News consumer, beware: journalists are trying to redefine what "objective" means. They think objectivity is for losers who don't have the guts to stand up for "the right side of history."
Take CNN, which brands itself as an anti-Trump outfit. In an interview with CNN host Dana Bash for Modern Luxury magazine, writer Michael McCarthy summarized: "Where once the journalistic mandate was often framed as presenting opposing viewpoints and allowing the audience to decide, Bash argues that such symmetry no longer suffices." Forget "symmetry." Imbalance is in.
Bash argued that objective reporting now means "objectively" challenging the lies of public officials -- and guess which side apparently does all the lying? "Objective reporting doesn't mean just giving all sides of the issue," Bash said. "Objective reporting now, rightly so, means explaining what somebody says when it's false or when it's not right or when it's misleading."
"It's a subtle but critical distinction," McCarthy claimed. No, it's a very unsubtle redefinition of the word.
Consider Bash's softball interview with Kamala Harris in 2024. This is how she approached Harris lying about President Joe Biden's mental decline in office: "Right after the debate, you insisted that President Biden is extraordinarily strong. Given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people?" It's not "holding government accountable" to just say "no regrets"?
McCarthy then cited Bash working against a "backdrop of increasing hostility to journalists," where "political figures seek to cast the media as adversarial or untrustworthy."
Notice how reporters who promote other reporters can't imagine that journalists offer a "backdrop of increasing hostility" to Republicans, and that no one should accept the idea that CNN is "adversarial" to Republicans. Forget the hourly evidence.
Two weeks after Bash threw softballs at Harris in 2024, she was throwing hardballs at J.D. Vance about claims the immigrants were "eating the pets" in Springfield, Ohio. Bash can feel confident she was "fact-checking," but they only seem to check one side, just like CNN "fact checker" Daniel Dale is almost entirely devoted to trashing Trump.
Criticism of CNN's dramatic tilt is "scary in a democracy," says Bash. "It's intimidation. There have been different governments over decades who have tried to do that. And when it's successful, that's when it gets scary in a democracy. The principle is not to succumb to that." Their journalism operates on the assumption that they can dish it out but shouldn't have to take it. Criticizing them is bullying or intimidation, but their nasty attack pieces are not.
All of CNN's "succumbing" is to their Democrat pals. CNN pulled Jim Acosta off the White House beat, and instead, we were "treated" to Biden soft-soapers like Arlette Saenz, whose idea of a tough question was worrying out loud to the First Lady: "Your son Hunter has really been a target for Republicans over the years and likely will be in the years to come. How does your family deal with that intense focus on Hunter?" Saenz even stuck up for Team Biden's use of notecards with reporter pictures and pre-determined softball questions on them.
Or consider another CNN reporter, M.J. Lee, who asked Joe Biden about a Russian dissident who died in prison: "Would you go so far as to say that Alexei Navalny's blood is on the hands of House Republicans right now?"
Dana Bash can receive a glowing interview with glamorous photos in a glossy magazine, but that doesn't mean anyone has to believe CNN is a role model for journalists. Instead, she models how the media elitists are losing public trust with partisan spin.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.