How Political Double Standards Work, in Three Parts

By Judson Berger

Friday, September 27, 2024

 

If you’ll indulge something a bit different this week, let’s look at three examples of how double standards are applied in the media and the political landscape today, via the treatment of three distinct and significant news stories.

 

(And, before turning to that, a quick note: I’d like to make one last appeal as part of our flash webathon, as we fight to counter the ridiculous effort to cancel Rich Lowry over something he didn’t actually say. We’re asking for donations — of any amount — to help fund Rich’s travel so he can go on a speaking tour of his own, to champion the values of open debate and stick it to those who fabricated this smear against him. If you can, please, chip in — and thank you.)

 

The IVF Debate

 

Kayla Bartsch provides a public service in busting the myth that Republicans are targeting IVF (when, in fact, many are doing the opposite). But within that piece, she discusses something that speaks to how Democrats’ and Republicans’ legislative intentions are treated very differently in the press. Both Democrats and Republicans offered up dueling bills to, ostensibly, protect IVF, and each side blocked the other’s. How was this reported? You could probably guess:

 

CBS News: “Senate Republicans block IVF package as Democrats highlight reproductive rights”

 

CNN: “Senate GOP blocks IVF bill again as Democrats spotlight issue ahead of elections”

 

The New York Times: “Senate Republicans Block I.V.F. Protection Bill a Second Time, Breaking With Trump”

 

When you got to the body of these and other stories, most included the detail that Senate Republicans offered an alternative package, but the framing of the reports clearly fit with Democrats’ narrative — that Republicans are blocking their efforts to protect IVF. Kayla includes several other examples of news stories framing this legislative clash exactly how Democrats would want.

 

There are, of course, differences between the Democrats’ legislation and that offered by Senators Katie Britt (R., Ala.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas). As Kayla reports, “Britt’s bill would mandate that states not prohibit IVF if they are to receive federal Medicaid funding. The Democrats’ bill, the Right to IVF Act, would mandate a slew of progressive agenda items, under the guise of ‘protecting’ IVF.” The Democrats’ bill is much longer and more expansive than the Republicans’. But those differences certainly don’t justify treating the GOP-backed legislation as an afterthought in coverage.

 

Election Meddling

 

Many of us were led to believe that foreign interference in American elections is a serious problem to be confronted head-on. Yet 2024 has seen a wave of foreign interference on various fronts, not all treated equally. Noah Rothman documents the double standard at play, as it pertains to the treatment of the threat from Iran, versus that from Russia, in our elections:

 

Democrats want you to believe they are obsessively fixated on the scourge of interference in American elections by hostile foreign powers, by which they mean Russia and Russia alone. They seem incapable of acknowledging other malign actors abroad that also seek to influence American electoral outcomes, particularly when those operations are crafted for their benefit.

 

“President Joe Biden’s campaign did not reach out to law enforcement after individuals associated with the campaign received hacked material from Donald Trump’s campaign in their personal email accounts in part because they had not opened the messages,” Politico revealed on Thursday. The campaign Kamala Harris was bequeathed “did not provide a timeline of events” when asked by reporters to identify, presumably, when they received those hacked materials or the actions they took in response. “Similarly,” the report continued, “a law enforcement official familiar with the hacking incident told POLITICO Thursday that there’s no indication that the individuals associated with Biden’s campaign responded or took actions on the emails.”

 

That’s weird. Indeed, the Biden-Harris team’s inaction is rendered even stranger by the revelation several weeks ago that those unsolicited materials were pilfered from the Trump camp by agents loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

As Noah writes, the Biden DOJ is pursuing the Iran case, but the Biden-Harris political world is not exhibiting anything near the level of distress that Democrats do over Russian meddling, especially considering that the interference now includes a foiled, Iran-tied assassination plot: “Iran is trying to kill an American president on U.S. soil. Whether or not it is in the Democratic Party’s immediate political interest, Americans are obliged to internalize the gravity of that discovery.”

 

National Review’s editorial about the hacks and the plot notes that anti-Trump meddling gets “considerably less time from press-briefing podiums across the administration,” and Tehran’s theft of campaign information has prompted “virtually no outrage from the crowd that crowed about Russian ‘collusion’ . . . a manifestation of the double standard on foreign interference that benefits Democratic leaders.”

 

Tragedy in Georgia

 

The tragic cases of two women in Georgia who died after complications from taking the abortion pill, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, have become an unfortunate political football in the presidential campaign and beyond.

 

In Thurman’s case, doctors waited an astonishing 20 hours to operate, according to ProPublica. The original report said it’s unclear from the records why doctors waited so long to perform what’s called a dilation and curettage (D&C) but suggested a lack of clarity on the state’s strict abortion law played a role. Dan McLaughlin writes that, if the reporting is accurate, the hospital was almost certainly at fault, and “any lawyer who argues that the language of the Georgia heartbeat law outlaws a D&C after the child has already been aborted and is dead ought to be disbarred.”

 

But two other details from these cases warrant special attention.

 

First, a piece of history that is glossed over in the coverage is that, as Dan writes, Democratic administrations have over the past decade steadily rolled back Clinton-era requirements for doctor visits for women taking the pill. Miller reportedly did not see a doctor out of concern for “the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions,” and it’s unclear whether Thurman did — and whether an appointment could have prevented either death. The removal of those critical safeguards, however, should be at least as relevant to these cases as the reported confusion over Georgia’s abortion law.

 

Second, Dan reports on the double standard on display in the publicizing of “private medical information obtained and published in violation of federal law — the same federal law that the Biden administration is using to prosecute a whistleblower in Texas who was far more protective of patient privacy.” That whistleblower, Dr. Eithan Haim, today faces federal charges for alleged HIPAA violations, after he leaked documents showing a Houston-based hospital was conducting transgender procedures on minors, despite pledges to the contrary. He was charged for allegedly releasing “individually identifiable health information” of patients, even though he redacted such details. Dan notes that the information made public in the Georgia cases is, by contrast, “highly particular and personal to Thurman and Miller, and has literally resulted in the vice president of the United States leading chants of Thurman’s name at rallies.”

 

In one case, the public interest was evidently judged to outweigh concern about the regulations; in the other, the public interest barely factored into the equation. Strange, how this works.