Wherefore baseless?

Liberal columnist complains that calling Trump's statements "baseless" undermines the media's credibility, not the former president's.

Matt Bai, a liberal who writes for the Washington Post, argues that the mainstream media’s practice of constantly attaching qualifiers like “baseless” to Donald Trump’s assertions is unfair and counter-productive. He writes:

I don’t agree with Donald Trump when he posits that Democrats are provoking people into trying to kill him. . . .

But do I think Trump should have to produce some dossier of evidence in order for his theory to be taken seriously? No, I don’t. And by now, it seems tragically obvious to me that, by constantly holding Trump to a different standard of proof than we do anyone else, we in the news media are actually making him less accountable for his mendacity, rather than more so. . . .

Bai objects to applying these phrases to Trump because (1) it holds him to an unreasonable standard and (2) the media doesn’t apply the same standard to Democrats. Both points are true.

As to the first, Bai says:

It’s one thing to say that Trump’s stories of a stolen election or pet-eating migrants are false — this we know from reporting. But when it comes to something like this claim about Democratic rhetoric leading to violence, what kind of evidence is Trump supposed to cite? Must a candidate walk around all day with an armful of data to back up every assertion? Is there really no room to advance a controversial and speculative argument without producing slides to support it?

In fact, while Trump’s latest allegation [that Democrats are provoking people into trying to kill him] might be incendiary, there’s no reason we ought to dismiss it out of hand. . .It’s not crazy to think that these kinds of statements [about Trump posing an “existential threat to democracy] could incite violence, any more than it’s crazy to think that Trump’s rhetoric led to the sacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Saying so shouldn’t come with a courtroom-level burden of proof.

As to the double-standard:

Why is Trump the only politician for whom this burden exists? In this month’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris gleefully repeated this assertion that Trump had promised a “bloodbath” if he weren’t elected in November, even though his quote pretty clearly referred to the economics of car manufacturing. Wasn’t she speaking baselessly and without evidence?

Actually, she was lying.

But the mainstream media is firmly committed to helping Harris defeat Trump. Hence, the double standard.

And here’s where I reach my only disagreement with Bai’s column. He says the media’s practice of constantly calling Trump’s statements of opinion “baseless” arose as a good faith response, in the face of an extraordinarily dishonest politician, to competing concerns and pressures:

The news media can’t credulously publish things we know to be untrue — and yet, if the president says them, we can’t exactly not publish them, either. At the same time, we find ourselves pressured by critics on social media for whom no level of scrutiny, when it comes to Trump, will ever be enough.

So, at some point, we decided that the best way to handle Trump’s more dubious assertions was to take the unprecedented step of prominently labeling them as baseless or unproven.

But it’s not just critics on social media (or “sanctimonious journalism professors,” as Bai describes them later in his article — Jay Rosen, call your office) for whom no level of scrutiny of Trump will ever be enough. The journalists who keep calling Trump’s expressions of opinion “baseless” are crusaders in the anti-Trump brigade. I see little distance between the Trump-haters on social media and the Trump-haters in America’s newsrooms.

Bai fears that the use of qualifiers like “baseless” is feeding exactly the perception I just voiced. That’s why he thinks this practice is counter-productive:

The larger problem with all this selective labeling [by the media of Trump’s statements] is that it’s almost certainly having the opposite effect of what we intend. Rather than highlight Trump’s falsehoods for readers who might be inclined to believe him, our need to append qualifiers to everything he says is making us look like we’re out to discredit him. In other words, we appear to be proving Trump’s entire point not just about the news media but about the nation’s elite institutions as a whole. Rather than reinforcing trust in news coverage, I fear we’re further eroding it.

(Emphasis added)

The mainstream media looks like it’s out to discredit Trump because it is out to discredit him. If its constant use of qualifiers like “baseless” to assail his statements is further eroding trust in news coverage, long may it continue.