Member-only story
DEAR NEWS EDITORS: reporting “both sides” is not what it used to be
Y’all are drinking the koolaid today’s GOP dumps on you. They ARE NOT CONSERVATIVES. They are the Radical Right Wing
Listen, I know how you’ve been taught and trained on how to do “objective” journalism.
I used to be one of those journalism professors performing the task of introducing mostly bad writers to the standard rules to which most journalists at mainstream news media are supposed to adhere. You know: The inverted pyramid. The Associated Press Stylebook. And of course, what is fobbed off as “objective journalism: that is reporting “both sides” of any news story.
In politics, that has historically involved reporting what Democrats (i.e. “liberals”) say about an issue, and then getting the Republican (i.e. “conservative” side for “balance.” And vice versa.
Unfortunately, as I know you know, the US political spectrum has become seriously skewed these days. The problem is that ONE of the political parties (guess who) became enamored of Donald Trump because they could use his outrageous and already very public and well known television character to win elections. So, okay, what’s wrong with that?
Well, I know you know very well what’s wrong.
The man has a habit of lying about anything and everything, and repeating those lies even after they have been proven to be lies
As if that guarantees that readers will get a “full picture” of important stuff going on in America.
That assumption is (and was) debatable, but rather than attacking the “both sides” narrative in principle, I am going to explain to you WHY your use of what should be known as the Radical Right Wing White Supremacist Party as “the alternate” POV is simply not rational.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this. The GOP used to represent a spectrum of liberal to conservative Republicans, with only a fringe of radical right wingers.
However, the party since Eisenhower no longer even remotely resembles a reasonable alternative.
