Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin urged the media to disregard the “need for false balance,” as the midterm elections approach.
In a Thursday column, Rubin claimed Donald Trump’s supporters and defenders in the GOP have been protected by the news media from facing critical questions concerning the former president’s 2020 elections claims and defense of possessing classified documents found during the FBI’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago home.
Hammering the media for portraying Republicans as “rational,” Rubin instead called on the press to abandon any pretense that both sides deserved equal coverage.
“The Kabuki dance in which Trump, his defenders and his supporters are treated as rational (clever even!) is what comes from a media establishment that refuses to discard its need for false balance that it has developed over the course of decades,” she wrote.
The Post columnist continued by saying the media had become a “megaphone” for GOP “disinformation” in pretending Republicans accepted reality.
“The free, independent media is supposed to be the tripwire between disinformation (deliberate distortion) and widespread misinformation (innocent or willfully ignorant regurgitation of lies). Instead, it has been a megaphone for disinformation, upholding the pretense that there are two political parties with equally valid takes on reality,” she added.
Implying the media have been too friendly to Trump, Rubin said they should think about how they’ve “normalized” the former president and adjust their coverage accordingly.
“While mocking the ‘defenses’ Trump and his sycophants have raised, the political media might want to consider whether this is all that surprising — and what it has collectively done to normalize Trump. It should also consider how it can reconfigure its coverage to better convey objective reality and rise to the task of sustaining our democracy,” she said.
The Washington Post columnist used to be a conservative voice in years past, but has turned into a reliably liberal cheerleader for the Biden administration and the Democratic Party.
