Conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham, who happens to be my dear friend and co-author, has coined a term that deserves to be put into wider circulation. She refers to “icky facts” that many journalists do not know because said facts are problematic.
They’re problematic because they’re unhelpful to the Journo Class’ ideological and partisan agenda, and they’re often especially problematic because they’re touted by bad sorts of people who aren’t favored within their cloistered newsrooms and blinkered social circles. If the “right wing” media ecosystem is saying it, and Republicans are repeating it, it must be “debunked” — or, even better, ignored. These are icky facts, of which journalists almost seem proud to be unaware. Examples abound, ranging from any number of disputes about COVID-19 policy to virtually anything regarding faith or people of faith, to the bare basics of how guns work, to former President Joe Biden’s decline and family enrichment scheme.
We’ve seen this phenomenon play out several times in recent days during CNN’s coverage of the battle over immigration enforcement. For instance, host Abby Phillip, who interrupts conservative guests with whom she disagrees at a dizzying rate, while rarely interjecting against her fellow progressives, calmly informed Scott Jennings that “coming into the country illegally is a civil offense. It’s not a criminal offense.” This is flatly false. Some visa overstays are civil violations, but unlawful border crossings are, in fact, crimes. Second violations and beyond are felonies. Phillip likely wasn’t deliberately lying about this; she simply didn’t care to know the icky fact that disproves an incorrect Democratic talking point. Nearly every Democrat who ran for president in 2020 supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, which is an unpopular and extreme idea, but it is not current policy.
Not to pick on Ms. Phillip too much, but she’s also the star of another fresh, icky facts moment. Conservative guest Lydia Moynihan was on her program defending the arrest of former CNN host Don Lemon over his participation in the storming and disrupting of a Minnesota church service. Much of the press have framed the story as Lemon being punished and retaliated against for his “reporting.” Videos, however, show Lemon referring to the mob as “we,” kissing the ringleader of the sickening stunt, refusing to leave the house of worship when asked, and providing refreshments to the agitators. He also admits on camera to halting his own recording in order to help keep the mob’s movements and target secret. The grand jury’s indictment of Lemon cites witnesses who accuse him of blocking worshippers’ egress from the church. Moynihan raised this point, prompting an inevitable interruption from Phillip, who attempted to falsely “fact-check” her ideological adversary (the network insists they do not employ opinion hosts, only “news” anchors).
“No, it does not say that,” Phillip self-assuredly cooed about the indictment, wearing her practiced expression of disappointed disdain. She was wrong. Moynihan proceeded to quote directly from the document itself, confirming her assertion and disproving Phillips’s unfounded cut-in. Unfazed, the host deflected by vaguely questioning the reliability of the allegation. Goalposts, shifted; error, unacknowledged. Icky facts are not to be affirmed. Which brings us to a third example, also from CNN.
In a segment about Trump and redistricting, Republican strategist Brad Todd highlighted the problem of the 2020 Census’s disastrous errors, which disproportionately harmed red states and helped blue ones. We’ve written about this extensively on several occasions. Experts believe Republicans were unjustly deprived of 6-to-10 House seats and electoral votes because of these admitted and substantial counting errors, which have tainted the map across multiple election cycles. Todd articulated this verifiable fact, saying, “We know the 2020 census, the errors were almost always to the detriment of red states.” He was instantly interrupted by the CNN host, who pressed, “Do we know that?”
We do know that, Todd replied, and the Census Bureau has admitted it. But a great many journalists most assuredly do not know that, and don’t care to know it, because it’s an icky fact. If, while Trump was president the first time, the Census Bureau had miscounted the populations of more than a dozen states this badly in a way that hurt Democrats, it would have been treated as a national scandal and an Emergency For Our Democracy. But the mistakes — let’s call them that — flowed in the other direction, unfairly boosting Democrats, at the expense of above-board democracy. This was a desired outcome for journalists and their party, so the scandal never hit, and the emergency didn’t materialize. Many journalists probably have no idea this even happened, and continues to affect our representation throughout the decade, because it’s not the sort of thing that good people care about. The good people benefited, in fact, so this was deemed a nonstory to be given passing and perfunctory coverage, or none at all, then discarded.
HOW DEMOCRATS ARE SPINNING THEIR OPPOSITION TO THE SAVE ACT
You see, they cannot allow icky facts to challenge the narrative about redistricting, partisan villains — or anything else for that matter. So they become unknowable and unspeakable truths, reserved for grubby right-wingers to rant about on social media, which are to be pointedly questioned or outright denied if they ever threaten to break through. Journalists can choose to puncture their own bubbles by intentionally acquainting themselves with purveyors of icky facts.
Or they can continue to embarrass themselves with displays of hermetically sealed ignorance that fuel public mistrust, carpet bomb credibility, and hasten the self-inflicted demise of their industry.