The Media Needs to Take Responsibility for The Monsters They Help to Create in America.
The Public Must See How Bats*t Crazy MTG Is. Elevating controversial figures like her to national prime time to do so, with no push back, is not the way to do it.
I watched in horror and (un)surprise as Morning Joe spent an entire segment discussing whether it’s such a bad thing that 60 Minutes aired a prime-time interview with Marjorie Taylor Green.
The panel of journalists defended Leslie Stahl’s interview, calling it necessary, and Mika said, “All sides of the story must be told.” Jonathan Lemire patted the media on their backs for the lessons they’ve learned since 2016. And Joe talked about how he’d never put MTG on the air when she was a nobody, but now she’s a “leader” in the Republican party, so now he’ll put her on. He further justified his defense of Leslie Stahl and the interview by pointing out that controversial figures are often interviewed - mentioning an interview of Charles Manson specifically from the 1980s.
They did not talk about any number of factors that account for the outrage being relayed by the public on the subject. 1) We do not live in the 1980s. The 80s had no internet and did not have the divisive climate we do today, where normalizing our political villains has proven to have severe consequences for society. 2) Charles Manson got pushback from his interviewer. 3) Normalizing and giving a prime-time platform to MTG is the same thing the media did with Trump in 2015 onward. It was dangerous then, and it is more dangerous now. No amount of self-congratulations from the media amounts to their using those “lessons learned” not to repeat history.
National interviews aired at a time when most viewers are watching is in theory, a good idea. But if a journalist is going to interview someone like MTG, they need to be willing to hold them to account and push back when that person calls an entire political party “pedophiles” and not just respond with “oh, wow.”
American media culture has normalized “both sidesism” and the idea that giving both sides equal weight is required. This is not objectivity. This is not reporting. This allows blatant lies and conspiracy theories to fester without pushback and with a sense of legitimacy not deserved. “All sides of a story” do not require to be heard if one side of that story is utter bullshit. Provably false bullshit.
And it is a disgrace for national mainstream media figures to continue defending these interviews without qualifying or distinguishing why one might be more okay than another.
Jon Stewart is the only “journalist” allowed to conduct interviews with controversial figures until the remaining media members take a page out of his book and learn the art of pushing back forcefully to call out the bullshit. Until then, this is irresponsible and dangerous and seeks to normalize a now-prominent figure in the Republican party who is only in that position because the media continued to report on her every move when she was a “nobody.”
The media does not get to self-congratulate itself for being “more responsible” after learning lessons from 2016 when it continues to create the very divisive figures by elevating them from nobodies to leaders in the political sphere. This is why we, the public, get pissed when you give the nobodies oxygen. It turns them into somebodies because you, the media, create them to be that way for ratings.
And MSM, please stop doing condescending and dismissive segments about how well you’re doing as the media. The media has a long way to go to put into practice the lessons learned from 2016 and the monster that is Donald Trump that the media created.
The public needs to see how insane and dangerous figures like MTG are. Still, the media must stop raising people like her from nobodies to somebodies. Second, if the press interviews these figures, push back and hold them accountable for their dangerous rhetoric or don’t do the interview.
Here is the segment from Morning Joe on Monday, April 3rd. You can decide for yourself.
Link to Mary Trump’s original tweet, as seen in the screenshot above.
