For the last two years, much of the Republican Party has been claiming that any elections they lose must in some way be illegitimate. Some Republicans have even encouraged threats of violence toward beleaguered election workers. Now election liars are on the ballot across the country. Lying, fomenting violence and refusing to accept the will of the people should be political non-starters for candidates in a democracy. Yet rather than depict them as dangerously unfit, too many newsrooms have been protecting the electoral viability of these extremists. Journalists who know the 2020 presidential election was free and fair still frequently describe those who lie about it as mere "skeptics" who "dispute the results."
The 2022 midterms are a referendum on how well America's newsrooms have conveyed the authoritarian threat to the voting public. Studies show that the issues most important to voters closely match which issues the media's been covering. The words and frames journalists choose to describe parties, candidates, policies and their consequences have everything to do with what the public believes as they head to the polls. We call on the news media to urgently communicate that this is not an ordinary election, but rather a contest between would-be authoritarians and candidates who defend the rule of law and the electoral system. To aid in this effort, we propose a set of guidelines for pro-truth, pro-democracy election coverage. For the next two weeks, journalists must 1) make threats to democracy clear, 2) protect Americans against disinformation and 3) treat elections as if they are more important than the sports page (we flesh out our vision here).
