During a recent interview with Financial Times, Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, slammed Fox News–and to a lesser extent, CNN–calling them a dangerous “mix of entertainment and news.”
However, one bit stuck out in particular. When speaking of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, Baquet said:
We are used to warring philosophies, but this is different. This is a guy who makes stuff up. I am not opposed to his presidency, that is not my job. But my job is not to beat around the bush when a candidate lies.
Yes, Donald Trump lies with fair frequency. During the seemingly endless primary debates, he would indeed make things up, the most prominent example being his invented opposition to the Libyan intervention. That said, Hillary Clinton has a frosty relationship with the truth as well. The difference is that the media is in favor of any Democrat, regardless of who they are, and against any Republican, regardless of who they are.
Google “New York Times Hillary Lie,” and these are the first results:
Two articles in which far-left Paul Krugman defends Clinton, and one in which Nicholas Kristof compares Trump’s “lies” to Clinton’s “fibs.”
In the article “Clinton’s Fibs vs. Trump’s Huge Lies,” Kristof writes:
One persistent narrative in American politics is that Hillary Clinton is a slippery, compulsive liar while Donald Trump is a gutsy truth-teller…Yet the idea that they are even in the same league is preposterous. If deception were a sport, Trump would be the Olympic gold medalist; Clinton would be an honorable mention at her local Y.
He goes on to cite Politifact and The Washington Post, both of which have Trump lying at higher rates than Clinton.
Of course, Kristof fails to gauge the seriousness of the lies told by each candidate. For example, Donald Trump’s lie that he didn’t support the Libyan intervention was indeed blatant, but it had little to no real-world consequence. On the flip-side, Hillary Clinton’s email lies were egregious; she put U.S. national security at risk by using a private, unsecured email server while acting as Secretary of State. One lie certainly outweighs the other in terms of severity.
In an article titled “The Lying Game,” Paul Krugman writes:
Here’s what we can be fairly sure will happen in Monday’s presidential debate: Donald Trump will lie repeatedly and grotesquely, on a variety of subjects. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton might say a couple of untrue things. Or she might not.
Like Kristof, Krugman proceeds to cite the “non-partisan” Politifact. Also like Kristof, Krugman fails to quantify the lies of each candidate, meaning Trump’s “Pants on Fire” lie that the United States doesn’t have any “chess grandmasters” is equal to Clinton’s “Pants on Fire” lie in which she told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that “[FBI Director James] Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people.”
No.
Baquet needs to take a hard look in the mirror, reassess his statement that his “job is not to beat around the bush when a candidate lies,” then perhaps talk about the severity of Clinton’s lies in comparison to Trump’s.