Networks seem poised to normalize GOP extremists this week

The media should do truth-telling at this week’s convention to help “lower the temperature.”

The Republican National Convention is just getting started, so it would be unfair of me to prematurely denounce the news coverage.

Maybe in light of the ghastly assassination attempt against Donald Trump on Saturday, the TV networks will avoid amplifying the extreme rhetoric that has characterized the Republican Party in recent years. Maybe people across the political spectrum will “lower the temperature,” as Joe Biden put it Sunday night. And perhaps the media will do its part.

Maybe TV networks will contribute to an honest political dialogue with more scrupulous truth-telling. If Republicans spread conspiracy theories and accuse immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country,” perhaps the networks will cut away from the speeches to do instant fact checks, aided by authoritarianism experts like Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Timothy Snyder. 

Or maybe the networks will run a crawl across the bottom of the screen to correct disinformation just seconds after it occurs.

Or maybe they’ll refuse to platform some Republican speakers, such as North Carolina governor candidate Mark Robinson, who recently told a small-town church group that “some folks need killing.”

But I’m probably dreaming. Pro-truth innovations like that seem unlikely at this week’s confab in Milwaukee.

Look for the media to cover the convention much as they’ve covered the conventions of the past, because they’re living in the past, utterly incapable of adjusting their approach to cover the ever-more-radical Republican Party.

The media will take comfort in balloon drops and people wearing funny hats. They’ll pay close attention to the Trump family’s fashions and the style points of the MAGA elite. They’ll pretend they’re witnessing a celebration of our political process when, in effect, they’ll be normalizing a corrupt, fascist party that is trying to overthrow our democracy.

“Lowering the temperature” does not mean silence or meekness. But it does mean the media must push back against violence and hatred while trying to find some semblance of unity in a shared set of facts.

The media do not further this goal when they amplify lies and act as if they’re helpless to do otherwise. They say they’re prepared for fact-checking at the convention, but there’s no reason to expect it to be front-and-center in the live coverage. 

The website TVNewser sent a questionnaire to the networks about convention coverage, including a query about fact-checking. Abigail Crutchfield, a CNN vice president, said simply: “We plan to cover all angles of the speeches across our platforms. Fact-checking is, of course, a part of that coverage.” 

But it wasn’t part of CNN’s live broadcast of last month’s Trump-Biden debate. CNN’s anchors played the roles of potted plants, letting Trump lie incessantly. The network’s excellent fact-checker, Daniel Dale, was consigned to Twitter/X through the debate itself and was brought onto CNN for a thorough vetting long after the debate ended.

ABC’s convention plan sounds similar, with quick-reaction fact-checking offloaded to a secondary platform. Producer Marc Burstein says the network will fact-check “in real time … on an ABC News Digital live blog.” Burstein adds that ABC will “also report on fact-checks during network and streaming coverage when appropriate.” But color me skeptical. 

NBC News producer Matt Carluccio said: “Viewers know that we can’t possibly jump in every time we hear a lie or truth. We know that will happen, we prepare our audiences for it and we give them the context and information needed to make up their minds based on that reality.”

Whatever that means.

Fox News had the most cagey answer to TVNewser’s question. “Fact-checking is done judiciously to maintain our focus on the news rather than the process of fact-checking itself,” said Doug Rohrbeck, a senior vice president at Fox.

“Judiciously.” Right.

Beyond fact-checking, there will be plenty of opportunities for the news media to point out the right wing’s Project 2025 blueprint for a power grab and Trump’s vow to use the government for political “retribution.” But will the media dare raise those issues, or will they skip them to avoid spoiling the festivities? 

The last Republican National Convention, in 2020, was a travesty. You may recall that Trump broke protocol by delivering his acceptance speech from the South Lawn of the White House, turning the People’s House into his own personal party venue. Even though the pandemic was raging, 1,500 people attended the White House event in person, almost all of them maskless. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, added to the inappropriate behavior by addressing the convention on video from a Jerusalem rooftop despite State Department guidelines that agency officials should not “speak for or against a partisan candidate” at a convention.

The news media pointed out those breaches of decorum in 2020, but the event was a net win for the GOP anyway. It could hardly be otherwise. Not much news occurs at political conventions, but a lot of propaganda does. 

The networks in effect hand over the programming to the politicians. The news outlets worry that if they put too critical a filter on the events, they will come across as adversaries. So they let the parties “have their say.” That’s their version of fairness toward Republicans and Democrats. But it’s unfair to the public and the truth.

Trump’s Thursday night acceptance speech will undoubtedly draw major attention. But in general, the networks vastly over-cover these conventions, with days of prime-time programming that add nothing to the public’s understanding. Rather than broadcasting speeches by liars like Ron DeSantis and Elise Stefanik, it would be far more useful for the networks to spend an hour investigating what mass deportations might do to the American economy.

Of course, that would require fresh thinking by the news media, which is as rare as the truth at a Republican convention.