The Bottom Line? Boris Pulls a Brian

Boris Epsheyn’s recent comment on Brian Ross’s recent misreporting in relation to the Michael Flynn plea, is, as is typical with “Bottom Lines,” not terribly original or thought out.  It’s a rehashing of the “fake news” trope favored by Trump and his supporters.

Epshteyn attempts to turn Ross into a synecdoche for the media in general, suggesting that Ross is emblematic of a hostility to the president endemic in the media.

Not surprisingly, Epsheyn himself distorts the facts, even has he chastises others for doing so.  He supports his assertion by noting that Ross had erroneously reported that the Aurora movie theater shooter was a member of the Tea Party.  This is to establish the point that Ross is vehemently anti-conservative.  However, one of the other (of several) times Ross got a story wrong was reporting that Saddam Hussein was behind anthrax attacks in the U.S. after 9/11.  That goes unmentioned, of course, because it doesn’t fit with the narrative Epshteyn is weaving.  (For the record, even the Bush administration, to their credit, tried to steer ABC right on this story—that’s how far out it was.)

Epsheyn catalogs a number of other bits of evidence of media bias against Trump, but provides no attribution or evidence that these came from journalists (as opposed to say, satirists, pundits, etc.).  And, needless to say, he is silent about a myriad of parallel events to be found from conservative media’s (including Sinclair broadcasting) coverage of Obama and others. 

But that doesn’t really get at the important thing, which is that he’s missing the forest for the trees.  In point of fact, academic studies of the content of media coverage of the 2016 election show that Trump benefitted greatly from the media, who fell all over themselves to give him free air time, and disproportionately dwelled on Hillary Clinton’s  email “scandal”, while only tangentially covering any particular Trump scandal. 

One of the “big lies” undergirding this editorial and much of the “fake news” movement is that mainstream media and Trump have an adversarial relationship.  In fact, as the evidence (and ratings) suggest, they are each the best thing that has happened to the other.

Also warranting a notice is the fact that Epshteyn doesn’t actually mention the substance of the Ross story—that Michael Flynn would testify that Trump directed his campaign to connect with Russia *before* the election (rather than merely in the transition phase).  That’s because this detail, while journalistically important, would seem relatively trivial to the average viewer (who would, understandably, focus on the fact that Trump’s team was in contact with Russia at any time prior to the inauguration).

So, Epshteyn makes the tactical decision to be vague about this, allowing his audience to fill in this empty space with any/all Trump/Russia stories—it’s all “fake news.”

Moreover, he himself makes an assertion that he cannot stand behind, saying that Ross’s story “wrongfully accused the president of actions that he did not take.” (Note the intentionally vague language: “actions”).  No, it didn’t.  It wrongfully reported that it was established fact that Flynn planned to testify that this had happened.  There is no way Epshteyn can say that the president did not direct his campaign to work with Russia.  Indeed, we know that the campaign *did* collaborate with Russians.  We simply do not know yet if Flynn has/will testify that Trump personally directed this before the election.  Much like Ross himself, Epshteyn is well out over his skis, suggesting that because a specific aspect of Ross’s story was inaccurate (certainty that Flynn would testify about this), that the underlying action (Trump directing his campaign to collude with Russian agents) is, somehow, demonstrably false.

So, the bottom line on this Bottom Line is this: Epshteyn plays fast and loose with the facts himself,  even as he attempts to feign outrage about the journalistic malpractice of others.