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The politicians who tried to overturn an election -- and the local news team that won't let ...
Media • Perspective
The politicians who tried to overturn an election — and the local news team that won’t let anyone forget it
By Margaret Sullivan
Media columnist
May 2, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
The journalists at WITF, an all-news public radio station in Harrisburg, Pa., made a perfectly reasonable decision a few months ago. ... They decided they wouldn’t shrug off the damaging lies of election denialism. ... They wouldn’t do what too many in Big Journalism have done in recent months: shove into the memory hole the undemocratic efforts by some Republican elected officials to delegitimize or overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Too many Sunday news shows repeatedly book the likes of Kevin McCarthy, Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson without reminding viewers how these members of Congress tried to undo the results of the election — and encouraged the Trumpian lies about election fraud that led to the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol less than four months ago. A rare exception is CNN’s “State of the Union,” which hasn’t booked a single member of the so-called Sedition Caucus since January.
{snip}
But Harrisburg’s WITF has gone a different route: They want you to remember. ... Months before the election, the station’s reporters and editors were already deeply alarmed by what they saw unfolding. “We could see the disinformation really taking hold, this idea that the only way President Trump could lose is if the election were rigged,” Tim Lambert, the station’s news director, told me last week.
[The pro-Trump media world peddled the lies that fueled the Capitol mob. Fox News led the way.]
The deadly culmination of that anti-democratic lie, the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, solidified their thinking. In late January, the station — whose newsroom includes six reporters and two editors — posted an explanatory story stating that they would be regularly reminding their audience that some state legislators signed a letter urging Congress to vote against certifying the Pennsylvania election results, and that some members of Congress had voted against certifying the state’s election results for President Biden, despite no evidence to support their election-fraud claims.
{snip}
In other words, no memory hole. No “let’s just move on.” And, sorry, no amnesty.
For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan
Margaret Sullivan Follow https://twitter.com/sulliview
Margaret Sullivan is The Washington Post’s media columnist. Previously, she was the New York Times public editor, and the chief editor of the Buffalo News, her hometown paper.
The politicians who tried to overturn an election — and the local news team that won’t let anyone forget it
By Margaret Sullivan
Media columnist
May 2, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
The journalists at WITF, an all-news public radio station in Harrisburg, Pa., made a perfectly reasonable decision a few months ago. ... They decided they wouldn’t shrug off the damaging lies of election denialism. ... They wouldn’t do what too many in Big Journalism have done in recent months: shove into the memory hole the undemocratic efforts by some Republican elected officials to delegitimize or overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Too many Sunday news shows repeatedly book the likes of Kevin McCarthy, Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson without reminding viewers how these members of Congress tried to undo the results of the election — and encouraged the Trumpian lies about election fraud that led to the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol less than four months ago. A rare exception is CNN’s “State of the Union,” which hasn’t booked a single member of the so-called Sedition Caucus since January.
{snip}
But Harrisburg’s WITF has gone a different route: They want you to remember. ... Months before the election, the station’s reporters and editors were already deeply alarmed by what they saw unfolding. “We could see the disinformation really taking hold, this idea that the only way President Trump could lose is if the election were rigged,” Tim Lambert, the station’s news director, told me last week.
[The pro-Trump media world peddled the lies that fueled the Capitol mob. Fox News led the way.]
The deadly culmination of that anti-democratic lie, the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, solidified their thinking. In late January, the station — whose newsroom includes six reporters and two editors — posted an explanatory story stating that they would be regularly reminding their audience that some state legislators signed a letter urging Congress to vote against certifying the Pennsylvania election results, and that some members of Congress had voted against certifying the state’s election results for President Biden, despite no evidence to support their election-fraud claims.
{snip}
In other words, no memory hole. No “let’s just move on.” And, sorry, no amnesty.
For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan
Margaret Sullivan Follow https://twitter.com/sulliview
Margaret Sullivan is The Washington Post’s media columnist. Previously, she was the New York Times public editor, and the chief editor of the Buffalo News, her hometown paper.
