Media shreds its credibility

Now that the FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has come to a close, and the confirmation vote is impending, we must focus on a factor that made this chapter in our politics so toxic: the media coverage.

Time magazine correspondent Molly Ball observed, “Members of the girls’ basketball teams he’s coached sat in the front rows behind him at his Senate confirmation hearing. But Ford’s charge shattered Kavanaugh’s carefully crafted tableau, calling into doubt the image he projected. The row of young girls, legs bare in their privateschool skirts, looked different now.”

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted, “So even though Dr. Ford is saying please stop, slow down, I’m not comfortable with the way this is going, the GOP is gonna plow through, ignore her telling them to stop and just take what they think is rightfully theirs?”

This week, numerous news outlets covered an interview the Atlantic held with Sen. Lindsey Graham, in which he referred to the crude remarks made by James Carville in the 1990s during the Paula Jones case. “This is what happens when you go through a trailer park with a $100 bill.” Though Graham was making a point about crude rhetoric in politics, all context was extracted and the quote attributed to him, alone. Later, some media corrected the mischaracterization, some did not.

We have seen so much journalistic malfeasance around these hearings that there can be no doubt that there has been a degradation of credibility to the entire field. Let us hope this was the low point.