As corporate media news outlets cover the critical 2022 midterm election campaign, their focus invariably is on polls and personalities, rather than on the issues that most voters care about. As is usual their default coverage zooms in on sensational stories, scandals, insults and meaningless rhetoric. When Republican candidates spend millions of dollars to air venomous political ads that combine fear-mongering with race-baiting about an out-of-control crime wave and charge that Democrats are at fault, reporters generally repeat the charge without fact-checking the actual crime statistics. In fact, research has repeatedly shown that crime is rising faster in Republican, Trump-supporting states.
Although Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have proposed various plans that would cut or eliminate Social Security and Medicare, the media has shown very little interest in this explicit GOP threat to a vital program that millions of older Americans rely on.
Sadly, the spread of politically-driven disinformation in the 2022 election campaign continues virtually unchecked. A prime example can be seen with Elon Musk, who shortly after closing his Twitter purchase deal, re-tweeted a link to a homophobic conspiracy theory about the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Andrew Lawrence, a senior researcher with Media Matters For America, who discusses the ways in which corporate media fails to adequately cover critical issues important to voters in the 2022 midterm election campaign.
ANDREW LAWRENCE: You know, you can look at 2016 in the coverage of Donald Trump as just such a great example and one that I’m sure most of your listeners will remember. But there was very little talk about his policy and it was more about what he said. Who did he criticize? Did you see the way that he misspelled that tweet? Did you see what he said about Rosie O’Donnell on Twitter today? These are things that do not impact people’s lives in any way.
And then you get into the horse race coverage and it becomes … you have a lot of these people who should be explaining the policy and how it impacts people’s lives. And instead they talk about, “Well, how are voters gonna react to what he just said? Is this attack ad going to work?” You know, that type of thing. And those things don’t matter. They don’t matter.
And so, I’m assuming that most of your listeners are fairly well-informed, just given the fact that they’re listening to your show right now. But I think the majority of Americans aren’t. And that’s not a fair critique. You know, people are busy going to soccer practice, busy working 12-hour shifts, you know, that type of thing. And so when they’re walking by the TV and all they see is talk about the horse race — both candidates are gonna be just kind of neck and neck, you know, and it’s just sort of like, “Well, I don’t really like the way the country is going, so we’re gonna switch things up.” And it’s just such a disservice to viewers.
And I think a real issue is that the news is supposed to be boring. And what it’s about now is about getting ratings and policy coverage is boring. It’s just boring, and people don’t wanna watch it. And, people will turn the channel. But if you have two pundits yelling at each other about which candidate will be better for “freedom” — which doesn’t mean anything — that’s gonna draw in viewers and they want to see the wrestling match. And it’s a real failure of the media and not just conservative media, but of mainstream media as well, the folks on that type of stuff.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Andrew, I wanted to talk about a case in point that I know you’ve looked at. As part of their culture war campaign in this 2022 midterm election, the Republican party has all our candidates reading from the same script about the scourge of crime in America, making people scared to even leave out of their front door for fear they’re gonna be shot, mauled or mugged. Does our media scrutinize these fear-mongering talking points that the Republican candidates repeat, repeat and repeat and compare the rhetoric with the actual crime stats, which by and large don’t reflect what these Republicans are saying?
ANDREW LAWRENCE: Right. And this is a really great example of what we were just talking about, the horse race coverage, because the truth of the matter is that crime is slightly up, but it is up further in red states than it is in blue states. But now you’ve got mainstream media. They’ll say that crime is an issue and that Republicans are pushing it, and that pushes people into believing that Republicans are better on crime. And Republicans don’t care about the truth.
There was a debate in Oklahoma, I don’t remember the candidate’s name. It was for governor and the Democrat brought up that actually Oklahoma is more dangerous. There’s a higher violent crime rate in Oklahoma than there is in New York City. And she got laughed at. I think it was the Republican candidate, I don’t think it was a moderator. But somebody said, “Well, does that feel true to you?”
And that’s what it’s about. It’s about creating this feeling of what feels true. And, they do that. Fox News has been pushing this crime thing for months and months and months and it’s more about making it feel true than the facts.
And then at that point, then you’ve got mainstream media, you’ve got the Sunday shows. When they bring up crime, they bring it up as an issue for Democrats. It’s gonna hurt them in the polling without ever mentioning the actual crime statistics and that they’re higher in red cities, red states. Violent crime is higher in cities with lax gun laws. And these are the types of things that get in the weeds and it gets a little bit boring, but it’s really important for people to know the truth about that stuff.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Andrew Lawrence (14:22) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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