The media is failing to fight for democracy
In a long interview with a Russian official, a major news network did not mention the D word.
Democracy is in danger across the world. Fascist forces are sowing and taking advantage of chaos. Authoritarian rulers and wannabe dictators are trying to ignore courts and other governmental structures to tighten their grip, including here in the United States.
The battle over democracy has always been at the core of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Former President Joe Biden understood this well and addressed it in numerous speeches. “We’re living in a time when democracy is more at risk across the world than at any point since the end of World War Two,” he said last year at the Normandy American Cemetery, on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. He added, “The struggle between a dictatorship and freedom is unending. Here in Europe, we see one stark example. Ukraine has been invaded by a tyrant bent on domination…. The United States and NATO and a coalition of more than 50 countries standing strong with Ukraine.”
Now, President Donald Trump has changed the U.S. stance, making clear his willingness to give Russia much of what it’s looking for. As a Slate headline put it, “Trump’s Ukraine Peace Plan Gives Russia Everything It Wants.” The potential repercussions for democracy everywhere are seismic.
Yet, CBS, one of the nation’s biggest news networks, committed a big chunk of its Sunday political show to an interview with a Russian official, posted the full version online, and did not even bring up the D word. It’s the latest example of a huge problem. The biggest force that should be fighting for democracy— the news media—has been failing in this mission.
Some might question whether it’s the role of the media to “fight for” anything other than truth. The answer is yes. The media operates on and reflects basic values. For example, when someone walks into a public place with an AR-15 and kills random people, news agencies make clear how horrific that is. They don’t seek out guests to offer a “perspective” that such actions are fine. Values lie at the core of journalistic decision making.
A free media and democracy go hand in hand. When people can choose their leaders, they can —and should—demand those leaders allow the media to operate freely. And in order to choose the right leaders, voters need to know the truth about them. So the media should lead this fight. That includes highlighting and explaining all threats to democracy and challenging those who seek to end it.
So what happened on CBS is symbolic and depressing but not surprising. The network stated that this was a rare opportunity to question a Russian official, yet it steered clear of democracy. Instead, host Margaret Brennan asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about Trump’s recent posts on social media (of course), in which he said Russia’s strikes on Ukraine are “not necessary, and very bad timing,” and his message to Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Vladimir, stop!”
Lavrov responded with lies, which CBS, as usual, did not bother to correct. Among them: "The international system of diplomacy was not used for the entire duration of the Biden administration."
This interview was pretaped, not live. CBS easily could have paused the interview to tell the audience the truth. It could have cited former U.S. State Department official Suzanne Nossel, former CEO of PEN America, who wrote a Foreign Policy column explaining that Russia’s invasion “occurred despite every effort of Western diplomats to avert it. The Biden administration deployed a Swiss Army knife of both traditional and innovative tactics aimed to avoid armed conflict.” The network could have quoted the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which praised Biden in 2022, saying he was “right to pivot toward diplomacy in the Russia-Ukraine war.”
For that matter, CBS could have cited its own reporting. Before Russia attacked Ukraine, CBS reported that Biden “urged President Vladimir Putin to give diplomacy a chance to succeed.”
Russian leaders, like Trump, know that they can say all kinds of things in an interview with a news network and not be fact checked. Viewers who heard this don’t rush to fact check what they hear, so they were left with the impression that Trump is coming along to end a war through diplomacy. And they were not told that Russia is fighting against democracy.
Authoritarian rule is on the rise. The latest Democracy Index says 60 countries are now authoritarian, up from 52 a decade ago. Future generations will study how hard we fought to maintain this form of government. And media fails like this Lavrov spectacle will serve as reminders of how legacy media blew it.
 | A guest post by
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Thanks for publishing this, The Contrarian. The media should be *leading* the fight for democracy. It's a fundamental responsibility. I've discussed this in several episodes of They Stand Corrected, including this one: https://theystandcorrected.substack.com/p/media-and-the-fight-for-democracy
You get this exactly right. Virtually all of the major media outlets seem to be resorting to a false equivalency crouch, suggesting that there are two plausible sides to each story. That is just rubbish. They are failing to grasp that there is no value-less objective position. All reporting reflects inherent values and biases. Reporting that fails to call out liars and tyrants just signals a media outlet's weaknesses and fears. We are in a war to preserve our democratic values, and if we lose there will be no free press to report anything. We need media outlets that stand up for western democratic values, loudly and clearly.