candidates are), its relative importance to her fitness for office was dwarfed by the torrent of allegations against the GOP nominee.
Nevertheless, extreme center pundits like ABC‘s Matthew Dowd could not resist equating the two, tweeting out, “Either you care both about Trump being sexual predator & Clinton emails, or u care about neither. But don’t talk about one without the other.” After getting pushback, Dowd doubled down with an equally dubious take: “The response to my tweet is what is wrong with the country. Partisans of each side are unwilling to look at the faults of their own candidate.” “Partisans” on “each side” were just too partisan—unlike Matthew Dowd, dispassionate arbiter of truth.
The debate questions between Trump and Clinton went beyond false balance, with two questions asked about Clinton’s email server and only one asked about Trump’s abuse allegations.
2. Violence by Trump Supporters Is Somehow Also Clinton’s Fault
The media often spoke generically about how “both sides” were fueling an acrimonious campaign. Despite the fact that Trump has called for journalists to be lambasted, promised to defend anyone who assaulted a protester, told one protester he’d “beat the crap out” of him, threatened to punch a protester in the face and insisted another be “roughed up,” the media still found the chutzpah to rope Clinton into it, despite her never once uttering an inciting word.
One of the worst offenders, a New York Times article (3/12/16) used the words “both sides” three times, without presenting any evidence Clinton was contributing to the problem at all. Though the article does briefly mention that “heated words” were “led primarily by Mr. Trump,” it framed the issue with false parity, and populated the piece with quotes to this effect:
The anger from both sides was so raw, they concluded….
…in which those on both sides of a widening divide have begun to see their fellow Americans as a threat to their economic future and basic dignity.
…Richard Daley, who presided over the violent 1968 Democratic convention. “Both sides are fueling this,” he added.
While it’s true anti-Trump protesters had confronted Trump supporters, there was no evidence they were either Clinton backers or had been incited by Clinton to attack anyone. Yet this important point was glossed over, with readers given the distinct impression that two equal halves were egging on their supporters to take matters into their own hands.
3. ‘Race Relations’ Instead of White Supremacy
One of the most common rhetorical tics employed by pundits when discussing Black Lives Matter, or in general conversations about racism, is the false equivalency term “race relations.” It implies that there’s a conflict between two equal parties who simply need to mend their differences—as opposed to one side (white supremacy) wielding power over the other (people of color).
Both Lester Holt and Elaine Quijano used the term in the presidential and vice presidential debates, respectively. Holt insisted we also need to “heal the divide” between the races, while Quijano framed the issue of police brutality by asking, “Do we ask too much of police officers in this country?” Viewers were left with the distinct impression racism was something two parties had to simply talk over and hug out, rather than a centuries-old system of subjugation.
4. Anti-Racism Is the Same as Racism
The New York Times‘ most racially tone-deaf columnist, David Brooks, has spent decades belittling the threat of white supremacy and playing up the scourge of “political correctness.” In a recent screed against the rise of “identity politics” (11/18/16), he casually equated racists and those who fight them:
But it’s not only racists who reduce people to a single identity. These days it’s the anti-racists, too. To raise money and mobilize people, advocates play up ethnic categories to an extreme degree.
To extreme-center pundits like Brooks, joining together to fight your oppressors is just as bad as oppressing. By the same logic, hostages in a bank robbery plotting to overpower their captors are just as bad as the bank robbers themselves, since context and power dynamics are irrelevant to Brooks.
The New York Times’ own reporting isn’t much better. A December 8 piece about Trump fans needing “safe spaces” had this textbook example of runaway false equivalency:
Bias incidents on both sides have been reported. A student walking near a campus was threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab. Other students were accused of being racist for supporting Mr.Trump, according to a campuswide message from March Schlissel, the university’s president.
Threatening violence against vulnerable populations is just like calling racists racist. Though the Times ended up changing the paragraph after a torrent of criticism on social media, the original paragraph perfectly captures the dangerous instinct to cry “both sides” in the face of wildly unequal power dynamics.
A Washington Post piece (11/14/16) condemning anti-Trump protests made this classic comparison:
Sore losers protesting the democratic process are just as useless as hate-filled winners sneaking around towns painting swastikas and racist graffiti.
5. Left and Far-Right Parties in US and EU Are ‘Anti-Establishment’
Daily Beast (9/12/15): the ‘New Politics of Spite’
Despite the fact that Trump is diametrically opposed to virtually everything British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn stands for, the extreme center never missed an opportunity to conflate the two as part of the same, nebulous “populist” wave across the West. The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman (8/6/15), in her prophetically titled “Don’t Worry, Donald Trump Won’t Win. But I’ll Sure Miss Him When He’s Gone,” referred to Trump as “America’s answer to Jeremy Corbyn.” The Daily Beast‘s Maajid Nawaz (9/12/15) insisted Trump and Corbyn both represented the “new politics of spite.” Perennial “both sides”–monger Anne Applebaum over at Slate (8/21/15) linked Trump and Corbyn as the “voice of the bottom feeders.”
A recent New York Times article discussed “populism in the age of Trump,” posting a graphic that lumped leftist parties Podemos of Spain and Syriza of Greece in with far-right National Front of France and Freedom Party of Austria—although they have virtually nothing in common, aside from disliking “the establishment.” Of course, the extreme center misses that the left and far right have radically different definitions of “the establishment”: One side, broadly speaking, opposes the One Percent, the wealthy class; the other is railing against a conspiratorial elite, often Jewish or otherwise othered. One side hates multinational banks, the other hates (((the bankers))). These are not at all comparable, yet one wouldn’t know reading most tracts on the “rise of populism.”
6. Sanders Is Trump
Washington Post (6/8/16)
2016’s most common and reliably dull take was that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were simply two sides of the same coin. This was typically done by pro-Clinton pundits or journalists in an attempt to position two extremes and position Clinton in the Reasonable Center.
- NPR: “5 Ways Bernie Sanders And Donald Trump Are More Alike Than You Think”
- Bustle: “5 Ways Bernie Sanders & Donald Trump Are More Similar Than You Think” [a different article!]
- Atlantic: “What Trump and Sanders Have in Common”
- Huffington Post: “How Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s Campaigns Are Similar”
- Guardian: “Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Look Like Saviors to Voters Who Feel Left Out of the American Dream“
- Washington Post: “This Is How Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Are the Same Person“
- Washington Post: “The Obvious Trump Running Mate? Bernie Sanders, of Course“
Never mind that, sans some vague notions on trade (if you don’t look too closely), Sanders is opposed to everything Trump stands for—or that in the wake of Trump’s surprise win, Sanders has emerged as his harshest critic—it was such a neat, politically expedient narrative, partisan centrists couldn’t resist. Free college is the same as a Muslim registry, single-payer healthcare is just like purging 11 million undocumented immigrants. Everything is the same, ideology doesn’t exist.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
One simply cannot compare Donald Trump, the Twittering Tyrant wanna-be to Bernie Sanders, man of the people social democrat. Bernie has been consistent in his work and positions for 40 years … Donald Trump cannot stay consistent for 40 seconds. Bernie tells the truth, and if the facts change, Bernie re-evaluates … Trump merely makes up his own facts. Bernie talks to an reasons with the American public, Trump demagogues like Hitler and even admires him.
Trump is not fit to be President and the Republican party has taken over this country by cheating, lying and stealing.
Trump has been quite consistent, he’s a con man and a crook. His sense of entitlement is boundless! This has all been well documented by the New York press for forty years.
Consistent in his work and positions for 40 years? He supported Clinton.
is your point that Sanders flipped from opposing Clinton to supporting her? That is natural in party politics, and (if you consider it fully and fairly) it is a totally fair and rational thing to do. He thought is path was better than hers, but when the primary season chose Clinton, he had a choice: Support her or not. Clearly, from his point of view (and mine) supporting her was much closer to his positions that not supporting her. Bernie Sanders has been VERY consistent over decades – anyone claiming otherwise is not familiar with the public record on this issue.
Sanders is just a capitalist-light politician. His role from the beginning was to send people who was naïve to believe him to vote for Killary. Not mentioning his staunch imperialism in foreign policy.
There is further false equivalency in the view that the gatekeepers of what can honestly be labeled “political correctness” deem protofascismo to be as dangerous as principled opposition to the exploitocracy.
The former is normalized
The latter is demonized.
There were several False Equivalencies in 2016 around foreign affairs. The pairing of the new Ukrainian with the quiet revolutions in Georgia and Czechoslovakia and calling Russian actions along their boarders some kind of equivalent to Soviet or Tsarist periods. Others abound.
What about the equivalency between Trump’s and Clinton’s “dishonesty,” “lies,” and “untrustworthiness”? While quite a few fact-check articles on the debates invariably showed different orders of magnitude between the two, didn’t many articles, not specifically about the debates, treat the two candidates as equivalent?
Obviously those articles aren’t equating Trump and Sanders based on their policies. The author is blatantly dishonest in proposing that idea. Trump and Sanders are similar in that they’re both populists, outsides who are running against “the establishment”. Way to go in ignoring that completely.
Thank you! I’ve been wishing someone would make points like these. I wish you had also mentioned how the media cared nothing for equivalency during the primaries, when they virtually ignored Bernie Sanders’s record-breaking crowds and his speeches and focused entirely on Hillary Clinton, at the same time giving enormous amounts of air time to the now presumptive president-elect’s rallies, shenanigans and lies compared to any time they gave to his opponents or the Dems.
At the time, his rallies were poorly attended, often in the hundreds, while Bernie’s rallies were filling stadiums with overflow crowds in parking lots and hastily rented nearby halls. For reasons I may never understand, our corporate media chose to pit Hillary against that man and chose to give him incredible quantities of free publicity while never doing more than the occasional milk-toast discussion of his outrageous lies, calls for violence and the numerous well-founded accusations against him. Simultaneously, they focused almost exclusively on emails, Benghazi, and when anything began looking up for her, even her husband’s infidelities and the false stores of her not being well.
Had our MSM done its job, we’d be in a very different place right now. Were they to do their job now, and expose the incredible conflicts of interest and the fact that this man is filling his cabinet with military generals and billionaires, all of whom appear to be either racist or misogynist or both, and that most seem hand-picked to dismantle the very departments over which they will have oversight, I might begin to have faith. Instead, the MSM let us down at every turn. I can’t help wondering if we have just witnessed a bloodless coup by an organization we don’t yet comprehend exists.
Yep ALL misogynist. Every single one. Billionaires too. Even the women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Donald_Trump
Excellent comment and predictably the Trump-style “Men’s Rights” activist is poised at the ready to “attack.”
The false equivalency model is always used to create the impression that there are two equal sides in any conflict. It’s the frame trafficked in when the Israeli-Palestinian debacle is pivoted into the news cycle due to the latest eruptions of violence.
And it’s used by white racists to demean “Black Lives Matter” with the pithy comeback, “All Lives Matter” as if such diplomatic pabulum resolves the crises that so many Black citizens negotiate on a daily basis.
It’s also amazing how much paid meme-making goes into making any matter related to gender (as in violence against women) “gender neutral.”
It’s statistically true that 90% of serial killers are men, yet a recent documentary sought to create an equivalence between males and females on this issue.
While writers like Eve Ensler have documented the ridiculously high levels of sexual abuse, rape, and general attacks on women WORLDWIDE, usually this subject is blanketed over with angry white guys claiming that some woman attacked them. Otherwise, they do their utmost to prop up tangential arguments which once again seek to set up a false equivalence between men and women on the issues of violence, aggression, dominance and power.
Adam Johnson explains the dynamic brilliantly in explaining the role of power dynamics in struggles between those who face no collective prejudice (or its cultural, economic, and social side effects) and those compelled to seek common cause with others sharing the same struggles.
Mass media isn’t doing its job–as the Fourth Estate–since it was deregulated. No longer is any Fairness Doctrine in place and that’s the chief reason why an outfit like Fox News (which sadly is viewed by millions) could make the FALSE case for war against Iraq by convincing its viewers that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 911 attacks. To this day, many Fox Viewers still believe The Great Lie…
I blame the Democratic Party and their entitled nonsense behind “It’s Her Turn!” They sabotaged themselves in every possible way, beginning with their stupid suburban republican outreach while denigrating the working class which gave the Democrats their electoral power to to stealing the primary from Bernie Sanders. While the Republicans have continued their policy of voter disenfrachisement – a policy which worked for them in at least Michigan and Wisconsin if not elsewhere- the Democratic Party threw at least that many voters over the side with their dismissal of Sanders voters and rural workers.
Now come up with a “moral equivalence” for that!
I agree with all of these, except for number one. I think both were equivalent and both bad enough to keep either of them from holding office. I don’t at all see how the Trump revelations towered over the Clinton email problems. As I see it:
The accusations against Trump – though combined with his words on the tape paint a sickening possible picture – were just that. Accusations made at the height of the campaign, and mostly in the media. Some were tainted by their relationship with tabloids or offers of monetary exchange.
The Clinton email scandal, as well as the leaked emails, was an official FBI investigation which went along with Congressional inquiry and FBI proclamations. Certainly these were no mere accusations – everyone knew misdeeds had occurred, it was only the question as to what level of crime they rose to.
We have to take into account that the video of Trump were a great many years old and were his words – though there’s no reason to think he didn’t follow through on his acts, neither is there 100% evidence that he did so. On the Clinton email scandal was recent act, and combined with the email dump from Wikileaks, showed current evidence of questionable behavior.
Finally, the Clinton’s were the worst people to be trying to call out Trump for his sexual behavior, because all was immediately compared with similar accusations (an acts) which surrounded Bill Clinton – but ultimately they remained accusations of personal behavior. Hillary Clinton’s crimes were political in nature and as great offense to people who believe in open government and ethical behavior in public service as Trump’s acts were an offense to common decency.
This wasn’t a question of whose house I’d rather my daughter had a sleepover at. This was a question of who should be President and who had the right character. And the answer, clearly, was “neither”. The focus should now be on how this party system brought us these two miserable candidates, not nonsense about wether the Russians hacked someone’s email.
Though I doubt it matters, its hard to imagine what is going to emerge from President Obama’s investigation over Russian involvement in tampering the election. Though it hardly matters what comes out – in the current environment each side will believe whatever pleases them and we’ll roll onto whatever disaster awaits our country next.
I disagree. You need to find out what really happened with Hillary Clinton’s e-Mails — there has been so much mis-information on the subject one must re-approach the subject entirely. I suggest NPR’s THIS AMERICAN LIFE aired on November 4, 2016, which can be heard here:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/601/master-of-her-domain-name
This is the false equivalency between errors of OMISSION and COMISSION. Courts of law understand this problem, the court of public opinion almost NEVER does. I think there is no way to characterize her behavior as “CRIME” in any way.
They were not equally unfit for office – evidence the way Trump wants to staff his cabinet – totally radical, full of conflict of interest, and not in line with what america as a whole wants. Heck, Trump literally ‘asked’ the Russians to continue hacking … read that story from July here (and look further to find video of his statements):
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-putin-no-relationship-226282
This amounts to treason, does it not? Equivalent to what from H. Clinton?
Well said, Don Gul. In fact if I had to pick one scandal that was more serious than all the rest, it would be Clinton’s email scandal. It was constantly reported in the frame of concerns over the security of state secrets, and whether Clinton was risking exposing government secrets. I saw this frame as a diversion away from the real issue of public accountability and the possibility of investigation of her tenure as Secretary of State. In other words, only lack of security was problematized by the media, when the secrecy itself should have been seen as the problem.
Why did Clinton set up a private email server in her home? And why did she later deliberately mischaracterize this act as the use of a private email account (not server), and falsely equate it to Colin Powell’s personal email account as Secretary of State? Regular people don’t set up private servers for their own email, and if someone does it is out of a concern for keeping secrets.
So it is Clinton’s carefully planned attempt to KEEP things secret that is cause for suspicion–precisely the opposite of how it was portrayed in the media, where the concern was merely Clinton’s supposed negligence of the security of state secrets. No, she wanted secrecy, and she wanted to keep things secret from other branches of government in particular, and her state.gov email account was not good enough for this. We already know many of the things she would have liked to have hidden (communication related to Libya, Honduras, Haiti, and the Clinton Foundation and the oil monarchies, to name a few), but we certainly don’t know it all. And we never will, thanks to all the emails she was able to delete from her private email server before it was handed over.
Ben – Please listen to the NPR piece – it has answers to ALL of your questions. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/601/master-of-her-domain-name
Randy- Thanks for the link. I did relisten to that (I had caught most of it on the radio at the time), but I remain unconvinced. NPR’s effort to humanize Clinton through voice-acted comedy, Ira Glass’s preempting of cynicism about Hillary through a balancing act of “interpretations”, and the general assumption that incompetence and intended secrecy are mutually exclusive are what sour the piece for me.
Yes, I recognize that Hillary Clinton is inept with computers, but I don’t think we can justifiably believe that there wasn’t an attempt by Clinton and her aides to hide certain things in the FBI interviews, and that her legal team’s deletion of personal emails was only that, despite the FBI’s later findings from ‘resurrected’ deleted emails. These may in fact be true, but there is no rational basis to assume so.
Yes, I’m cynical, but that’s because Clinton’s record as Secretary of State is full of unconscionable acts worthy of hiding, such as pushing (successfully) for war with Libya, rigging a Haitian election, and collaborating with a coup in Honduras, not to mention selling weapons to foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation. That other Secretaries of State have been implicated in crimes of this nature (Colin Powell among them) does not exonerate any one of them, Clinton included.
Frankly, I would have preferred Clinton to win the election over Trump, but I think the email scandal was a big part of her weakness as a candidate, because of all the unknowns that it might have (or probably) covered over. If only we had known about the email scandal before the Democrats gave her the nomination, we could have nominated a stronger candidate!
Is this a false equivalency?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy
Didn’t make it through the whole article. Too lopsided in favor of Clinton.