Let's Curb the Kangaroo Court of Anonymous Sources!

Tim Graham on Dec 6, 2024

The anti-Trump media have already congratulated themselves for destroying the Matt Gaetz nomination for attorney general and are now attempting to destroy the Pete Hegseth nomination for secretary of defense.

Vetting the records of cabinet nominees is a legitimate journalistic function. It is not a legitimate journalistic function to kill a nomination based on hit pieces stuffed with anonymous sources. Someone with responsibility at media outlets should ensure that their hit pieces include some sources who are named. Networks who eagerly spread anonymously sourced hit pieces are also illegitimate. This is activism, not journalism.

Three NBC reporters issued a story that began: "Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for defense secretary, drank in ways that concerned his colleagues at Fox News, according to 10 current and former Fox employees who spoke with NBC News." None of them were named: "three current and seven former Fox employees, all of whom asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation."

So, you can destroy someone's nomination anonymously, with no "retaliation"? Couldn't it be argued that these nasty quotes alleging out-of-control drinking could constitute "retaliation"?

NBC granted this permission because they all share the same negative goal: purge Pete. They refuse to interview his Fox News co-hosts who went on the record in Hegseth's defense and say NBC never reached out to them. That's because fairness and balance are equated with "normalizing" Trump.

Fox News personality and comedian Jimmy Failla summarized the partisan media games with this tweet: "NBC runs with anonymous sources who say Pete Hegseth hits the bottle but ignores everyone ON RECORD who says Doug Emhoff hits his girlfriend."

Back in October, when the networks ignored the allegations of Emhoff's violence at the Cannes Film Festival, they ran with an anonymously sourced hit piece in The Atlantic where Donald Trump allegedly claimed that a dead Mexican American veteran's funeral was too expensive (that he had offered to fund). Four years earlier, Goldberg & Co. used anonymous sources saying Trump called American war dead "suckers" and "losers." They're still peddling that toxic stuff.

This, in political terms, is a kangaroo court, where the accused is not allowed to know his accusers -- "for fear of retaliation." It's manifestly unfair to ruin presidential campaigns or government confirmations with anonymous sources and a lot of braying about "growing outrage tonight." Who is "growing the outrage"? The media with an axe in its hand.

Taxpayer-funded NPR promoted New Yorker writer Jane Mayer and her latest anti-Hegseth hit piece on the ridiculously named "All Things Considered," since that program -- well, all NPR programs -- failed to consider the allegations against Doug Emhoff in October. Mayer also promoted NBC's hit piece. She also underlined, "Pete Hegseth has been accused of raping a woman in 2017." No charges were ever brought, but they'll throw any noodles at the wall when there's a Republican "confirmation process."

You can also see the games at play when NBC reporters proclaim their network has not "independently confirmed" nasty allegations against Republicans but recounts them on television anyway. But they'll sit on negative allegations against Democrats like Doug Emhoff because they haven't confirmed them independently -- if, in fact, they are making any attempt to independently confirm these things.

"News" outlets that load up negative stories with anonymous sources cannot lecture us on transparency, and if they ruin a newly elected president's nominees before any confirmation hearings, they also should not lecture us on democracy. The phrase "deep state" can often apply to political actors running the country through anonymous mudslinging in the press.

========

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.