MSNBC's Trump Speech Coverage Problem
Relearning the lost Journalistic Art of Fact Checking Politicians
During this year’s Iowa Caucuses, MSNBC refused to air Donald Trump’s victory speech. Given the number of repeated lies that Donald Trump tells on a regular basis as well as his generally inflammatory comments, MSNBC has decided to stop covering his speeches.1
This move was met with fierce criticism.2 Many critics compared MSNBC to state run news organizations in countries without free democracies and drew references to the fiction novel 1984.
The critics have a point. Should candidates be censored because journalists dislike them? If Trump can be censored in this way, who else could be?
But MSNBC has a good reason for not covering Trump. In nearly every public appearance, Trump will say things that he knows are factually inaccurate and often inflammatory.
On Tuesday night during the New Hampshire Primary, MSNBC chose to air Trump’s election night speech. However, Trump had not gotten about a minute into his speech before he began once again stating knowingly false information that was inflammatory, claiming that he had won New Hampshire in the general election. (He lost both times).
MSNBC’s anchors were flummoxed.
This is a vexing problem. Trump should be covered. He might once again become President. He also cannot be trusted to deliver any public remarks in which he will not say factually inaccurate and inflammatory things to the public.
However, like with so many issues arising under Trump, the issue of whether to cover his speeches reflects a larger problem.
American journalists have gotten really bad at fact checking elected officials and candidates for public office.
Elected officials will often state things to the news media that are in direct conflict with their own records, make claims about the limit of their own powers that ignore their constitutional duties, or propose unconstitutional laws and policies. These statements are not Trump level lies but they mislead the public.
The response from journalists? Nodding agreement and repetition as though the statement was fact.
Frankly, given the common lack of journalistic proper fact checking, it’s little wonder that Trump has long felt like he can say whatever he wants regardless of the truth. Because journalists will either nod along with what he says or if they tire of his knowingly false statements, they will simply refuse to cover him at all, which only feeds into his campaign narrative of personal victimization and grievance.
Journalists failing to fact check elected officials and candidates is a basic failure of journalism. Elected officials need to be held to account for their actions or lack thereof. The public needs to be fully informed about a politician’s voting record and whether what a political candidate promises can be constitutionally enacted so that voters can make an informed decision.
In many cases, a statement might not even be a deliberate lie. An elected official may simply be misinformed. However, even then, the public still needs to be informed that the person who either leads them or seeks to lead them is misinformed. And why.
To highlight the problem, I provide three bipartisan examples of elected officials or political candidates making misleading statements where journalists failed to properly fact check. These statements weren’t lies and they weren’t even necessarily malevolent. But they were contextually misleading. And because journalists failed to properly fact check, the public was left uninformed.
Example 1: Governor Gavin Newsom and COVID-19 Public School Closures
In a 2023 interview, Newsom was asked about the prolonged public school shutdowns during COVID-19.
Newsom responded that he could do nothing about the public school districts that shut down for too long because of the system of strong local control that enabled school districts to do as they pleased.3 Effectively, he argued, his hands were tied.
The journalist asking him the question nodded and provided no follow up.
However, there’s a serious problem with Newsom’s answer. Under the California Constitution, the state is ultimately responsible for the administration of public education, not local school districts.4 Even though the state can and often does delegate administrative duties to local school districts, that’s done in the state’s discretion, not because local school districts have any independent legal prerogative.5
Thus, the statement that prolonged school closures were something that Newsom had no control over doesn’t add up. The state had not only the constitutional authority to reopen schools but arguably a constitutional obligation to do so once it became clear that the schools could be safely reopened.6
And certainly, Gavin Newsom knows this because of his legal threats against certain local school districts for defying state law regarding LGBT curriculum and student pronoun/naming policies in the schools.7 Moreover, Newsom had additional authority to act unilaterally without the Legislature’s approval under the Emergency Powers Act that he frequently used during the pandemic.8
Doesn’t the journalist interviewing Newsom have a duty to inform the public of how California governance works? Shouldn’t Newsom have to give a better answer than there was nothing he could do about school closures when the duty for administering public education is constitutionally committed to him?
Most members of the public, including most lawyers, are probably unfamiliar with constitutional law. Most are probably not aware of who has ultimate control of public education under the California Constitution. There might even be some confusion because local charter cities do have autonomous authority under the California Constitution in many other policy areas.9
The lack of a fact check allowed Gavin Newsom to avoid giving an answer where he either justified the prolonged public school closures or admitted to having made a mistake. Instead, the public was left less informed.
Example 2: Congressman Kevin Kiley and Abolishing Single Family Home Zoning
In 2021, there was an effort to recall Gavin Newsom from office. One of the leading politicians behind the effort was then Assemblyman, now Congressman, Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), an elected official with a seemingly pathological obsessive hatred of Gavin Newsom, who ran for Governor himself as a replacement candidate.
In a 2021 gubernatorial debate of replacement candidates, a moderator asked candidates about how they would build new housing to solve the housing crisis while still also preserving single family neighborhoods that most Californians cherished and did not want to see upzoned.
Kiley responded, “Preserving single family homes is very important.” The moderator nodded along and asked no further follow up questions.
As an Assemblyman, Kiley co-authored legislation, SB-50, that abolished all single family home zoning in California and mandated a minimum residential density of quadplexes throughout the entire state.10 He even spoke at State Senator Scott Wiener’s shitshow Oakland press conference to support SB-50 where he shouted down hecklers from the Moms 4 Housing organization who were protesting SB-50.11 He also voted in favor of all other legislation to abolish single family home zoning.12
The average voter watching that debate was left with an impression of Kiley as someone who would oppose efforts to abolish single family homes. Yet his record is one that was the complete opposite.
Shouldn’t the journalists moderating that debate have fact checked Kiley given that his statement is inconsistent with his voting record? At the very least, shouldn’t the journalists moderating the debate have asked him to explain his extremely unique policy position to the voting public?
Moreover, beyond the issue of upzoning itself, a candidate’s statement that is completely at odds with that candidate’s voting record raises questions as to the integrity and sincerity of that candidate, including other policy positions they claim.
The lack of a journalistic fact check allowed Kiley to give an answer that was perhaps politically convenient but at odds with his voting record, leaving most voters watching the debate uninformed.
Example #3 - Rick Caruso and Implementing Race and Sex Hiring Preferences
Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer who ran for Mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, promised that if elected Mayor, he would ensure that 50% of all city hall staff would be Latinos and that 50% of all city hall staff would be women.
Journalists covering this announcement repeated Rick Caruso’s promise. They offered no additional qualifiers, leading one to believe that this was something that Rick Caruso could simply decide to implement if elected Mayor.
Implementing this promise violates the explicit language of the California Constitution.13 While also likely prohibited by the 14th Amendment, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and other state and federal law, the California Constitution is very clear that there are no exceptions allowing Rick Caruso to engage in race and sex based hiring as LA Mayor.14
Whether one agrees with or likes this constitutional provision, it is the law and elected officials swear an oath to uphold and defend the United States and California Constitutions when they take office.15 In fact, candidates for elective office in California must take this oath when they file to run for office.16 Moreover, elected officials are presumed to know and follow the law.17
Some questions that a journalist could have asked when making this rather critical fact check.
Did Mr. Caruso, running to be the Mayor of the largest city in California, not know a very basic and fundamental piece of California law?
If not, why not?
If Mr. Caruso relied on policy advisors to develop this policy (as one might assume he did given that he spent over a 100 million dollars in his effort to win the office), are they also unaware of California law? If so, did he plan on hiring these same advisors to work in his Mayoral Administration?
If he was aware of the law, was he planning to violate the law and stand in the school house door like George Wallace?
If so, was he aware of the potential liability from court judgments he is setting up for the city by implementing a clearly illegal scheme?
If he was planning to violate the California Constitution, are there other constitutional provisions and laws he also plans on violating as well?
Alternatively, if he was aware that he cannot legally do what promised, was he simply promising this in an attempt to gain votes from uninformed voters for something he would never actually do?
These are all questions that should have been asked. And they were questions that the public deserved to have answers to. Unfortunately, these questions were never asked. And they were never asked because journalists performed no fact check.
A Potential Solution to the Trump Speech Problem
The three preceding examples are but a few of what I’ve witnessed. I’m sure many other readers have witnessed plenty of journalistic failings too where politicians were allowed to state things without being challenged.
And there lies the problem with fact checking and journalists.
If journalists are unwilling or unable to fact check Gavin Newsom, Kevin Kiley, and Rick Caruso, how on earth could they be expected to fact check Donald Trump?
Perhaps the solution to the Donald Trump problem is to return to basic journalistic principals and standards. Instead of nodding along in tacit agreement when politicians issue misleading statements, journalists should fact check them instead.
They should do this for all politicians, regardless of the politician’s political party or ideological bent, whether the journalist happens to agree or disagree with the politician on the particular issue, or whether the journalist personally likes or dislikes the candidate.
Fact checking Donald Trump is difficult and laborious work. However, it is perhaps necessary to do in order to preserve our system of democracy.
The author of this article is an attorney licensed to practice in the State of California and the District of Columbia. This article and all of the works on this Substack page are statements of the opinions of the author, only, and do not constitute legal advice; they are not intended to be relied upon by any individual or entity in any transaction or other legal matter, past, pending, or future. A paid subscription to this Substack page supports the author’s scholarship and provides access to research that the author has compiled, but does not establish an attorney-client relationship. The author does not accept unsolicited requests for legal advice or representation, and this Substack page is not intended as legal advertising. The opinions expressed on this Substack page reflect the personal views of the author only.