Ongoing Media Suicide

We are used to bias in debate moderators, even some grossly inappropriate interventions (here's looking at you, Candy Crowley). But ABC's David Muir and Linsey Davis did not even try to fake professionalism. When the late Tim Russert hosted Meet the Press, he invariably asked Democratic guests the tough questions on issues of the day. The difference was that he rarely pressed or followed up as he did with Republicans. He was the former campaign manager for George McGovern, and even he was vastly more professional and even-handed than the pair of miscreants provided by the Disney Corp.

Their boss, the Disney exec who oversees the news division of its ABC subsidiary, is not only a longtime friend of Ms. Harris, she introduced her to her husband. Hugh Hewitt and others have pointed out that there was not one question about China (a big Disney movie market), so no danger that the loyal ABC hitpersons might raise an issue that would upset The Mouse. No questions about the American recently murdered by Hamas that might upset the Democratic balancing act of catering to the anti-Israel vote while appearing not to. Not a single hard question or correction aimed at Willie Brown’s old girlfriend.

[Side note: Why is Mr. Trump’s rather sordid sexual history continuously, entirely relevant, and always fair game, whereas we do not explore the fact that Ms. Harris’ political career was entirely the result of sleeping with a married political kingpin? For Trump it was a deplorable distraction, not the basis of his career.]

Ms. Harris claimed that she had never advocated gun confiscation when she has previously done so—in an interview with David Muir himself!! It is not as if he needed to do a deep dive into his notes to call out that lie. Others have quantified the unchallenged lies Kamala has told. But some of that seems like picking the flys__t out of the pepper. The problem is larger than counting falsehoods and fact-checking the supposed fact-checkers.

In the old real world, the voters, the competing campaigns, and an actual news media would discuss the quality of content offered by the debaters rather than leave it to two self-appointed, rather poorly prepped judges in real-time. Unlike the candidates, the moderators know the question in advance. There is no excuse for bad info, inaccuracies or not knowing the candidates' previous statements. The hack moderators repeatedly made wrong pronouncements (crime statistics, late-term abortions, Haitian dietary practices, etc).

The overriding problem is a format in which the moderators pick the topics, participate at will, and claim a presumption that their own take is the objective view. That is a level of authority that I would be reluctant to grant to an actual professional journalist and certainly not to those two.

It is one more instance in which it is universally clear that we do not have a professional news industry in major media or newspapers. They are third-string cheerleaders for a failed elite trying to hold off a global populist revolt. Like Baghdad Bob, they will lie until the office lights go out.

Kamala Harris could not exist in a legitimate news media environment. And our debased, increasingly pathetic journalism industry thinks it needs to support the uniparty to survive. A delusional symbiosis of mediocrity. How long can that survive?