Just like you, I have been happily following along the last few days as poll after poll after poll shows Hillary dominating the Screaming Cheeto™ that is Donald Trump. In the wake of a highly successful convention, Trump’s all-out assault on the grieving parents of a war hero, his thumb in the eye of his own party’s highest-elected officials and his bout with another human who is an eighth of his size, but at least double the IQ, the polls have been offering Team Blue some peace of mind that the slimy veneer that’s been covering Trump is beginning to wear off and show his true color. (Orange?)
But then, during her taking of questions from members of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the dreaded “E” word came up: Email.
Hillary did her best to explain her remarks Sunday on Fox News about her use of a private email server as secretary of state and the resulting F.B.I. investigation. From the New York Times:
In her remarks here before the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Mrs. Clinton tried to explain the discrepancy with what Mr. Comey actually said.
“I was pointing out in both of those instances that Director Comey had said that my answers in my F.B.I. interview were truthful,” she said. “That’s really the bottom line here.”
Mrs. Clinton reiterated her explanation that the classified emails the F.B.I. had identified as having passed over her private server were not marked classified at the time.
The explanation did not appease Republicans.
Duh.
After a week of euphoria, I felt my heart sink into my stomach. Not again. Are we really going to do this over? After nearly 2 weeks of “email-free” existence, were we really going to have to deal with more of this nonsense?
I went to my favorite news aggregators and searched “Clinton email” to see what kind of things were being plied to the masses in the name of journalism. I began reading phrases like “legally calibrated statements” and seeing bylines with phrases like “Hillary Clinton tried to answer questions about her emails. It didn’t go well.”
Oh, man.
For the next few hours, I spent my time wringing my hands and looking for silver linings, all the while in disbelief that this was a thing, yet again.
But my apprehension turned to anger when I came to the following realization:
There is a double-standard in play here.
I’m not part of the crowd that believes that there is a strong media bias of coverage towards or away from one candidate over the other. Quite the opposite. The media has been relatively aggressive in their reporting, particularly when it comes to Trump. . .which is easy to do when everything he says is subject to another mass shaking of the nation’s collective head.
Then what do I mean by a double standard?
While the coverage is fairly consistent, the standard that each candidate is held to concerning what they say could not be more different. While the press is fact-checking everything Trump says (because everything he says is suspect), they are content to say “That wasn’t correct” and leave it at that. They are in such awe that a human being is so completely capable of lying this much, that once it has been pointed out, they move on and set themselves up to report on and fact check the next prevarication. They are wide in their coverage, but refuse to be deep.
On the other hand, let Hillary misspeak or fumble over a word and it’s GAME ON! Everything she says gets compared to something else she said, hyper-scrutinized and is clearly an attempt to obfuscate the truth. “See, she IS lying! She IS crooked!”
Why?
She is a Clinton. Whether it’s fair or not (Hint: It’s not) her last name makes her a lightning rod. Republicans absolutely have had it out for her since she had the audacity nearly 25 years ago, before Big Dog took office, to declare that she wasn’t Tammy Wynette standing by her man and she wasn’t content to stay home and bake cookies. Not the pearl-clutching type, she was more than a trophy First Lady. . .she was a warrior for the down-trodden, the “less-thans”, the “least of these”. In short, as far as Republicans were concerned, she didn’t know her place.
That said, it is up to journalists to be truly journalistic. . .to bring equality to their reporting. . .to move on from infotainment and back to hard news that looks for answers, not ratings.
Here’s hoping. . .