The essential idea of an objective news media is that journalists (aside from clearly-identified opinion commentators) present a factual rundown of the news, and it’s up to the public to sort through that information and forms their own judgements. An objective news media is vital if citizens are to make the decisions for society based on their own values, rather than being steered by powerful news organizations with their own agendas.
Eight years ago, however, many in the media admitted they weren’t committed to objectivity, as a number of journalists announced that, with Donald Trump on the ballot, the election was too important for news organizations to play it straight. “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?” asked the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg in an August 8, 2016 front-page story, “The Challenge Trump Poses to Objectivity.”
“Like it or not, this election is a plebiscite on the most divisive, polarizing and disrupting figure in American politics in decades. And neutrality is not an option,” Univision anchor Jorge Ramos preached in the August 23, 2016 edition of Time. “We cannot hide in the principle of neutrality. That’s a false equivalence.”
“You know, the structure of covering politics is you compare an apple and an orange....In this case we have something more like an apple and some rancid meat,” Slate editor Jacob Weisberg lobbied on CNN’s Reliable Sources on September 4, 2016.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank similarly argued, “In an ordinary presidential campaign, press neutrality is essential. But in Trump....attempting neutrality legitimized the illegitimate.”
But in this context, “neutrality” just meant leaving it up to Democrats to criticize Trump, and letting voters decide the ultimate outcome. Journalists who opposed this were demanding their brethren sacrifice the last shreds of their neutrality in order to directly oppose Trump.
The public isn’t stupid — they recognized what’s going on, and didn’t like it. At the end of the 2016 campaign, huge majorities saw news organizations as pulling for Clinton: “By nearly 10-1, all those surveyed say the news media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see Clinton rather than Trump elected,” USA Today’s Susan Page and Karina Shedrofsky wrote in an October 27, 2016 article about a USA Today/Suffolk University poll.
Seven years later, the media’s ratings were no better, according to a September 2023 Gallup survey, when a combined 68% of Americans reported having “not very much trust” (29%) or “none at all” (39%) when it comes to the media “reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly.”
And in the last eight years, the media have left their biased fingerprints all over the news — starting with their coverage of Trump and his supporters, but on a host of other issues as well. (See NewsBusters, every day.) Yet in spite of all of this, our archives are full of quotes from journalists insisting, even in the Age of Trump, that they have no partisan axe to grind:
■ “Corrupt media. In Trump’s world, journalists are really just Clinton campaign workers in disguise collaborating with her in an attempt to rig the election. This is not just false, it’s ludicrous and it’s damaging....What are the consequences of this conspiratorial talk?”
— Host Brian Stelter on CNN’s Reliable Sources, October 16, 2016.■ “The effort today to get this best obtainable version of the truth is largely made in good faith. Mr. President, the media is not fake news. Let’s take that off the table going forward.”
— Washington Post Associate Editor and author Bob Woodward at the White House Correspondents Dinner, April 29, 2017.■ “We’re not anti-Trump...We’re pro-truth. We’re pro-honesty. We’re pro-decency, and this is a tough moment in American history for people that support facts and decency.”
— Host Brian Stelter to Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway on CNN’s Reliable Sources, November 5, 2017.■ “One thing we’re not is the opposition. We’ve never tried to be part of the political debate, but people want to drag us into it. We shouldn’t take the bait. We’re simply a voice of truth. There’s no balance, there’s just fairness and truth. And a true voice and the truth is what we all need to be hearing right now. A voice that no matter how many disparaging tweets or calls of fake news, we can’t let it be silenced.”
— NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd at Radio Television Digital News Association dinner on March 8, 2018.
■ “Listen, when I covered Barack Obama, I was just as tough on him. People might not believe that.”
— CNN correspondent Jim Acosta on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, May 16, 2018.■ “One of the mistakes we in the mainstream media made during when these false allegations against us for being biased for 40 years happened is we started believing, ‘Oh, maybe we are biased. And wait we can’t look biased.’ So we created a lot of false equivalency issues.”
— Host Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s MTP Daily, August 30, 2018.■ “It disgusts me when we are referred to as ‘fake news.’....We are the people who tell the truth!...Anyone who is dumb enough to confuse the occasional media mistake with media bias would be dumb enough to confuse today’s weather with the climate. We report the facts.”
— Dallas, Texas ABC affiliate WFAA sports host Dale Hansen accepting Lifetime Achievement Award at Radio Television Digital News Association dinner, March 13, 2019.■ “I just hope that young people, in particular, adhere to the standards of objectivity that we have cherished in our business for the last 100 years.”
— CBS News Radio White House reporter Steven Portnoy at National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas, April 9, 2019.■ “I have never witnessed a concerted effort by any news organization to take a stand one way or the other on a political issue, to damage one particular party or help another. We have been far more honest and straightforward with the American people than President Trump has.”
— CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta in a June 11, 2019 Publishers Weekly interview.
■ “We don’t set out to be pro-Trump, we don’t set out to be anti-Trump. We set out to be pro-truth. Now, I understand in this day and age why being pro-truth can be construed as anti-Trump, but that’s not our problem, that’s not our fault. We’re just here to ferret out the truth.”
— CNN chief Jeff Zucker at Citizen CNN, October 24, 2019.■ “Our President is often loose with the truth but this is the thing at CBS, what we pride ourselves on is giving you the news and letting you make your own decisions....So when I hear him say ‘fake news,’ I just sit there and go, ‘Oh, is he not talking about us.’ I never feel that.”
— CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King on CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden, June 11, 2020.■ “There’s also this notion that we’re somehow ideologically attached to a party — the Democratic party. And that’s not true. We are completely independent. We held the Obama administration to account. We fully expect to hold the Biden administration to account.”
— Outgoing Washington Post editor Marty Baron on CNN’s Reliable Sources, February 28, 2021.■ “I don’t think anyone who’s looking for deep lib would seek out CNN. It’s just not what we do. But no, it’s not going to be ideological. We’re just not in that game. We’re not an opinion network, we’re a news network.”
— CNN chief digital officer Andrew Morse discussing CNN’s new streaming platform as aired on Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast, July 19, 2021.■ “We’re ferociously defending the idea that it’s possible to....be objective and nonpartisan....Our mission is to illuminate and not advocate.”
— NBC News President Noah Oppenheim in an interview with Tom Jones of the Poynter Institute, posted January 19, 2022.■ “We’re not Republicans, or Democrats, we’re journalists.”
— NBC correspondent/MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on NBC’s Meet the Press, February 27, 2022.
■ Host Stephen Colbert: “The word on the street is you guys aren’t allowed to be liberal anymore? Is that the case?”
CNN host Don Lemon: “I don’t think we ever were liberal.”
Colbert: “What?”
Lemon: “Yes, I don’t think we ever were liberal.”
— CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, November 29, 2022.■ “I don’t have a base. I’m a journalist. I don’t have a base, Democrat or Republican.”
— Host Sara Sidner on CNN Tonight, July 26, 2023.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
