“Bothsidesism” is one of the most insidious failings practiced by mainstream media outlets, and The New York Times—despite their often terrific investigative journalism—is nonetheless among the most common culprits. Monday’s front page serves as Exhibit A. The print section has an article called “Biden Is Facing His Own Questions About Testing.” As of Wednesday evening, the online version of the article has this headline: “After Biden’s Exposure to Trump, His Team Is Cagey on Health Questions.”
The headline’s subtext all but screams out “see, we’re going after Biden on COVID-19 too!” It’s the worst sort of bothsidesism.
That headline most likely provokes serious concerns. What questions, exactly, is Biden facing about COVID-19 and testing? Is he lying about his negative tests? What’s he hiding? Is he just as bad as Trump on this? That’s a very powerful headline, and The Times editors knew it when they wrote it.
The article itself begins with two paragraphs about how Biden has “model[ed] responsible behavior” and stayed healthy, while Donald Trump has, well, done what he’s done. In the next paragraph, however, we are told that “Mr. Biden’s health protocols have remained largely under wraps,” which seems to amount largely to his campaign having said that he is tested “regularly,” without having stated definitively that he is tested every day. Maybe he missed a day once in a while. That’s worth a front-page story?
Regarding these questions—and it’s a stretch to call them serious ones, now it appears even those have been answered, as the article explains: “Then, on Saturday night, after two days of refusing to provide details about Mr. Biden’s testing procedures, the campaign committed to releasing the results of all of his tests.” This means that going forward, we’ll know exactly how often the Democratic nominee has been tested, as well as the results. What questions remain? That’s not clear.
The article continues with some discussion about whether Biden should have quarantined after Trump’s positive test, due to having shared a debate stage with him a few days earlier. There are some quotes from Biden campaign officials, discussions of ethics and transparency, yet nothing else about other specific “questions”—although another paragraph provocatively broadens the topic from COVID-19 by starting with: “The questions about Mr. Biden’s health….”
Okay, New York Times, let’s get this straight. The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote has been hospitalized with COVID-19—with literally countless levels of deceptions, falsehoods, failures, and chickens coming home to roost surrounding his contracting the virus as well as the severity of his case. Yet the grand poobahs over at the Gray Lady decided that they needed to show they are not biased toward liberals by slinging some COVID-related dung at Joe Biden.
That’s what I mean when I criticize the bothsidesism at The New York Times. That phenomenon, also known as false equivalence, can occur in a single article, when a journalist quotes both sides on an issue in a way that falsely suggests each take has equal value (i.e., “Democrats say the sun rises in the east, Republicans disagree”). Climate change coverage all too often contains this awfulness, although it’s far from the only issue. Bothsidesism can also inform a media outlet’s overall coverage of an issue, affecting story assignments, placement of articles in the paper or on the website, etc. It’s this second type that’s at work in The Times’ story on Biden and COVID-19.
You can almost picture the big bosses sitting around a table, nodding as Executive Editor Dean Baquet—who also ran the show during the galactically misguided “but her emails!” coverage—says something like: “well, we’ve had all these front page stories about Trump’s positive COVID-19 test, and about how they’ve lied about his condition, and how they kept him out there doing a fundraiser even after he should’ve been quarantined, and the timeline of positive tests and, well, just about everything. That means it’s time for a story that hits Biden over COVID-19 and his personal health. Gotta cover both sides, guys. Let’s go find something.”
You can call it bothsidesism. You can call it false equivalency. You can call it the result of decades of Republicans doing what Eric Alterman characterized as “working the refs.” One thing you cannot call it is journalism.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)