The Media’s Not-So-Happy Fourth of July

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the media’s attempts to suck all the joy out of the America 250 celebrations, and we cover more media misses.

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The Media’s Not-So-Happy Fourth of July

Donald Trump ruined the Fourth of July.

That’s the narrative proliferating throughout much of the media, both implicitly and explicitly.

Whether it’s Trump’s “fascism” or environmentally damaging fireworks, or even offensive language in the Declaration of Independence, reporters found all sorts of reasons not to be merry about America’s 250th anniversary over the weekend.

New York Times opinion writer Robin Givhan was perhaps the clearest in her disdain: “Trump Ruined the Fourth of July for Me,” she wrote in an op-ed, saying that she can “barely tolerate the sight of red, white and blue” this year. “When combined into a maximalist display of nationalist cheerleading, the colors make my heart ache. The flags on federal buildings are grand, but they hang alongside banners featuring President Trump’s scowling face.”

And Givhan wasn’t alone. The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum penned a column lamenting that Trump “inevitably” had “destroyed the nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations”:

This year is different, because the White House is inhabited by people who don’t believe in the “abstractions” that we usually celebrate on the Fourth of July. And this affects the rest of us, whether we want it to or not. Congress’s celebration, planned for a decade, has been usurped by the president’s celebration, funded by private donors and featuring a political speech by himself. Other institutions in and around Washington postponed or reduced their 250th celebrations, so as not to get in the way of the president. Many people who might have participated will not attend, pay attention, or care.

Former NBC host Chuck Todd made Trump sound like the Grinch of the Fourth of July, accusing him of “selfishly trying to steal this anniversary from us.”

Todd’s former employer offered similarly dour coverage of the major anniversary: “As nation turns 250, many Americans say the Stars and Stripes is now a red flag.”

“The American flag: To some, it’s Old Glory. To others, it’s a MAGA hat on a stick,” the outlet captioned a social media post.

The NBC article explains, “Rather than not fly the flag, several readers said they plan to show their patriotism — and protest Trump — by flying it upside down to signal that the country is in distress.”

And over on MS NOW, analysts urged jubilant Americans to slow their roll, warning that while America had made it to 250, the country might last only another five or ten years. Morning Joe guest Richard Haass told viewers, “The honest news is, our democracy is not in great shape,” adding:

Checks and balances are not working in any way like James Madison set out in the Federalist Papers. You have the abuse of the pardon power. We’ve been talking about the, the corruption and the lack of accountability of people in office. We have a president going to war without the involvement of the American people or the Congress, talking about rigged elections. You know, it’s a long list. So I think, and the lesson we all ought to take from this is not to be sanguine. So yeah, we can celebrate the 250th, but it’s got to be a really sober celebration.

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And Princeton University professor and MS NOW contributor Eddie Glaude, asked by Mike Barnicle whether he “sees optimism at the end of this July Fourth rainbow” said, “No, no Mike, I don’t. And it comes about, I think that, that orientation follows from, from my own formation. I don’t think I’ve ever teared up around patriotism. I don’t ever think I found joy in singing the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’”

Historian Jon Meacham argued that there’s no real anniversary to celebrate at all, saying there’s a “very good case to be made” that the country was actually founded in 1965. “That’s when a multiracial, multiethnic democracy came more fully into being with the Immigration and Nationality Act, with the Voting Rights Act. And so we’re really about 60 years old,” he said.

The Washington Post, like CNN’s Victor Blackwell, chose America’s 250th anniversary to call attention to three words in the Declaration of Independence that writer Dana Hedgpeth says “paint a cruel picture of Natives.” She says the phrase “merciless Indian savages” is evidence that the Declaration’s “ideals were not extended to everyone.”

To no one’s surprise, media outlets suffering from well-established Trump Derangement Syndrome had their symptoms triggered by the president’s patriotic plans.

Both the Post and Politico warned of the environmental impacts of Trump’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration on the National Mall — articles that probably would not have been written had any other president been in office during the displays.

George Thurston, a professor of medicine and population health at New York University, told the Post that people attending or living near the display should “minimize exposures” to the smoke and consider wearing an N95 mask.

“Scientists have well documented the soot and heavy metal pollution that can spike severely in the wake of pyrotechnic displays, and the world-record-setting number of fireworks lined up for July 4 will mean an equally large jump in pollution, according to experts and internal NPS documents,” Politico reported.

Meanwhile, WaPo, like other outlets, also took shots at Trump’s Great American State Fair: “Every food stall is a mystery at the Great American State Fair,” read a headline from Washington’s paper.

Headline Fail of the Week

An editor’s note from NPR last week is the stuff of nightmares for many journalists. NPR published and then quickly retracted a piece by veteran Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg: “Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, retires.”

NPR’s editor’s note insisted that the article was “erroneously published.”

Totenberg has since claimed she “misheard” an announcement that someone — she doesn’t say who — made about “retirement” as she was leaving the Court.

As Fox News recapped, “The veteran journalist is no stranger to gaffes and controversies.” The outlet rounded up a number of her past controversies here.

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Media Misses

• NBC News apparently felt compelled to explain that it was using the terms “biological male” and “biological female” in reporting on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on transgender-identifying men in women’s sports only because it was directly quoting the Court.“Just a quick note here,” anchor Craig Melvin said. “The terms that we’re using here during our reporting, biological male, biological female, the high court put those terms in quotations in their decision and their dissent. But just so you know, we’re using those terms from the decision itself, biological male, biological female.”
• On MS NOW, legal analyst Lisa Rubin claimed that Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the aforementioned case “speaks of hate, not of jurisprudence.” Host Alicia Menendez called the decision a “major blow to transgender rights.” Contributor Kimberly Atkins Stohr claimed, “There is ample evidence that transgender girls and women playing sports pose . . . neither a competitive nor a physical risk to cisgender athletes, which is basically the basis upon which Justice Brett Kavanaugh based much of his decision.”