Relearning How to Frame a Political Story

‘There’s a part of you that’s still 1978,’ Keith Olbermann says of today’s prominent journalists

U.S. Capitol Buildings by David Mark from Pixabay

Steve Schmidt, a founder of the Lincoln Project, interviewed political commentator Keith Olbermann on the April 14 episode of Schmidt’s The Warning podcast.

Schmidt kicks off the discussion by mentioning Sean Hannity’s March 27 conversation with Donald Trump on Fox as an example of the challenge in covering Trump and his ideologues and co-conspirators. How should real journalists comprehend this phenomenon and respond? (1:30–2:05)

‘Fair and Balanced’?

As context, I’ll insert: For its first two decades, Fox News used the slogan “Fair and Balanced.” It phased this out around the time Trump was elected and took office. Nonetheless it has been a pervasive assumption in journalism that a proper, thorough story must be framed as a both-sides debate; if it isn’t balanced in this way, it isn’t fair. This model has a flaw: When one side is obviously insincere, poorly researched, spreading misinformation (falsehoods) and disinformation (lies), violating privacy, inciting violence, or is otherwise destructive, the other side only collaborates in the damage by treating it as a real contribution to collective human knowledge or even by…