False premises and baseless claims

Phil Berger needs to back off his claim that the election is compromised.

Earlier this week, Senate President Pro-Tem Phil Berger defended shiftin control of the State Board of Elections from the Governor’s office to the state auditor by attacking the integrity of the election. He told reporters, “We're seeing played out at this point another episode of 'count until somebody you want to win wins.'” Berger is referring to the Supreme Court race where Democrat incumbent Alison Riggs overtook Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin. Griffin led on election night but trailed as absentee and provisional ballots came in. Griffin requested a recount and has sued to have votes removed.

Karen Brinson Bell, Executive Director of the State Board of Elections, sent Berger a letter asking him to correct his statement. In it she said, “This accusation of wrong-doing has absolutely no basis in fact.” She concluded her letter saying that she’s “deeply proud…of my fellow North Carolinians who administered an incredibly smooth and lawful election this year, despite very trying circumstances. I urge you to show your fellow citizens the same gratitude, and to refrain from making baseless accusations of wrongdoing that could put these same people in danger.”

As of this writing, Berger has not responded. I don’t expect him to answer her. The goal is to cast doubt on the institutions that maintain our society. It’s been the GOP’s standard operating procedure since they took control of state government back in 2011.

Back then, they spent an enormous amount of energy to destroy the credibility of our public schools. They told us over and over that public schools were broken and attacked teachers for having part-time jobs because of their summers off. They used that narrative to cut funding for public education while pushing through a voucher scheme that shifts taxpayer money from public schools that serve poor kids to wealthy families who send their children to private ones.

Conservative attacks on the media act in a similar fashion. When the New York Times announced earlier this week that a hacker had downloaded a file containing testimony from a woman who claimed Matt Gaetz had sex with her when she was a minor, a conservative journalist attacked the Times for “pushing out this info and attributing it to an anonymous hacker.” The Times using a hacker for a source is more concerning than a potential Attorney General of the United States having sex with minors or paying for sex.

It’s just classic deflection. Republicans land the equivalent of a sucker punch on an institution or organization, creating doubt about its credibility. The media doesn’t respond and the criticism starts to become valid, or at least credible, in the minds of people watching or reading. It’s been so destructive that trust in our institutions is at an all-time low. Very few people are defending them.

In the case of Berger, I’m not sure which reporters were present, but the stories don’t read like anybody pushed back. A statement like his needed serious clarification. The most obvious question to Berger should have been, “Which votes don’t you think should have counted?” It should never have gotten to the point that Bell needed to send him a letter. That should have been the job of the reporters covering him.

As we move into the next phase in the battle against populist extremism, we need to develop a press corp or a media ecosystem that asks the right questions and holds the powerful accountable. Too much of the legacy media is spending too much energy serving as stenographers or trying to see both sides instead of asking the tough questions.

We got into this mess, in part, by allowing false narratives and questionable premises to gain credibility when they never should have. Our schools weren’t failing and they weren’t broken until the GOP broke them. Our elections have been fair despite Republican attempts to corrupt them. The media’s role should be to expose the failings of our most powerful elected and appointed officials, not make excuses for them.