The NY Times seeks balance but the facts are a lot more lopsided

It is the duty of the media to report the news in a fair and balanced way. Journalists learn this from the get-go in J School. Give equal weight to all responsible and credible sides in every story, whether they involve elections or almost any other controversial topic. Tell a full, complete and impartial story to the best of your ability.

But the key words there are “responsible,” “credible” and “full.”

The New York Times set out on this election eve to tell a tale of our national anxiety – of which there is surely no shortage. But did it meet the tests posed by such key words?

“The nation enters this Election Day on edge over possibilities that once seemed unimaginable in 21st-century America: political violence, assassination attempts and vows of retribution against opponents,” the paper began its piece, under the headline “How Americans Feel About the Election: Anxious and Scared.” The piece carried the subhed: “Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump have framed the presidential race as an existential battle. Voters are heeding their warnings.”

But one must wonder, based on that evenhanded subhed, whether the existential issue really exists for both sides.

Certainly, with democracy at stake, it exists for supporters of Kamala Harris and, one might fairly say, for the whole country. Should Trump prevail — and live up to his promises of retribution, the use of the military against dissenters, the pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters, the gutting of civil-service protections and a stronger hand for the Presidency, and much more — then the term “existential” seems apt.

But does the equation work the other way? Is it reasonable to think the word is appropriate if we elect a sitting vice president who isn’t planning to do any of those things, who isn’t planning to upend Washington or to embrace chaos, and who would likely bring a lot of continuity to the job?

So, one might question whether the Times, in an effort to live up to the ethic of evenhandedness, is misleading readers. One might ask whether it is dealing in false balance, so-called “bothsidesism,” at the expense of the truth here.

This is not to say that Americans of all stripes are not anxious about the vote. Indeed, it is a seminal election and both conservatives and liberals have a lot at stake. And this is not to say that the paper’s diligent reporters aren’t fairly reflecting the divergent views of ordinary folks whom they quote.

“In dozens of interviews over the final weekend of the campaign, Americans from across the political spectrum reported heading to the polls in battleground states with a sense that their nation was coming undone,” the piece says. “While some expressed relief that the long election season was finally nearing an end, it was hard to escape the undercurrent of uneasiness about Election Day and what might follow afterward.”

And the individuals mentioned reported real fears, as the paper recounted:

“I worry about violence,” said Bill Knapp, 70, a retiree from Grand Rapids, Mich., faulting Trump for that possibility as he mingled with other Harris supporters at a local Democratic campaign office. “I’m bracing for that no matter what the outcome is.”

And, on the Trump side, the paper reported on how 56-year-old Melody Rose of Levittown, Pa., worries about everything from affording a place to live to the outbreak of World War III — a global conflict Trump warns is all but inevitable unless he retakes the White House.

“We’ll lose all our freedoms,” Rose said. “I think there will never be another election season again.”

Oh, really?

Yes, it’s true that Democrats from Harris on down are rousing – and worrying – their backers with the specter that Trump will sow chaos and threaten the democratic order. But, isn’t Trump’s rejection of the 2020 results and his refusal to say whether he would accept defeat this time just such a threat? Isn’t hard evidence, such as the bloody rioting on Jan. 6, persuasive about who is vulnerable here? Was that day really a “day of love,” as Trump sought to recast it, even several people died and many were badly hurt?

And, for their part, are Harris and the Democrats similarly planning to reject an electoral rejection, should that happen? To not honor the will of voters, as Trump appears willing to do?

Indeed, are Democratic operatives planning to intimidate voters at the polls, as thousands of GOP “watchdogs” are likely to do? The Republican National Committee last June launched a drive in swing states to marshal thousands of polling place monitors, poll workers and attorneys to serve as what the RNC called “election integrity” observers.

It’s no wonder, that some Harris voters are afraid to even speak out loud about their candidate. As the Times piece reported, at an early voting site in a small city outside Grand Rapids, Mich., a 69-year-old man who would publicly identify himself only as Gary D. spoke in hushed tones when discussing his choice.

“Some questions are not safe to answer,” he said, glancing around before admitting he backs Harris. “Ten years ago I would say ‘yeah,’ no problem. Now, things are different now. I feel like there’s more intimidation than there used to be.” His biggest feeling about the election “fear.”

Given Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and weighing it against the “fascist” charges Harris and her supporters have leveled, is there really any balance? Is there, moreover, a question of accuracy?

At a recent Georgia rally, Trump said he  would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1790, the law under which Japanese, Italian and German Americans were interned during the second world war, as The Guardian reported. He said he would pursue the death penalty for undocumented immigrants who kill an American.

As Politifact reported, Trump early last month told supporters in Scranton, Pa., that Harris is surrounded by “very smart, very vicious people” who are “the enemy from within.” A few days later, he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is “the enemy from within.” Asked about possible Election Day chaos, he warned of “very bad people,” “radical left lunatics” who should be handled if “necessary” by the National Guard or the military. 

The outlet noted that experts say the “enemy from within” phrase echoes rhetoric by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., who led 1950s congressional investigations seeking to root out imagined communists who he claimed had infiltrated the federal government.

“Trump’s use of the ‘enemy within’ language is intentionally vague, open-ended, and malleable,” Allison Prasch, an associate professor of rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Politifact.

She suggested it “plants a seed” in the listeners’ minds that “there is something or someone that must be punished” for the current state of the economy, the immigration system, false claims about voter fraud, the U.S. political system or whatever he’s talking about, the outlet reported.

“With this vague but explicit idea articulated, Trump underscores the ‘Us versus Them’ framing of the US electorate while also distancing himself from any actions taken by supporters against this ‘enemy within,’” the academic said. “It’s incredibly dangerous.”

One, again, must ask who those in real danger are.

A friend in Seattle argued this past summer that liberals like him need to get guns because they could be the targets of crazed Trumpers. Does he have a point? Has he got a stronger case than would Trumpers who fear they could lose their guns if Harris wins, as the former president has baselessly said?

The effort at balance that the Times made is understandable, but it is also wrongheaded. To be sure, the editors and reporters haven’t missed the real threats that Trump and his backers pose — they’re all there. But they have buried those real dangers in a flawed evenhandedness.

Much more on target is another piece in the paper, headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” with the subhed “No major party presidential candidate, much less president, in American history has been accused of wrongdoing so many times.”

That piece lays out, in fact, much of the reason that Trump is running. He is determined to try to get out from under an extraordinarily long long list of legal woes, and serving in the White House could do much of that for him — certainly in eradicating the pending Department of Justice actions and, perhaps, delaying state actions.

“America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes,” the piece says, referring to Trump’s 34 felony convictions. “ What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to ‘retribution.’

“He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic … He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.

“His persecution defense, the notion that he gets in so much trouble only because everyone is out to get him, resonates at his rallies where he says ‘they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way,’ the Times reports. “But that of course belies a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.”

So, one must for a final time ask: who really poses the danger here? And is that something every voter should ponder as he or she enters the voting booth?