We talked earlier, for example, about Romney lying about President Obama’s record on job creation. It was a rather casual lie, but it was a demonstrably false claim about the nation’s most important issue. The former governor made the claim in an interview with Time’s Mark Halperin, who not only chose to let the lie slide, but passed along Romney’s bogus argument to the public with no scrutiny or fact-checking at all.
Whether Halperin didn’t know he was being lied to or simply didn’t care is unclear. But the larger point remains the same: media professionals (a) have to know the basics so they can have some idea when candidates are trying to mislead them; and (b) have a responsibility to call out blatant dishonesty when they see it.
As Greg Sargent put it earlier today, “Look, Romney is going to make the claims that Obama didn’t create any jobs, and that he made the economy worse, countless times between now and next fall. They will be central to his entire campaign rationale. Can we please start pressing him to justify it when he says this stuff?”
That need not be a rhetorical question.
The alternative is a further descent into “post-truth politics,” with a negligent media enabling liars every step of the way.
#board-2412
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle
