On Wednesday morning, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan explicitly advocated that since Trump administration spokesmen are liars, they should be denied any admission to the network Sunday talk shows. She called up Sunday show hosts and demanded it. Can you imagine the Post arguing in 1998 that the Clinton administration should be denied access to television because they were obviously lying about Monica Lewinsky? Here’s Sullivan’s conclusion:
There is no reason to be surprised about the public statements of the Prevarication Administration.
But there is reason to doubt whether giving proven liars a regular platform is something that ought to continue. Truth matters. [Emphasis hers.]
Sullivan, like the rest of the liberal media, was furious that Trump spokesman Stephen Miller defiantly projected an unproven “everybody knows” cynicism that there’s a substantial voter fraud problem in New Hampshire. Sullivan, like the rest of the liberal media, didn’t see anything wrong with black Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings offering no proof on the same show as he proclaimed “there are millions of people, I'm sure, who have not been able to vote that should be able to vote.”
Stephanopoulos fought Miller tooth and nail, but Cummings was given a free pass.
Now let’s wonder how Sullivan in 2012 – then the Public Editor or reader's advocate of The New York Times – evaluated Susan Rice lying on all the Sunday talk shows about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi was a spontaneous protest gone wrong, caused by a YouTube video. Put “Margaret Sullivan” and “Susan Rice” in a Nexis search of the Times – you get nothing.
Perhaps Sullivan would argue that Rice wasn’t relevant to the newspaper’s coverage? Sullivan did write about complaints that the Times was displaying bias by placement on Benghazi congressional hearings, refusing to put them on Page One. (Because, obviously, the Clinton haters shouldn’t win.)
Sullivan actually wrote in 2012: “I see no evidence that The Times is pushing the Obama agenda, overtly or otherwise.” Now who sounds like “The Prevarication Administration”? Who is a team player, a spokeswoman like Kellyanne Conway?
This Sullivan campaign obviously doesn’t extend to Dan Rather or to Brian Williams. Sullivan doesn’t mind if they show up on television and decry the Trump liars – as they shamelessly do.
This is how Sullivan reported on her Ban the Liars crusade:
Should proven liars continue to be given these platforms, especially on the Sunday-morning talk circuit? At what point are some administration officials no longer welcome in these influential national forums?
I asked John Dickerson, host of CBS’s Face the Nation, and George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s This Week, that question Monday. Both thoughtfully made the case that it’s important to have administration spokespeople on their shows, even if they don’t say much that’s useful or spout falsehoods.
“If they are representatives of the White House, then the bias should be for taking them on the air,” Dickerson said. The key is to provide context, he said — sometimes with a discussion immediately following, and, when appropriate, to do what he calls “adjudicating,” meaning pushing back, asserting established fact through repeated questioning, as he has often done.
Or sometimes, Dickerson says, viewers are best served by letting such guests speak freely, and then let “an informed and wise” viewership make its own judgments.
Stephanopoulos, who pushed Miller hard on the lack of evidence for his voting-fraud claims, told me that he was a worthwhile guest.
“Miller was elaborating on the president’s own assertion,” he said. “So it’s critical for us,” through questioning Miller as his surrogate, “to hold the president accountable.”
The Trump administration is a month old, and somehow the Post’s media columnist thinks White House aides should have no place on a Sunday news program. For four years? For eight? This, from the same people who pound the table if The Washington Post is denied access to Trump for 48 hours.
