The Maine Issue

How advocacy journalism erodes trust

I’m about to describe someone who is in the current news cycle.

He is a 41-year-old blue-collar worker from a tiny American town; a Marine Corps vet with a troubled past. He has a DUI on his record, but that’s the least of his problems. In 2007, this man got the tattoo of a Nazi military symbol on his chest and left it there for the next 18-years. He claims he liked the design and didn’t know what it stood for, but some of his acquaintances have told reporters he knew full well what the tattoo meant. This man who’s been in the news cycle spent a lot of time online. He boasted that, while stationed in Afghanistan, he peed on a dead Taliban soldier. He called the Virgin Mary a ‘skank.’ He argued that if women were so worried about sexual assault, they shouldn’t get too drunk. He claimed Black people are bad tippers.

If you’ve read about this man already, you know where this story is going. But if you haven’t, I would think you’re imagining we’re talking about a right-wing militia member, one of the January 6^th suspects, or maybe someone who marched in Charlottesville.

You might be surprised to find out that this man is actually the odds-on favorite to become a US Senator this fall. Graham Platner, a former oyster farmer from a small town in, Maine, is the Democratic Party’s newest hope to do what Tim Walz was clearly incapable of- appeal to working-class voters.

Despite his dark past, Platner has been championed by the progressive elite. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have endorsed him. Ditto for Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, who in doing so said without a trace of irony that Platner is “someone who tells you exactly what he thinks.” Hard to argue with that.

Based on Platner’s seemingly disqualifying history, you might think cable news would be running round-the-clock coverage breathlessly decrying our descent into fascism and hate. But, of course, modern journalism doesn’t work that way. The coverage of Graham Platner’s unlikely rise to power has fallen along typical partisan lines.

Legacy journalists have mostly presented Platner as a sympathetic figure who struggled adjusting to civilian life after several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. This, despite the fact that Platner had been home for nearly a decade when he posted incendiary comments like, “Bastards. Cops are bastards. All of them, in fact.” He also referred to himself as a communist online several times, even though he now says he didn’t mean that either.

Platner will be on the cover of the upcoming Time Magazine issue. The headline reads ‘Party Crasher,’ and while the article does not gloss over his past, it aims to contextualize and normalize it. The New Yorker has gone one step further- reframing Platner’s past as evidence that people can change and grow. In an opinion column earlier this month, the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg seems to blame all the fuss on conservative pundits,“Platner’s haters are embracing a distorted conception of him- and his following- built on a fundamental misunderstanding of his appeal.”

This is not to say that conservative media has covered his candidacy in a balanced way. Fox News has run numerous stories criticizing Platner’s comments, calling them ‘disqualifying.’ Breitbart News has labeled him ‘Nazi Tattoo Platner,’ and The National Review has accused Maine Democrats of playing ‘antisemitic footsie’ with the candidate.

All of this is sadly predictable and emblematic of why the public has lost its faith in the media. If Platner happened to have been a Republican, the coverage of his candidacy would have been completely reversed. Mainstream news would have focused on his hateful online posts while conservative media would have stressed his military service and supposed redemption.

The core of the problem is that modern journalists are outcome based rather than information based. Their stories openly reflect their desires for Platner to either succeed or fail. This is not journalism. This is political activism masquerading as news.

Is Platner‘s past disqualifying? Are his apologies sincere? Despite what the journalists covering his candidacy seem to believe, those are not questions they should be answering. Their job is to hold up the mirror to reality and allow the voters of Maine to decide.