theQuestion: Should the news media be allowed to ask a public figure any question they want?*
When did you stop beating your wife? The right answer of course is “I never started,” but that is beside the point. While the news media loves to torment public figures with what is called ‘loaded questions’ they should never be asked—unless there is verifiable evidence that could stand-up in court.
The impact of loaded questioning—often intended—is to smear the recipient by publicizing unjustified, controversial and salacious assumptions which are tailor-made for shocking headlines and confrontational sound-bites. The loaded question is a powerful weapon in the journalistic arsenal.
Weapon? Yes, not wielded to reveal truth but to take down political opponents that threaten the left-wing ideology in the mainstream news media. We witnessed this battle play out in Canada during the Stephen Harper years. Harper recognized immediately the press’s proclivity to use loaded questioning to badger and tarnish the Conservative agenda. This is why he did an end-run around the Ottawa press corps and reached out directly to regional and ethnic media.
There has to be limits on what the press corps could ask and those limits were sorely tested last week when BuzzFeed committed journalistic malpractice and published a 35-page “intelligence dossier” which branded U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as a sexual fetishist and insinuated he is under the influence and potential control of Russia. Numerous media sources had received the report and none could substantiate it—including BuzzFeed. Yet, BuzzFeed decided to publish the entire report anyway the day before Trump’s first press conference as President-elect.
The best way to describe the content of the report is to quote the headline in the Mirror: “Donald Trump ‘hired group of prostitutes to defile Moscow hotel room where Obamas slept’, sensational dossier claims.” If this reporting is not ‘fake news’ then there is no such thing.
At the presser, knowing the details of the report were not only unverified, but unverifiable reporters still peppered Trump with questions based on assumptions derived from the report. One reporter asks “reasonable observers say that you are potentially vulnerable to blackmail by Russia or by its intelligence agencies…Can you make clear whether during your visits to either Moscow or St. Petersburg you engaged in conduct that you now regret.” These are weasel questions, pure and simple. And, journalists engaged in this line of questioning should be shamed out of the media.
Questions themselves often communicate more than the answers. Sadly, these questions demonstrate the abdication of journalistic ethics and fair play.