How media amnesia becomes GOP amnesty

Journalists fail to remind the public of Republicans’ past misconduct

After the Jan. 6 insurrection but before Donald Trump left office, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina sent a text to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows:

“Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!”

Norman wanted Trump to call out the military to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected Joe Biden. Even after lives were lost because of the assault on the Capitol, Norman kept pushing for a coup. (And yes, Norman is a sloppy texter who didn’t know how to spell “martial law.”)

This traitorous text is something we ought to remember about Norman. But in the New York Times’ 34 most recent mentions of Norman over more than a year, the Times has referred to the text zero times. Zero. The Times has depicted Norman as just another conservative lawmaker addressing the issues of the day.

This is media amnesia, and it’s helping would-be fascists get away with their treachery as they plot to commit more.

Bernard Kerik is another example of a bad actor benefitting from journalists’ failure to put things in context. Last March, the Times’ Maggie Haberman wrote:

“Among those assailing the Manhattan district attorney on Saturday was Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, who took part in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after the 2020 election and has known him since Mr. Trump was mainly a New York real estate developer.”

Haberman then quoted a tweet by Kerik denouncing the Manhattan district attorney investigating Trump. She failed to mention a couple important things. Kerik isn’t just a former NYC police commissioner; he’s a former NYC police commissioner convicted of tax fraud who spent three years in federal prison. And Trump pardoned him afterward, so Kerik is the wrong person to quote about Trump when you don’t disclose the pardon. Which Haberman didn’t.

News consumers count on smart journalists to remind them of relevant facts from the past. But bad journalists stick unpleasant facts in a memory hole because of sloppiness, forgetfulness or unwillingness to annoy a person they may want to use as a source later. That malpractice gives right-wing mischief makers a clear impression that they can outrun their own corrupt records.

When Dinesh D’Souza lied about the 2020 election in a film called “2000 Mules” and was sued over it, the Associated Press story didn’t even remind readers that D’Souza had been convicted of an election-related felony himself: using straw donors to funnel money to a Republican candidate in violation of campaign limits. Since AP’s story didn’t mention the conviction, it also didn’t say D’Souza was pardoned by Trump, whose election lies were trumpeted in D’Souza’s film.

Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer also benefits from the media’s failure to recount important facts. In recent years, news stories seem more likely to recall Spicer’s appearance on “Dancing With the Stars” than to remember that he brazenly lied about the inauguration crowd size in one of his first acts in the Trump White House.

Just once I’d like to see a mainstream reporter describe Kellyanne Conway not simply as a “former senior counselor and campaign manager for President Donald Trump” but as the person who claimed in early March 2020 that Covid-19 “is being contained,” coined the phrase “alternative facts” to whitewash lies, and talked about a terrorist attack that never happened, the “Bowling Green Massacre.”

I’m not saying the news media should bring up these ugly details just to whack misbehaving political figures. I’m saying they should bring them up when they’re relevant information for weighing the person’s credibility.

Many people remember that a Republican congressman compared the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol to a “normal tourist visit.” But far fewer remember it was Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia who said it. And that’s a shame, because a dangerously ignorant statement like that should be tattooed onto Clyde’s career for all time. Yet in the 10 New York Times stories that mentioned Clyde in the last year, the “tourist” quote appeared just twice. The anti-democratic activism of congressmen like Clyde and Norman has been largely normalized by the news media.

I’ll grant you that sometimes it’s not practical to get into a newsmaker’s backstory in a news article. It may distract readers too much from the point of the story. So I’m not saying the Times should have mentioned Ralph Norman’s martial-law text in all of the 34 stories where it didn’t. Some of those stories were about budgeting and the House speakership, with Norman mentioned in passing. But others gave Norman enough attention that a reference to his anti-democratic plotting would have been appropriate. In a story last February about Norman’s push for congressional term limits, it would have been highly relevant to point out that Norman conspired to extend Trump’s time in office even though he’d lost the election. Yet the Times didn’t mention it.

For those instances when including the backstory in the news article seems like too much of a detour, I have an admittedly unrealistic wish that news outlets would start putting footnotes at the ends of their stories. Imagine how informative it would be if the main text of a story referred to “Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.*” … and then a footnote at the bottom of the story said:

“* Ralph Norman sent a text to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 17, 2021, trying to get Donald Trump to call out the military as part of an authoritarian plot to defy the will of the voters and keep Trump in office.”

That kind of footnote would be a public service.