Why Cable News Is Still Letting Politicians Lie and Get Away With It

John Fitzherbert, in his book “The Boke of Husbandry,” published in 1534, wrote,” The dogge must lerne it, whan he is a whelpe, or els it will not be: for it is harde to make an olde dogge to stoupe.”

What Mr. Fitzherbert wrote has become a much used proverb: “You can’t teach an old dog new trivcks.”

And the oldest of old dogs in the year 2024 was the cable television networks for repeating their actions during the run-up to the 2016 election, when they gave Donald Trump unlimited air time in 2024, despite knowing that he was a serial liar, because it improved ratings.

Last year, the cable networks again gave unlimited air time to the former twice-impeached president by allowing him to turn his many legal troubles into free television campaign ads, despite his countless fabrications in front of the cameras.

The millions of dollars of free air time given to Mr. Trump in 2015 and 2016 is believed to have contributed to his being elected president. After he was defeated for reelection in 2020, the cables said “We’re no longer will let him use our airways to tell lies. But that didn’t last for long.

Early indications in 2024 shows that they didn’t mean what they said, because on Jan. 11, Mr. Trump was permitted to spread his lies without any real time pushback from cable reporters while he was speaking. And providing a free open mic continued throughout the year.

Of course, providing a disgraced and convicted president free airtime was par for the course for cable stations because cable hosts permit many untruths to be told on their programs without push back.

That’s why when watching cable political shows viewers will notice that some things never change, even if it happens on a different day, at a different time, in a different year.  A prime example is the less than penetrating interviews by cable news hosts of their guests.

The first interviewer in the new year that I saw who would not push a guest was on Media Buzz, the program on Fox that Howe Kurtz says is a look at the week’s news “without any political biases,” which in itself is, to put it gentlemanly is an untruth considering the frequent appearance of his far-right guests.

On his first Media Buzz program of 2024, on Jan. 7, Kurtz highlighted a major fault of cable TV interviewers, permitting. guests to say anything and talk around a question without any follow-up or push back by the questioner by saying “You are not answering my question.” Guest Ron DeSantis twice circled around Kurtz’s question - one about whether Donald Trump was responsible for the attack on the Capital, the other regarding pro life legislation. Both times Kurtz accepted DeSantis’s’ none answers and moved on.

Kurtz, in particular, hardly ever calls out a guest for sprouting an untruth or misleading information. Two examples from his June 2 telecast.

Guest Tomi Lehren, a conservative commentator, while attacking President Biden’s record, said that illegal immigrants were attacking policemen, giving the appearance it was happening all the time. Factually, it occurred once, but Kurtz did not correct Ms. Lehren’s misleading comment. Later in the program, Trump Senior Advisor Jason Miller uttered two inaccuracies, to put it politely. He said that the Manhattan D.A. decided to investigate Mr. Trump when the former president announced he would again run for president. Actually, the investigation began in 2018. He also said that the Trump defense team was not allowed to bring witnesses to testify, another untruth. Kurtz didn’t bother to correct either statement.

And on his June 9 program, he let guest Caroline Downey of the National Review call the judge in the hush money case “corrupt” without challenging her statement. Just another example over the years that Kurtz lets statements from conservative guest that are misleading or untrue go unchallenged. I can write an entire column of other examples like those above. 

On his June 23 program, taking about the upcoming presidential debate, Kurtz said it was about “two presidents,” obviously playing to his Fox viewership. This is a no-no. The U.S. has only one president at a time.  Non-partisan reporters uses the phraseology “the president and former president.”

There are many other examples that prove the Howard Kurtz’ Media Buzz is just another right-wing Fox program that I can cite that decries Kurtz’s claim of not being partisan. But this is an overview of the entire year of cable news, so enough Kurtz examples.

Oh, well. One more from his September 8 program: During his monologue, he criticized Kamala Harris for flip flopping on fracking, but did not mention Donald Trump’s numerous flip on the abortion issue.

As readers of my past cable news columns know, I am not a fan of its reporting and have faulted it for various reasons. However, I can’t recall anything as ridiculous as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer having William Shatner as a guest commentator during the moon landing on Feb. 22 because he played Captain Krk on Star Trek. Still to come, Mr. Blitzer? Having an actor who played a doctor explain brain surgery?

I also find CNN, and particularly Wolf Blitzer’s program, the most misleading broadcasts of the major cable networks. Everyone knows that Fox News and MSNBC slant their coverage to appeal to their audience. But CNN promotes itself as a straight shooter. But it isn’t. On April 28, CNN reported that a presidential poll showed former President Trump leading President Biden in all the battleground states and nationally by a large margin. On the same day, a CBS poll had Biden leading or neck- and- neck with Trump in the battleground states, which CNN failed to mention. And its coverage of the anti-Israeli protests are announced as being coast-to-coast. While that’s true, the number of protests at colleges are minimal compared to the number of colleges and universities in the U.S., which number approximately 6000, which is never mentioned.  Good reporting would put that into context.

Another prime reason that I dislike cable reporting is that they excel at turning a raindrop into a hurricane. Example: For days prior to the South Carolina primary, even though it was known that Mr., Trump would handily defeat Nikki Haley, cable covered the story as if Ms. Haley had a chance.

I thought that March 22, might the day that most shows why cable news should not be considered a first- rate provider of news. It was on that day that Kate, the Princess of Wales, announced that she had cancer. For hours, the announcement dominated cable coverage. It was as if Donald Trump’s legal problems and the Israel-Hamas war didn’t exist, especially at CNN. And the coverage of the Princess of Wales health problems continued for several days.

But I changed my mind on April 9.While it’s undeniable that Fox, MSNBC and CNN slant their news coverage, the most one-sided, biased coverage of a situation that I ever saw on cable was on that day's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He spent almost the entire problem blaming Israel for what’s happening in Gaza and for the U.S. government’s response to the situation. Stewart was obviously taken aback when his guest, Christiane  Amanpour, the chief international anchor for CNN and host of CNN ‘s international's nightly interview program, said that the Gaza authorities did not permit independent Western journalists to cover the situation there. Stewart neglected to mention that during his prejudiced commentary, even though it has been largely reported that all the information emanating from Gaza is by the Gaza government, which can’t be verified. After Amanpour’s media coverage comment and during her subsequent commentary about the situation, Stewart took an obvious low- key approach to his questioning, maybe because he realized that he was speaking to a person that really knew what was happening, instead of just bloviating, as he did about a situation that he has no first-hand knowledge about.

That’s the trouble with political commentary on cable news: It provides an open mic for anyone to express an opinion even if they don’t know all the details and if they’re deliberately lying. And all too often, these opinions are accepted as facts by viewers who , instead of reading respected print pubs, get their news from cable TV shows like Jon  Stewart’s, who in my opinion stopped being funny year’s ago.

Again, on Dec. 23, I changed my mind about what I believed was the lowest point in cable news during the year 2024. When it was announced that Bill Clinton was hospitalized, Wolf Blitzer had a doctor discuss what might be wrong with the former president. Blitzer and the doctor should both be ashamed of themselves. Blitzer, like Kurtz, practices a low form of journalism, so I wasn’t surprised about the Blitzer discussion. But the doctor should be ashamed of himself for speculating what might be wrong with Mr. Clinton without having any information.

Summing up

In its Oct. 28 edition, the WS J published a laudatory article about Dana Bash, CNN’s chief political correspondent.

In the article, Ms. Bash said about her moderating the debate that caused President Biden to cease running for re-election, “We are the facilitators,” Bash said of CNN’s approach to the debate. “We are not participants. And if and when somebody says something that’s not true, it’s up to their opponent to correct that.” 

That’s the problem with cable news political coverage in general, and debates in particular. Too much false information by politicians is permitted to go unchallenged, which makes for sub-par journalism.

Lesson for PR people

When doing research for a program or a speech, do not include cable TV as a research site. The above examples explain why I feel that way.