The media obsesses over creating a false equivalency with Hillary Clinton. Any time she slightly exaggerates anything – or perhaps just inferring Trump’s political stance on an issue based on an extrapolation and interpretation of his related stances rather than an outright statement of his, since his actual statements are rarely clear – is seen as the equivalent of twenty of Trump’s outright lies.
It might seem fair at face value that the media is trying to treat both major party candidates equally. But when things aren’t equal, making a false equivalency is still false. The media can be fair and objective by reporting both sides as they occur, and noting imbalances when they are imbalanced.
Grading on a curve isn’t fair to the American electorate.
And when it works the other way, there’s so often a “presumption of innocence” with the Republican unless proven otherwise, and no story in the mainstream press unless proven otherwise.
Here are some examples:
Examples of the Media’s Double Standards
Disclosure of Personal Records
Hillary Clinton has already disclosed far more health information than Donald Trump has.
In July of 2015, Hillary Clinton released a health disclosure letter from her physical, Dr. Lisa Bardack, that followed a format similar to that of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and many other presidential candidates. In about a page and a half, it provided the results for recent blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and cholesterol tests. The letter also disclosed Clinton’s recent medical and prescription medicine history dating back to 1998. Additional records claiming to be from Dr. Bardack that purport to show more dire medical issues have been proven to be forgeries.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, dashed off a hyperbolic letter in five minutes that said his health was “astonishingly excellent,” said that he “showed only positive results” – an usual term for a medical professional for whom “positive results” would mean generally mean testing positive for the presence of a bacteria, disease, or medical condition like cancer – and concluded that "If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” – a conclusion for which he would have no medical basis, having no background as a medical historian and having performed no medical examinations of any other former president. Despite the flowery prose, the letter contained very little any actual information about Trump’s medical history. His blood pressure and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) score was listed, and though his blood pressure was low, it was listed that he takes 81mg of aspirin, usually prescribed for high blood pressure. but though it was mentioned that he takes a “low dose of a statin,” a medication for high cholesterol, the dosage was not disclosed, nor were the results of any cholesterol blood tests.
Following Clinton’s recent disclosure of pneumonia, she and Trump have both announced they will release more medical information, with Trump revealing that his announcement will reportedly be on the Dr. Oz show. (Dr. Mehmet Oz has already publicly said he won’t ask Trump any questions that “[Trump] doesn’t want to have answered.” Though some have speculated that Trump’s own abrupt cancelled rallies and unexplained days-long gaps in his schedule may be for his own health issues, the mainstream media has not pursued any significant questions about Trump’s own health. Meanwhile, after months of the Trump campaign insinuating that Clinton has serious health issues despite the fact that she’s the only candidate to have released real health records, Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway – on the night before he was to tape his campaign-gets-editing-approval infomercial on Dr. Oz – seemed to suggest that Trump shouldn’t have to release any medical information while simultaneously blasting Clinton for not releasing more of hers, saying we all have a right to medical privacy.
Meanwhile, Clinton has released 38 years of tax returns. Trump has released ZERO.
Voters have compelling reasons for wanting to see candidates’ tax returns. Tax returns help fill in gaps not provided in much more limited FEC disclosure statements. The returns provide a more complete picture of candidates’ financial dealings, their potential conflicts of interest, and their values and priorities through their charitable contributions.
Every Republican nominee in the last 40 years have released at least a summary of their tax returns, with all in the last 36 ultimately releasing at least two years. Hillary Clinton has released her tax returns dating back to 1977, with the last 23 years available online. That’s 38 years of tax returns, which might well be more than any other candidate in history. The next closest I was able to find was Bob Dole, who released 30 years of his returns.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has released none. Zero. And the media is largely ignoring it. I’ve already written quite extensively about why Trump’s excuses for not releasing his tax returns are bullshit, and discuss in detail the things he may be hiding, including perhaps not being as rich as he claims, not donating as much as he claims, having mafia and Russian oligarchy ties, having debts and conflicts of interest to hide, and more. It also includes an action plan at the end for how we can pressure the media to hold him accountable, so be sure to check it out … and take action!
Shady History with Email
The media just can’t let go of Hillary Clinton’s email server.
Although FBI Director James Comey said that Clinton’s handling of her email was careless (a fact disputed by Clinton as well as by the State Department), the FBI felt that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” against Clinton, and that because there was no intentional or willful mishandling of classified information, the FBI recommended to the Justice Department that no charges be filed against her. Despite right wing conspiracy theories that Comey was “in the tank” for Hillary Clinton and has ties to the Clinton Foundation (he doesn’t, despite Breitbart’s tenuous claims), he was in fact the deputy special counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee and hardly on chummy terms with the Clintons. Indeed, Comey’s actions have been highly unusual and political, raising innuendo and taking the extraordinary step of making the FBI’s investigative documents public. The idea that he’s deliberately acting to help Clinton is highly doubtful.
Though the Clinton email controversy has been overblown, the media still can’t let go of it even months after the FBI’s report. In the 18 month period ending September 1, there have been 560,397 articles written about Clinton’s email server. More than half a million articles over a “scandal” that many analysts said from the beginning wouldn’t result in charges because no willful misconduct occurred.
Meanwhile, where are the stories of the Bush White House “losing” 22 million emails?
In the meantime, how much reporting have you seen about the Bush White House “accidentally losing” 22 million emails?
This is not a wacky conspiracy theory. It’s news that was properly reported, just under-reported.
An exhaustive report by Newsweek explains how the Bill Clinton White House set up an email system designed to preserve and maintain email records in compliance with the Presidential Records Act, settling a lawsuit against the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Administration’s lax standards around email retention. (Believe it or not, the first White House emails apparently began in the Reagan Administration in 1982.)
But the George W. Bush Administration shut down the Clinton email servers in January of 2003 and replaced them with ones owned by the RNC. The Republican National Committee owned the White House’s email server that was used by President Bush and 95% of Bush’s chief advisers. (Could you imagine the outcry if Clinton’s State Department emails were being run off of servers owned by the DNC?)
The server’s existence came to light when Congress subpoenaed the White House for email records relating the politically motivated firings of nine U.S. Attorneys, and the White House claimed that the emails had been deleted and 438 backup tapes had been lost. Along with the “lost” emails about the U.S. Attorneys were also “lost” emails about CIA agent Valerie Plame’s “outing” by White House or State Department insiders: specifically (though possibly not solely) Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. It covers the period leading up to the Iraq War and could shed light on what White House advisors really knew about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The 22 million emails were later miraculously found nearly a year after President Obama’s inauguration. But the new administration was mired in dealing with the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, so it was up to the National Archives to sort out which emails can be retrieved under normal Freedom of Information Act laws and which are to be hidden for five to ten years under the Presidential Records Act. The National Archives is still sorting through them.
And while there are a handful articles in the mainstream press about the Republican National Committee running the email server used by George W. Bush and almost all of the White House, and then “accidentally losing” 22 million emails, it’s a tiny fraction of the nearly half a million articles written about Clinton’s email server that was widely acknowledged from the beginning wasn’t illegal. Again, this is not hyperbole: 560,397 articles have been written about the Clinton emails over 18 months.
Republicans aren’t worried about recovering former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell’s emails used on his private AOL account.
And what about recovering Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hidden emails?
The FBI’s investigative documents reveal that Colin Powell used a personal email account when he was Secretary of State, and advised Clinton to be careful about using her BlackBerry for official business lest her emails become “official record[s] and subject to the law.” Powell said he got around record-keeping requirements by not using devices that captured data, and by using a personal computer hooked up to a private phone line whether at home or in hotels. Powell’s personal emails remain out of the system. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Ranking Minority Member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has pointed out Republican double standard in not trying to recover Secretary Powell’s emails, saying that if they were serious about preserving the historical record, “they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powell's emails from AOL, but they have taken no steps to do so despite the fact that this period – including the run-up to the Iraq War – was critical to our nation's history.”
Exactly which Foundation is the problem here?
One foundation provides lifesaving services, the other is a sham.
There are actually two Clinton Foundations: the Clinton Family Foundation and the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. For simplicity, I’ll call them the Family Foundation and the Clinton Foundation, respectively.
In the 15 year period since the Clintons have left the White House, they have donated $23.2 million to charity, which is about 9.8% of their adjusted gross income. Most of that money (about $18.4 million) is funneled through the Clinton Family Foundation and is then dispersed to a wide variety of charitable organizations such as the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, the Arkansas Community Foundation, the University of Arkansas, and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. But the largest recipient, receiving $4.3 million, went to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The Clintons donations are proven through their tax returns. The above figures were calculated before her 2015 tax returns were released, which showed the Clintons earned $10.6 million in 2015, paid a 31% to 34% tax rate, depending whether self-employment taxes are included, and donated $1 million through the Family Foundation.
Although it’s called a foundation, which often suggests raising money to then donate to other outside charities, the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation is actually a public charity that engages in direct charitable work, working on issues relating to global health, climate change, economic development, health and wellness, and improving opportunities for girls and women. Because of the Clinton Foundation, for example, more than 11 million people have access to life-saving AIDS medication. Charity Watch gave it an A Rating (which is higher than the American Red Cross’), calculating that 88% of its funds went to programs while only 12% went to overhead, and only $2 was spent on fundraising for every $100 raised. (As someone who has worked for nonprofits, been on the board of other nonprofits, and done fundraising in my home for dozens of nonprofits, I can say that’s a phenomenal rating.) The Clinton Foundation receives donations from more than 300,000 contributors annually, with 90% of the donations under $100. None of the Clintons draw a salary from the Foundation; they donate millions to it.
Trump Foundation funding no longer comes from Donald Trump. (source: The Washington Post, September 10, 2016.)
Meanwhile, the Trump Foundation is all but a sham. Initially, like the Clinton Family Foundation and so many other foundations set up by the wealthy, it was set up in the late 1980s to be a conduit for him to channel his personal charitable donations. He donates to the Foundation and a trustee or a board administers a grant-making process to distribute to other charitable causes. But by the early 2000s, the Trump Foundation started to accept donations from outsiders. By 2007, a majority of its funding came from outsiders and by 2008, Trump wasn’t donating to it at all.
(Note: unlike the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, private foundations like the Trump Foundation and the Clinton Family Foundation that are primarily funded by a single individual or family are not rated by Charity Watch, Charity Navigator, or similar charity rating services.)
Not only is Trump reaping the public relations benefits of the Foundation without spending his own money, but he may be actually turning a profit. At one event in 2010, for example, the Foundation solicited $150,000 from the Charles Evans Foundation for the Palm Beach Police Foundation. The Trump Foundation then awarded exactly $150,000 to the Palm Beach Police Foundation – none of which came from Trump himself – for which Trump was awarded the Palm Tree Award for his philanthropy. The award was presented at a gala that was held at the Mar-a-Lago Club owned by Trump. The Washington Post wasn’t able to determine if the police foundation had to pay to rent the club in 2010, but they reported that they spent $276,463 in 2014 to rent it for another event.
The Trump Foundation is also used to buy unusual gifts … for Donald Trump. In one instance, the Foundation purchased a six-foot painting of Trump for $20,000, which is now at one of the Trump golf courses. And in 2012, Trump won a bidding war at a charity auction to buy a football helmet signed by Tim Tebow, which was then paid for by the Trump Foundation using other people’s money. Remember, the Foundation’s own disclosure records show that Trump hasn’t donated to his own Foundation since 2007.
In addition, the Trump Foundation made at least five “phantom” donations: donations they declared on their tax returns to the IRS – some of which were announced publically by Trump, like a $10,000 donation to the Latino Commission on AIDS – but the recipient organizations never received. At least one was intended to cover up a political bribe to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi that will be discussed in the next section.
The Trump campaign claims that he makes personal donations that don’t go through his Foundation, but there’s no evidence of this. The Washington Post contacted 270 charities with ties to Trump. The found just one: a donation in 2009 of less than $10,000 to the Police Athletic League of New York. And last month, Trump donated $100,000 anti-gay, white supremacist Tony Perkins’ Greenwell Springs Baptist Church after it was damaged in the recent Louisiana floods. Not for general flood relief for the state. Just to Perkins’ church.
Despite Trump’s claims to be worth $10 billion, The Washington Post could only identify $3.9 million in donations he’s made over the last 15 years, including donations through 2007 to the Trump Foundation. Compare that to the $23.4 million in donations the Clintons made off of earnings of $237 million (not billions) over the same period.
Of course, Trump’s tax returns would show if he made other personal charitable donations to charities The Washington Post didn’t think to call, and to whom, but he continues to refuse to release them.
One foundation has actually been proven to be involved in a pay-for-play bribery scandal: Trump’s.
In August, the Associated Press ran a story in which they claimed that more than half of the people “outside of government” that Hillary Clinton met with while she was Secretary of State were donors to the Clinton Foundation. “It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president,” the writers breathlessly decried in their opening paragraph.
But digging a little deeper reveals that there was nothing substantial to the story. The 55% figure they came up with required some very creative accounting by excluding meetings with thousands of U.S. and international government officials, leaving only 154 private individuals, 85 of whom were also foundation donors. The true figure if you include all of her meetings is closer to 5%. And the examples of individuals the AP cites that she met with, surely the most salacious they could find, didn’t show anything untoward. One was with Muhammad Yunnus, a Nobel Peace Prize winning economist who quite probably would have also met with Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell. (In fact, the Clintons have worked with Yunnus since the 1980s, before Bill Clinton was even President.) The others were major business executives with legitimate State Department business, at least one of whom was a major donor to Republican politicians, who likewise would have met with any Secretary of State about their business. Other prominent individuals not mention by name in the AP’s story but included in their 85 people include philanthropist Melinda Gates, whose own foundation requires state department assistance to provide help to millions of people around the world, and Nobel Peace Prize winner and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel – both of whom would have met with any Secretary of State.
Even the AP had to concede that the meetings didn’t violate any legal agreements the Clintons signed with the Obama Administration when she became Secretary of State. The AP doesn’t state there was any pay-for-play, though they hint at it, but the Trump campaign dove on the misleading story and ran with the false accusation, and House Republicans have called for yet more Congressional hearings.
In fact, the Clinton emails released by Judicial Watch, which has been targeting Clinton for years, show that pay-for-play didn’t happen: in a few situations, the emails show that Clinton Foundation donors tried to use connections at the Foundation to get state department access and didn’t get it. But after all that work, the AP wouldn’t have had a sexy headline with “No Pay-for-Play with Clinton at State Department.”
And meanwhile, the Trump Foundation has been proven to have engaged in political bribery.
In 2013, dozens of Florida residents were pressuring the Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to join a New York lawsuit on their behalf against Trump University, alleging that their seminars in Florida had scammed them.
Florida State Attorney General Pam Bondi accepted an illegal $25,000 campaign contribution from the Trump Foundation right before dropping plans to sue Donald Trump over Trump University.
Then Trump donated to Bondi’s re-election campaign and Bondi decided not to pursue the lawsuit – a direct conflict of Florida’s bribery statutes for an Attorney General to accept campaign contributions from someone with a case under consideration. Trump claims he never spoke with Bondi and the contribution came with no strings; Bondi claims she asked him for the donation, not knowing her office was considering a case against him. Nevertheless, the timeline shows the case was under consideration, then the donation was made, and then Bondi’s office decided not to pursue the case. Trump also held a fundraiser for her at his own Mir-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach.
But at least in the Bondi case, the Trump Foundation got roped into pay-to-play scandal: the donation to Bondi’s “Justice for All” re-election campaign came not from Trump’s own pockets but illegally from the Trump Foundation, which cannot donate to political campaigns. The foundation tried to hide the donation by recording it on their IRS filings as a donation to an anti-abortion Justice for All organization in Kansas, but the funds nevertheless made their way to the Bondi re-election organization, not the Kansas group. This was no oversight where funds intended for the Kansas anti-abortion group were accidentally delivered to the wrong address in the wrong state; the Kansas anti-abortion group, when asked by The Washington Post, knew nothing about the Trump Foundation listing them as the recipient of a $25,000 donation. They weren’t expecting anything and had never interacted with the Foundation, and the Foundation acknowledged it was intended for Bondi.
Donald Trump was forced to pay a paltry $2,500 fine by the IRS, 10% of the bribe campaign contribution, and also reimbursed the Trump Foundation for the money it had paid Bondi for her services.
In addition to the Florida case, Trump similarly apparently bribed then-Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas, who had been pursuing but then abruptly cancelled a suit against Trump University … and then received a $35,000 campaign contribution for his gubernatorial campaign. This apparently came directly from Trump himself, not his foundation. And it gave $100,000 to Citizens United – yes, the Citizens United – to finance a lawsuit against New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who was already suing Trump over Trump University.
And once again, what about Colin Powell?
Colin Powell, the Republican Secretary of State from January 2001 to January 2005, founded a nonprofit in 1997 called America’s Promise Alliance, a foundation to help children and youth from all socioeconomic sectors in the United States.
When Powell was tapped by George W. Bush to become Secretary of State in 2001, there were no discussions in his confirmation hearings about needing to distance himself from the organization. He stepped down as the foundation’s chair, retaining the honorary title of “Founding Chairman” according to the organization’s 990 Forms at the time. His wife, Alma Powell, is the chair today and was co-chair while Powell was Secretary of State.
And no one questioned whether powerful people were using donations to Powell’s nonprofit in order to curry influence. People like Ken Lay, chair of Enron, who donated $70,000 in 1999, on whose behalf the State Department advocated in a dispute with India in 2002. Nor did they question that AT&T is a top sponsor of the organization. Colin and Alma Powell’s son Michael was Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, which has considerable oversight over AT&T, during the same period that Colin Powell was Secretary of State.
There’s no evidence that any organizations used their donations to America’s Promise to get political influence from either Colin or Michael Powell. But the point is, the press treats these examples differently. A major donor to Colin Powell’s foundation has State Department business, one requiring the State Department to stand up to India, and the press automatically assumes all is good unless there’s a smoking gun of political pressure and undue influence. But when a Clinton Foundation donor happens to also have legitimate business with the State Department, their very existence is cause for front page headlines. They are suspected of malfeasance and pay-for-play until proven otherwise. As Paul Krugman noted, “If reports about a candidate talk about how something ‘raises questions,’ creates ‘shadows,’ or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.”
A double standard applied to the Clintons but never to Republicans.
Dueling with the Press
Hillary Clinton stopped doing press conferences with the Washington press corps this year, and the press lost their collective minds. Headline after headline wailed about it, with The Hill even rather ridiculously whining in a headline, “Will She Ever Hold a Press Conference Again?”
It’s not that she was ducking the press entirely. It addition to being a part of all of her events, Clinton had participated in more than 300 sit-down interviews by the end of May alone. (That’s 151 days, so an average of two per day.)
My personal hunch was that she would resume press conferences once she was set up to travel with the press pool. That happens at varying times with presidential campaigns, but I figured it would be around the traditional Labor Day kickoff of the official campaign season – and sure enough, right after Labor Day she got a new plane large enough to travel with the press corps, had a quick informal chat with the press corps, followed by daily press talks on the plane and, last Thursday, a real with-a-podium press conference.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump banned all Washington Post reporters from his events. Previously he had revoked their press credentials but reporters continued to attend by getting tickets as a member of the public. As of June, even the ones who had scored tickets were being escorted out. Also banned from covering his campaign events, according to the New York Times: Foreign Policy, Univision, The New Hampshire Union Leader, The Des Moines Register, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Fusion, BuzzFeed News, and Gawker. And, in an article about Trump considering adding the New York Times to his banned list, CBS News noted that Politico and the conservative National Review were also banned.
Trump has vowed that if elected, he would weaken libel laws to make it easier for the sitting President of the United States to sue press outlets that are critical of him. Even after being confronted with the fact that Vladimir Putin kills journalists who disagree with him, Trump still praised the dictator, saying, “At least he’s a leader.” Even at the Commander-in-Chief Forum, Trump praised Putin for his high poll numbers – numbers kept high, President Obama noted, because Putin controls the press and jails dissidents. Something Trump’s rhetoric suggests he’d emulate if he could.
But heaven forbid you hurt the Washington Press Corps’ feelings by having two sit-down interviews a day rather than stand behind a podium answering yet another question about the damn email server or why she didn’t smile more when talking about veteran suicides.
The Media Is Grading on a Curve and Accusing Us of Demanding ‘False Balance’
People are Starting to Talk about the Media’s Imbalance
The NBC Commander-in-Chief Forum
As the NBC Commander-in-Chief Forum showed, Trump continues to benefit from being graded on a curve. At the forum, interviewer Matt Lauer spent the first third of the time asking Clinton about her email server and then chided her for not asking complex question faster. He then asked Trump vague, open-ended questions – including starting with “Why do you want to be Commander-in-Chief” – that were easily ignored or evaded, didn’t fact-check Trump’s false claim that he had opposed the war, and allowed Trump to repeatedly attack Clinton throughout his entire interview after asking the candidates not to go after each other. (Clinton was scolded after mentioning Trump at the end of her interview.)
Clinton gave detailed answers at the forum, and had she not been forced to waste ten minutes on the emails, she could have gone into more. Trump’s entire plan, in the meantime, boils down to, “Despite my complete lack of a political or military track record to judge me by, trust my secret plan even though I’m not telling you anything about it or giving you anything to evaluate.” Candidates generally run campaigns based on ethos – their experience and track record – or based on their ideas. Trump doesn’t have a background and he won’t tell us what his ideas are, and somehow the media’s acting like that’s normal and acceptable.
If anything good came out of the Commander-in-Chief Forum, it’s that the imbalance was so obvious that it was the imbalance that made headlines the next day.
Meanwhile, over at the New York Times
As Paul Krugman recently noted in the New York Times, the media seems to be looking for excuses to treat Trump as Presidential:
If he manages to read from a TelePrompTer without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.
Meanwhile, Liz Spayd at the New York Times editorialized against “false balance” critiques.
The problem with false balance doctrine is that it masquerades as rational thinking. What the critics really want is for journalists to apply their own moral and ideological judgments to the candidates. Take one example. Suppose journalists deem Clinton’s use of private email servers a minor offense compared with Trump inciting Russia to influence an American election by hacking into computers – remember that? Is the next step for a paternalistic media to barely cover Clinton’s email so that the public isn’t confused about what’s more important? Should her email saga be covered at all? It’s a slippery slope.
It’s a false analogy because despite both dealing with computer servers, the stories really have nothing in common.
No one is asking for “tit-for-tat” reporting. No one is saying that if you do one negative story about one candidate, you must then seek out to do a negative story on their opponent. Quite the contrary! But so often it’s seemed like the media has drawn false equivalencies by taking ten “bad Trump things” and then saying, “Oh, but Clinton did this one negative thing, so it’s the same.” Trump has spent 18 months campaigning to deport Latinos and ban Muslims, cozying up to White Supremacists, and donated $100,000 to anti-gay Tony Perkins, whose Family Research Council has been officially classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Meanwhile, Clinton one time says that half of Trump’s supporters are a “basket of deplorables” and suddenly it’s all equal.
A Plan for the Media
Here’s what the media can do to be more balanced:
- Stop treating Trump like a child. No more soft-ball questions. You can’t ask detailed questions of Clinton and then ask Trump something like, “Why do you want to be Commander-in-Chief?” Stop letting him get away with evasive non-answers, especially like, “Trust me, I have a secret plan.” You know that’s bullshit. You wouldn’t let Clinton say something like that. So call Trump out on it.
- Stop letting Trump get away with lies. You haven’t let Clinton get away with the slightest exaggeration that’s nevertheless factually correct. Stop letting Trump lie about being against the Iraq War before the invasion, or about his myriad of other revisions to his history. Call him out on it.
- Stop letting Trump’s surrogates “correct the record.” Lately, Trump’s surrogates have been trying to Trumpsplain to the media. Don’t let them say Trump no longer supports mass deportations or that he’s no longer a birther if he himself won’t clearly say that. Trump has to say that himself.
- No weasel words. If your story depends on phrases like “raises questions” or “creates shadows” to create the appearance of impropriety, but you don’t have anything more to go on, you don’t have a story. You have some potential anecdotes, but until there’s something more substantial, it’s not journalism, it’s gossip.
- Balanced doesn’t necessarily mean equal. You don’t need to make everything proportional. If you’re fact-checking the debate and Clinton said three false things and Trump said fifteen, report all eighteen. Not just six, three each. And if Clinton’s were exaggerations and Trump’s were flat out whopping lies, say that. You don’t have to pretend they were on the same footing if they weren’t. Because so far, most of the time they really haven’t been.
- Don’t stop fact-checking just because it’s become overwhelming. Yes, Trump has famously been clocked at lying at his rallies on average every five minutes, and 71 lies were recorded at just one town hall event. It’s a lot to fact-check, but the voters depend on it. And there’s a good chance he’s repeating many of the same lies over and over, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time.
- You should be asking serious, substantive questions of both candidates. Enough with the emails. There is no new news there. Unless something new happens, give it a rest. Ask real, serious, substantive questions. Of both candidates. Give them a chance to answer in depth. Ask follow-up questions to probe for more details. Be a journalist.
- At one point do disqualifying things finally actually disqualify the candidate? For all of the hints and innuendo of Clinton shenanigans, nothing’s ever happened. Republicans have spent decades and millions of taxpayer funds trying to get the Clintons on something, anything, and continue to come up empty. In the meantime, Trump used his charity foundation to make an illegal political contribution to the Florida Attorney General, and he did it to bribe the her to drop a lawsuit against him, which she did. And he may have done it in Texas, too. He’s refused to disclose his taxes despite having the most complex conflicts of interest of any presidential candidate in history that only his taxes would reveal, and despite running entirely on a background that only his taxes can substantiate. He’s going to court in multiple states to defend the fact that his Trump University was a total scam, a suit he managed to push off until after the November election. How many campaign-ending things does he have to say or do before we finally say enough? Clearly not 23 … or 191.
The media strives for balance, but this race is the most unbalanced in history. One major party candidate is perhaps the most experienced, qualified candidate since Thomas Jefferson or James Madison; the other’s is completely inexperienced, perhaps the least qualified candidate ever. One candidate is widely regarded on both sides of the aisle as sharp and perceptive, capable of remembering incredible details, names, and dates, and able to make incredibly insightful connections – like asking detailed questions about India’s reaction to China’s dam projects in her first Secretary of State briefing because she understood how water resources were a national security issue. The other is barely articulate, speaks at a fifth grade level, refuses to read briefing papers, gets played by hostile foreign leaders while heaping praise on them, and cannot tell the difference between sarcasm and genuine praise.
Things aren’t equal, and trying to prop Trump up to make things more “balanced” is inequality.
Sources
Personal Disclosures
Bardack, Dr. Lisa, Hillary Clinton Health Disclosure Letter, July 28, 2015.
Bierman, Noah, “Campaign 2016 Updates: Donald Trump Says He'll Release New Medical Records; Hillary Clinton Follows Suit,” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2016.
Bornstein, Dr. Jacob, Donald Trump Health Disclosure Letter, December 4, 2015.
Carroll, Lauren, “Most GOP Nominees Since 1970s Have Released Their Tax Returns, Fox’s Chris Wallace Says,” Politifact, May 18, 2016.
Collins, Ezra, “Trump Campaign Manager on Medical Records: 'We All Have a Right to Privacy,’” USA Today, September 13, 2016.
Daou, Peter, “Hillary Clinton’s Feat of Strength Obliterates Months of Conspiracy Theories,” Shareblue, September 11, 2016.
Easley, Jason, “Questions Grow About Trump’s Health As GOP Nominee Cancels 4th Event This Week,” PoliticsUSA, August 26, 2016.
Easley, Jason, “While Ignoring Trump’s Hidden Health Records, Biased Press Jumps On Clinton Overheating,” PoliticsUSA, September 11, 2016.
Farley, Robert, “Fake Clinton Medical Records,” FactCheck.org, August 16, 2016.
Gass, Nick, “Dr. Oz Pledges to Avoid Questions Trump 'Doesn't Want to Have Answered,’” Politico, September 13, 2016.
Griffin, Jennifer, John Roberts, and the Associated Press, “Clinton, Trump to Release Medical Details After Hillary Episode at 9/11 Ceremony,” Fox News, September 12, 2016.
Lewis, Lawrence, “Despite Having Pneumonia, Despite the Heat and Humidity, Hillary Clinton Shows Up,” DailyKos, September 11, 2016.
Meckler, Laura, “Hillary Clinton to Release More Medical Records After Pneumonia Diagnosis,” The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2016.
Royal Scribe, “Trump Tax Returns: The Arguments and an Action Plan. #TrumpTaxes,” DailyKos, September 8, 2016.
Schecter, Anna R., Chris Francescani and Tracy Connor, “Trump Doctor Wrote Health Letter in Just 5 Minutes as Limo Waited,” NBC News, August 26, 2016.
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Email
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Foundations
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Burnett, Richard, “N.Y.'s Trump U Suit Draws Florida Officials’ Attention,” Orlando Sentinel, September 13, 2013.
Carroll, Lauren, “Democrat Pundit: The Clintons 'Take No Salary,' Get 'No Personal Benefit' From Foundation,” PolitiFact, September 1, 2016.
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DelReal, Jose A., “Trump, Dismissing Allegations of Impropriety, Says Donation to Fla. Attorney General Came with No Strings,” The Washington Post, September 5, 2016.
Fahrenthold, David A., “Donald Trump Used Money Donated For Charity to Buy Himself a Tim Tebow-Signed Football Helmet,” The Washington Post, July 1, 2016.
Fahrenthold, David A., “How Donald Trump Retooled His Charity to Spend Other People’s Money,” The Washington Post, September 10, 2016.
Fahrenthold, David A., “Three of the Mysteries in the Files of the Donald J. Trump Foundation Have Been Solved. Here’s What We Know.” The Washington Post, updated September 13, 2016.
Fahrenthold, David A., “Trump Pays IRS a Penalty for His Foundation Violating Rules with Gift to Aid Florida Attorney General,” The Washington Post, September 1, 2016.
Fahrenthold, David A. and Rosalind S. Helderman, “What we know about the charitable giving by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,” The Washington Post, August 25, 2016.
Farias, Cristian, “Attorneys General From Texas, Florida Quietly Dropped Their Trump U. Probes,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2016.
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Farley, Robert, “Where Does Clinton Foundation Money Go?” FactCheck.org, June 19, 2015.
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Horwitz, Jeff and Michael Biesecker, “Trump University Model: Sell Hard, Demand to See a Warrant,” Associated Press, June 2, 2016.
Isikoff, Michael, “Trump Charity Gave $100,000 to David Bossie’s Citizens United That Helped Fund Lawsuit Against Mogul’s Foe,” Yahoo News, September 9, 2016.
Kaplan, Alex and Oliver Willis, “A Timeline of the AP’s Flawed Clinton Foundation Reporting,” Media Matters for America, August 29, 2016.
LeTourneau, Nancy, “How the AP Spun the Story About the Clinton Foundation,” Washington Monthly, August 24, 2016.
Ring, Trudy, “Donald Trump Makes Flood Relief Donation to Tony Perkins's Church,” The Advocate, August 21, 2016.
Rocca, Christina, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, “Remarks to the Press on the U.S.-India Relationship,” U.S. Department of State, April 10, 2002.
Rosenthal, Brian M. and Gabrielle Banks, “Inside the Probe Into Trump University That Abbott's Office Launched and Then Ended,” Houston Chronicle, June 2, 2016.
Sahadi, Jeanne, “Hillary Clinton's 2015 Tax Return Shows $10.6 Million in Income, 31% rate – and Puts Pressure on Donald Trump,” CNN Money, August 12, 2016.
Shugarman, Emily, “Donald Trump Just Donated $100,000 to a Church Run by an Anti-LGBT White Supremacist,” Revelist, August 22, 2016.
Stern, Mark Joseph, “The Clinton Foundation Is Not a Scandal. It’s a Phenomenal, Life-Saving Success.” Slate, August 25, 2016.
Sumner, Mark, “Bondi Solicited ‘Contributed’ Directly From Trump, But Trump Denies Speaking to Her,” DailyKos, September 6, 2016.
Sumner, Mark, “Did Trump Bribe Officials in Both Florida and Texas to Drop Trump U. Case?” DailyKos, June 7, 2016.
Sumner, Mark, “Donald Trump Did More for Pam Bondi Than Just Cut a Check ... He Threw Her a Party,” DailyKos, September 7, 2016.
Sumner, Mark, “The Trump Foundation is a Real Scandal, And It Should Be a Campaign-Ending Scandal,” DailyKos, September 12, 2016.
Sumner, Mark, “The Trump Foundation’s Biggest Contribution Wasn’t Charity – It Was an Attack,” DailyKos, September 9, 2016.
Title XLVI, Chapter 838, Section 021, “Bribery; Misuse of Public Office – Corruption by threat against public servant,” The 2016 Florida Statutes, accessed online September 12, 2016.
Waldman, Paul, “The Latest Clinton Email Story Just Isn’t a Scandal,” The Washington Post, August 23, 2016.
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Yglesias, Matthew, “The AP’s Defense of Its Bad Clinton Foundation Story Is Also Bad,” Vox, August 24, 2016.
Yglesias, Matthew, “Colin Powell’s Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s are Treated Very Differently by the Media,” Vox, August 30, 2016.
Press Access
Byers, Dylan, “Hillary Clinton Finally Holds a Press Conference,” CNN Money, September 8, 2016.
Campbell, Colin, “Donald Trump Left Joe Scarborough Stunned After Being Asked About Vladimir Putin Killing Journalists,” Business Insider, December 18, 2015.
Cillizza, Chris, “Donald Trump Just Barred Washington Post Reporters From Campaign Events. That Should Bother You.” The Washington Post, June 13, 2016.
Concha, Joe, “Hillary Clinton’s Holdout: Will She Ever Hold a Press Conference Again?” The Hill, August 11, 2016.
Editorial Board, “How Donald Trump Tends His Media Blacklist,” New York Times, June 15, 2016.
Flores, Reena, “Donald Trump Rails Against the New York Times After Critical Pieces,” CBS News, August 14, 2016.
Folkenfilk, David, “Why Doesn’t Hillary Have More Press Conferences,” NPR, August 5, 2016.
French, Megan, “Hillary Clinton Hits Back at Critics Who Say She Doesn’t Smile Enough,” Us Magazine, September 8, 2016.
Gold, Hadas, “Donald Trump: We’re Going to ‘Open Up’ Libel Laws,” Politico, February 26, 2016.
Karni, Annie, “Clinton Speaks Briefly with Press on Her New Plane,” Politico, September 5, 2016.
Tani, Maxwell, “Obama Says Vladimir Putin is Donald Trump's Role Model: 'He Loves This Guy,’” Business Insider, September 13, 2016.
Wolfgang, Ben, “Hillary Clinton Yet to Hold a Single Press Conference in 2016,” The Washington Times, May 31, 2016.
Grading on a Curve
Berrein, Hank, “Lyin’ Donald: 101 of Trump’s Greatest Lies,” The Daily Wire, April 11, 2016.
Bradner, Eric, “Giuliani: ‘Trump No Longer Wants Mass Deportations,’” CNN, September 5, 2016.
Bump, Philip, “23 Things Donald Trump Has Said That Would Have Doomed Another Candidate,” The Washington Post, June 17, 2016.
Byers, Dylan, “Critics Blast Matt Lauer’s ‘Commander-in-Chief Forum’s’ Performance,” CNN Money, September 8, 2016.
Holan, Angie Drobnic, “In Context: Hillary Clinton and the Basket of Deplorables,” PolitiFact, September 11, 2016.
“Is Media Grading Trump on a Curve?” CNN, September 4, 2016.
Kaplan, Fred, “The Hillary Doctrine,” Slate, June 19, 2016.
Kirk, Chris, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Gabriel Roth, “191 Things Donald Trump Has Said and Done That Make Him Unfit to be President,” Slate, September 2, 2016.
Krugman, Paul, “Hillary Clinton Gets Gored,” New York Times, September 5, 2016.
Lima, Cristiano, “Giuliani: ‘Trump Believes Now That Obama Was Born in the U.S.,” Politico, September 8, 2016.
Rubyclaire, “NY Times Public Editor Defends ‘False Balance,’” DailyKos, September 11, 2016.
Schlatter, Evelyn, “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda,” Southern Poverty Law Center, November 4, 2010.
Spayd, Liz, “The Truth About ‘False Balance,” New York Times, September 10, 2016.
