Soledad O’Brian used her time on this CNN Reliable Sources panel to tell a truth that rarely gets aired.
Soledad O’Brien is 100% correct
Soledad O’Brien excoriated CNN / media for their coverage of news. They give platforms to the undeserving and fuel false equivalences.
Soledad O’Brien, host of Matter of Fact With Soledad O’Brien, Jacob Weisberg, Chairman and Editor-in-chief of The Slate Group, and Mark Leibovich, Chief National Correspondent, New York Times Magazine appeared on Brian Stelter‘s Reliable Sources. I cut most of the narrative by Leibovich and Weisberg because they were providing a tacit defense of a derelict media. Visit CNN’s Reliable Resources to see the entire segment, assuming they have the guts to put it up. But I will not provide apologists a platform or fortuitous coverage for reporting that continues to hurt this country materially. Judging from O’Brien disgust with the current state of the media, one hopes her new show, Matter of Fact With Soledad O’Brien will live up to its title.
O’Brien explained how the media is failing with a classic example.
“I think it is more the contortion to try to make things seem equal all the time,” O’Brien told Stelter. “If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done, actually quite well, is normalized white supremacy among a long list of things many Americans would find distasteful. I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here’re the ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful.
Listen, I have seen on air white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates, and they do a five-minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe is white supremacy. You have normalized that. Then Donald Trump would say, ‘Well Hillary Clinton, she’s a bigot.’ And it’s covered. Then the journalist part comes in and says ‘They trade barbs. He says she is a bigot. And she points out that he may be appealing to racists.’
It only becomes ‘he says she says’ when in actuality the fact that Donald Trump has said she is a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence which if you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech, she actually had really good factual evidence that we would all agree are things that had happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal. … In reality, they are not equal, and I think that is where journalists are failing.”
Throughout the discussion, Soledad O’Brien expanded on her narrative. Mark Leibovich, with one short prose, illustrated that he does not understand true journalism.
“When you get into the ‘on one hand on the other hand’ thing and then make a judgment where you say this is racist, this is white supremacy,” Leibovich said. “You are basically trying to overturn a judgment that has been rendered by one of our two major parties. Which is that this person is acceptable to be the nominee of their party. And obviously, it is not a unanimous thing. But I don’t know if it’s journalists jobs to make that rendering.”
It is journalists’ jobs, to tell the truth. Had they done that there would be no Trump. Had they done that the Affordable Care Act would not have fallen prey to misinformation. Had they done their job there would be no Iraq War and less than adequate stimulus. Had they told the truth and pushed back on those using the airwaves to lie, trickle-down economics would not have lasted as long as it has. Had they done their job, the American middle-class would not be in peril and a ladder to middle-class access would have been built for the poor. Kudos to Soledad O’Brien