NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham appeared Monday night on the Fox Business program Risk and Reward to discuss the media's new spin that the election is now over and Hillary Clinton is looking ahead to being president.
Graham lamented the early declaration of a Hillary victory, that the media is playing "a Jedi mind trick" and working to create a "self-fulfilling prophecy" for the Democrats.
ELIZABETH MCDONALD: Is the media just simply covering what Donald Trump has done in his missteps and his mistakes or have they crowned a winner early? Have they been too quick to say Hillary Clinton is the winner of the presidential race? It looks like that what happened in various morning news shows today. Even the Associated Press reported that Clinton is a commanding position to get to 272 electoral votes, that’s two more than necessary to win in November. With me now, Tim Graham, Media Research Center Director of Media Analysis. Alright, two weeks or less in the race. What do you think, Tim? I mean, you know, the media has a job to do. It's supposed to cover things like Donald Trump saying that he will sue 11 of his accusers in — when he was in Gettysburg, you know, giving a speech. That looks kind of weird. Is the media doing its job reporting or is it overstepping its bounds here?
TIM GRAHAM: Sadly, this is something we've seen in past elections too. We've see this sort of in the last couple of weeks of the campaign where the triumphalism sort of breaks out. Certainly 1992 you had this whole idea that basically George H.W. Bush was toast, you know, and the reporting carries that tone in a — like self-fulfilling prophecy, like a Jedi mind trick. “You’re going to lose.” And so they do this and what was the margin in 92? It was 43-38. It was a five-point race. In ‘96, they told us constantly that Bob Dole was losing by — in the teens. 15, 16, 17, you know he lost at the end by seven. So, all I'm saying to you is we don't know whether Hillary is gonna win or whether she's not in a win but they always type the democratic angle, so yes, today’s spin is she’s going to win. Let's go on to talking about how the Democrats will take the Senate next. Let's discuss Hillary’s transition team. Isn’t that a refreshing take and nobody says well, whoa, whoa, whoa. Maybe that's a little cocky to start talking about the transition team at this point. There's still time for something to get out. Lord knows, in 2000, they all came out with Bush had a DWI in his 20s and changed the whole race in the last weekend.
McDONALD: Yeah — I remember that. That’s actually right. To your assessment of things, I mean you look at what the newspapers are reporting both sides of the political aisle, you watch what the TV journalists are reporting do you think they've spent enough time in the various Clinton controversies, coming out of the Clinton Foundation, the use of the private e-mail server where the nation’s secrets were sleuthed through a basement in a server in Chappaqua and you know, just basically he play to play to stuff going on. Do you think that the media did not spend enough time on those issues?
GRAHAM: I would say no, and I think the important part here is to underline that the networks, in the last month or two, have spent way more time on Trump controversies then on Clinton controversies. They been much more interested in the Billy Bush sex talk tape, the ten or 11 accusers that was a story they like. When it comes to everything that's been going on with the Clinton Foundation, with the Clinton e-mail investigation, they are just not very interested in that. They're not very interested in these WikiLeaks e-mails and what that says about the way the Clinton campaign operates. They're not as interested in that and when they do get to Clinton stories, they do it in defensive way that focuses on, you know, why is this a story? Why are the Republicans so mean is half the story, so there is no question that once again, we have a news media that, in the last weeks of the campaign it was full on October Surprise.
McDonald closed by asking if Trump made a mistake by not focusing more on policy. Graham said “I think we been saying this for — since 2015, but I mean, we sat around in the primaries and said why is he making all of these missteps. So, maybe not. Who knows?....But there’s obviously the assumption in the general election that everything that worked for him in the primaries is a disaster in the general.”
