By David Harsanyi
Friday, January 17, 2020
As I note in my New
York Post piece today, I don’t believe that Martha McSally, who is serving
her first term in the Senate after being appointed to take John McCain’s seat,
is going to be helped much by accusing CNN’s Manu Raju of being a “hack.”
Attacking the press might be an effective way to excite national conservatives,
but it probably does little to entice independents and moderates in Arizona.
One group, however, was greatly affected by the
interaction: journalists, who seem to believe that McSally has engaged in some
great sacrilege. A distressed National Press Club statement calls her comment
“ethically wrong.” The New York Times’
Michael Barbaro says it is “never” ok to attack a journalist. One wishes there
would have been this level of outcry when Elizabeth Warren, also a senator,
called Fox News a “hate-for-profit racket.” But so it goes.
The Washington Post’s
media critic labeled the interaction “chilling.” Now, “chilling,” it seems to
me, would more appropriately describe the government spying
on reporters or throwing someone into
prison in effort to appease foreign theocrats. I’m pretty sure, at this
point, the largely inconsequential McSally-Raju kerfuffle has generated more
outrage from mainstream journalists than either of those cases.
It should also be noted, rude or not, that McSally’s
underlying grievance is legitimate. CNN, as Charles Cooke has written, is no
longer a news network, and Republicans have no ethical responsibility to treat
it as such, whether one of its reporters happens to be asking a legitimate
questions or not. And no matter how many times his colleagues put the word “respected”
in front of Raju’s name, it doesn’t change the fact that he has a
long history of partisan bias, not only with his still-unexplained Don Jr.
“collusion” piece, but on the issue of Brett Kavanaugh and many others. The
fact that Raju does some good reporting, doesn’t mean he isn’t also a partisan.
You can be both.
So when Bill Kristol contends, “If it’s liberal to hold
public officials in our liberal democracy accountable for doing their job, then
I guess I’m liberal,” he misses the point. It’s not “liberal” to ask tough
questions, it’s “liberal” to only ask tough question of one side.
Because if media held public officials accountable we
would be knee-deep in exposes explaining how House Democrats and former intel
chiefs were able to hoodwink outlets like CNN into a three-year 24-7 frenzy
over a conspiracy theory. There hasn’t been a single day of self-reflection on
the matter of dossiers or botched “scoops,” much less accountability (save by
one or two reporters.)
If Raju was concerned about accountability, he wouldn’t
allow the same House Democrats to continue to dictate the focus and assumptions
of his questions. Raju’s query wasn’t illegitimate — though it was certainly
loaded — but it does illustrate that whenever Democrats decide to change
course, the entire media turns their giant ship and sets a course to follow
them.
Conservatives surely remember how this worked during the
Brett Kavanaugh hearings, when outlets helped Senate Democrats spread one
unverified story after the next by merely asking questions. When Michael
Avenatti’s client made a transparently idiotic charges of gang rape, CNN didn’t
debunk or verify the accusation before airing it, they simply helped amplify
it. It does this all the time.
Now, it probably would have been far more constructive
for McSally to have answered Raju like so: “Manu, you are a consummate hack,
but the answer to your question is . . .” In any event, McSally is now
fundraising on the event. And Raju immediately posted the video as if it was
worthwhile news, basking in the subsequent melodramatic statements that
confirmed his victimhood. This is a symbiotic relationship between two partisan
entities — even if one side never admits its role.
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