Having attained the age of 81 and being both a criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer and a writer for my entire career, I have lived through many difficult, contentious and divisive periods. Indeed, I was a journalist before I became a lawyer, having covered the now-famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom organized by the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in August 1963. I am a self-described “newspaper junkie,” reading five major daily newspapers plus many weeklies as well as serious magazines.
Never, however, can I recall a period when I have, sadly, concluded that I am unable to believe much of what is reported in the media on certain topics. These involve two major areas: (1) any and all matters relating to former President Donald Trump, and (2) certain aspects of the upcoming presidential election. I am not at all a Trump fan, but I do get uncomfortable by the grain of truth in his ranting and railing at “fake news.” But now I want to focus upon my second gripe.
I do not know Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. However, I have long known and trusted Dick Russell, author of a biography published earlier this year entitled “The Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior.” This nuanced and serious biography paints a very different picture than that reported by the media now that Kennedy has announced that he will contest President Joseph Biden’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination – the only serious candidate to enter the race against Biden. In the media, Kennedy is depicted as some kind of troglodyte: An opponent of mandatory vaccination; an extremist; even a fool.
One Boston Globe columnist, Joan Vennochi, described Kennedy as a “conspiracy theorist” and wondered why it is that he’s attracted so much support. I am a regular reader of Vennochi’s column, and I have always found her to be both accurate and fair, but Kennedy appears to trigger extreme skepticism from among the best. A New York Times columnist, Pamela Paul, wrote that “one clear sign of America’s deepening hopelessness is the weird welcome of loony-tune candidates like Robert Kennedy., Jr., who has polled as high as a disturbing 20 percent among Democratic voters.”
Among hard news reporters, the situation is not better. Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times, in reporting on Kennedy’s July 20th testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, wrote: “Even by Mr. Kennedy’s standards for stoking controversy, his recent comments about Covid-19 were shocking.” She described his supporters as coming “from the fringes of both political parties” without citing actual support for this proposition – this, in a news rather than an opinion column.
On The PBS News Hour on the evening of the hearing, host Geoff Bennett interviewed Dr. Paul Offit, who said about Kennedy’s anti-vaccination stance: “In any case, it’s hard to watch him put this kind of misinformation out there continually. He is showing what misinformation can do. And, as a consequence, children are suffering.” (Kennedy has never said a word about removing vaccines from the market. Getting vaccinated merely would be voluntary. Although not a scientist, he questions the efficacy of certain vaccines.) Normally, the News Hour has two guests on each topic in order to give a diversity of views – but not this time. Kennedy was treated differently.
On the Cable News Network, reporter Karen Finney said concerning Kennedy’s theory about Covid attacking certain racial and ethnic groups but not others: “His own family doesn’t support him. And, as you just said, that is a deranged, disgusting thing to say.”
Such reporting poses the distinct chance that more and more Americans will come to believe that Trump is in fact correct when he accuses the media of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” only with the syndrome having spread well beyond reporting on Trump.
