Journalists on the Right Take Cronyism to New Heights

By Jon Friedman, June 28, 2023

 Only in American politics – where the Republican candidates and their favorite pundits never stop ranting regardless of the severity of the breaking “news” –would we say with some assurance that this is now at a calm-before-the-storm juncture.

 Charges have been filed against former President Donald Trump in the classified-documents case. Many GOP leaders, including Trump, are basically doing nothing more vicious than pawing at one another, as each one seeks to gain momentum in the media and the public’s consciousness before the 2024 presidential race really starts to heat up in earnest.

 For the Republican media who nonetheless breathlessly cover this organ music, it is the right time to jump on the conservative bandwagon.

 The Bret Baier Interview

 Trump’s recent television interview with Fox News’ veteran journalist Bret Baier will confound media experts for years to come. On the one hand, Baier doggedly tried to get Trump to address the pertinent issues of the case of the documents.

 Trump did not distinguish himself with his uncharacteristic halting, confused delivery – the absence of his trademark bluster was striking – and a devotion to rewrite history. To a discerning viewer, it seemed clear that the 45th U.S. President had no answers for Baier.

An analytical journalist might have made the intellectual leap to suggest that Trump, based on the Baier debacle, would not help his legal cause, either, in a courtroom.

And remember, this happened on Fox, which has been regarded as the safest of safe havens for Trump.

Following the Baier interview, right-wing media was conspicuous with its lack of criticism. It is also relevant to discuss how Trump got what amounted to a pass by sympathetic media outlets.

Mindless Exercise

These journalists happily engage, every day, in some sort of mindless exercise of “what-about-ism” as a reflex action as they try to minimize the charges against former President Trump – at least in the court of public opinion. These media folks will take any bit of dirt and try to find a way to bring it to President Biden’s door – and as far as possible from Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster.

This is how the reporters fill up the dead spots during a campaign. Even when the news is not major, build it up to a point where the readers and viewers can think of nothing else.

Hunter Biden What-About-ism

This week, the focus shifted to the reports that Hunter Biden, President Biden’s troubled son, would plead guilty to federal tax and gun charges. These are serious offenses, of course.

But neither admission appears to have any connection to POTUS’ affairs before he entered the White House or now. Investigations into Hunter Biden will no doubt continue, so we will have to wait and see if a genuine connection between son and father emerges.

For now, however, the Hunter Biden situation is a perfect example of where the mission of declared candidates and the media should diverge. It is perfectly understandable to read and hear the GOP candidates trying to make hay in this scandal because the wrongdoer is the President’s son. By making Joe Biden appear to look bad, they figure, their prospects increase.

But the journalists have a different objective – or they should, anyway. They should not jump eagerly on to the candidates’ bandwagon and invent ways to slam Joe Biden. Joe Biden was not mentioned in Hunter’s offenses.

And to even the most partisan GOP-loving journalist, it should be clear why the lenient sentence against Hunter Biden diverges from the harsh accusations against Trump.

Hunter Biden is not running for President!

The right-wing journalists’ attempts to make a reasonable comparison between Hunter Biden and Donald Trump smacks of desperation, at this early point in the 2024 sweepstakes.

The Elephant in the POTUS’s Room

What about the elephant in the room: the age issue.

It may be more plausible for right journalists to join their heroes in endlessly pointing out Joe Biden’s age. Some Democratic supporters and voters have singled out Biden’s age as a worry heading into the 2024 election.

It is not as if Biden were being asked to match the time that he posted in a marathon run in the past. Time marches on. And by the way, the last time I checked, Donald Trump, the leading GOP presidential candidate as of right now, turned 77 on June 14. (Joe Biden is 80 years old.)

The difference here is that the Hunter Biden debacle does not seem, right now, to have an effect on Joe Biden’s presidency. It should not matter, either, as we lurch into the 2024 race.

But Joe Biden’s age is different. It is a real, legitimate issue.

The Republican politicians have no interest in separating a real issue from a, well, trumped-up one. But the Republican media owes its followers more professionalism and an adherence to following the news in a – how does that go, again? – fair and balanced way.

The age – and accompanying ageism – is a legitimate issue for the Republican candidates to try to exploit. It’s fair to say that this won’t be the last time the conservative media is accused of this kind of act. But journalists on the right continue to show a capacity to take cronyism to new heights.

Jon Friedman wrote MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman’s Media Web column from 1999 to 2013 and has taught classes in journalism and other subjects at Stony Brook University. He has written three books and has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Sunday Business Section, The New York Post, Esquire and Time. 

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