In the past couple of years, newsrooms have relied increasingly on the phrase “without evidence” for headlines regarding something false or misleading said by President Trump or someone in his circle.
On Nov. 11, for example, NBC News published a story titled, “Republicans claim, without evidence, Florida seats being stolen as top Democrat pushes back.” One day earlier, on Nov. 10, NPR published a report titled, “Key Races Still Undecided; Trump Calls Fraud Without Evidence.”
It has actually become quite trendy to do this:
- CNN: GOP leader Kevin McCarthy suggests without evidence migrant caravan ‘could be’ politically motivated
- CNBC: Trump declares without evidence that ‘Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in’ with migrant caravan making its way from Honduras
- The Associated Press: Trump says without evidence that Dems are behind ‘caravan’
- The Tampa Bay Times: Florida officials respond to Trump’s claim, without evidence, that Puerto Rico deaths are made up
- Miami Herald: Trump claims without evidence that Democrats distorted Hurricane Maria death toll
- New York Times: Trump Claims, Without Evidence, That Kavanaugh Protesters Were Paid
- Washington Post: In new ad, Stewart doubles down on suggestion of sexual harassment claim against Kaine without evidence
It’s great that newsrooms are so eager to correct the record on Trump that they tell the readers upfront what’s wrong, but this level of scrutiny must be applied equally. Otherwise, it’s just partisan hackery. Unfortunately, newsrooms aren’t giving equal treatment to those in power. Not even close. The “without evidence” trend seems to favor Republican and conservative officials exclusively. In fact, for all of 2017 and 2018, there’s only one instance of a news organization noting in a headline that a Democratic official had alleged something without offering any proof, according to Lexis-Nexis.
It’s strange that this is the sole example from the last two years of a “without evidence” headline aimed at Democrats, considering 2017 also featured members of the opposition party claiming the GOP tax reform bill would be “the end of the world,” that the “debate on health care is life/death,” and that the legislation was “the worst bill in the history of the United States Congress.” There were no headlines from the Post, the New York Times, or CNN noting that there was no evidence to support these ludicrous claims.
Similarly, during the net neutrality fight earlier this year, the Senate Democrats’ Twitter account claimed, “If we don’t save net neutrality, you’ll get the Internet one word at a time.” There’s no evidence for that. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., also warned, “Without net neutrality, the internet as we know it ends.” Again, there were no “without evidence” headlines correcting these varying hyperbolic and false statements issued by Democrats.
When Democrats claimed without evidence during the recent midterm elections that Republican Georgia Gov.-elect Brian Kemp was secretly behind Democratic county governments’ plans to go cheapskate and consolidate their polling places, there were no accompanying “without evidence” headlines. Newsrooms didn’t pounce with these headlines last week when Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., claimed without evidence that CNN’s Jim Acosta is the victim of a conspiracy to have his White House credentials suspended.
Looking back even further, you’ll see there’s not a single “without evidence” headline seeking to correct the multiple conspiracy-mongering claims by Democrats that Russia “hacked” the 2016 election. Likewise, there were no “without evidence” headlines for former Sen. Harry Reid’s lie that 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney cheated on his taxes, a claim that the retired Nevada lawmaker all but admitted to fabricating from thin air. And of course, when former President Barack Obama claimed, “You can keep your healthcare plan” — a claim about Obamacare that he never had any basis for making — it took more than three years, until late 2013, before anyone in the press pointed out that this had been a very big lie, even the lie of the year. If only we’d been warned three years earlier that Obama was making that claim, “without evidence.”
The one-sided nature of this fact-checking trend really sticks out when you consider there were no such headlines written for the Democrat-backed women who claimed, without evidence, that they were sexually abused by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. There were no “without evidence” headlines for the Democrats who promoted Christine Blasey Ford before and after her testimony, even though there is still no evidence for what she said outside of her own word. And there were no “without evidence” headlines for Democrats who stood behind allegations that Kavanaugh exposed himself during a drinking game when he was a student at Yale.
I’m all for aggressive fact-checking. But let’s apply the standard equally, eh?
