By Madison Gable
Critics of American mass media and members of the press alike had a lot to say concerning former Trump aide Sam Nunberg’s media circus on Monday March 5, 2018. The responses garnering the most attention were those chastising major media outlets for running interviews with an unstable individual. The rebuttal was that stable or not, Nunberg’s refusal to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was news and needed to be reported.
Nunberg was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury on Friday March 9; the subpoena requested documents concerning his communication with President Donald Trump and nine other individuals. The media parade began when Nunberg released the subpoena to the Washington Post and ended about eight hours later when he finally told the Associated Press he would in fact cooperate with the investigation.
In between Nunberg made the rounds interviewing with CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, NY1, Politico, New York, and others. Throughout his time on-air Nunberg repeatedly announced that he did not plan to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation, as well as aired his dislike for Trump and love for Roger Stone. He indicated in multiple interviews that Trump colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election (and contradicted himself in those same interviews stating that Trump had no involvement with Russia).
The criticism soon came rolling in from all angles, and considerations about the ethics of continuing to interview Nunberg were front and center in the dialogue. Mother Jones editor Clara Jeffery asked, “Would anybody be ok with repeated interviews in this situation were it not a Trump crony”?. Additionally, in an often-quoted tweet, Axios’s Jim VandeHei said “This is one of the reasons America hates the media. Our entire industry lit itself on fire because a troubled Trump hanger-on made an ass of himself — live.” The Hill reported concerns about media using an unreliable source who may be contributing to the spread of misinformation.
In some longer opinion pieces Politico and the Washington Post, among other publications, clapped back asserting the newsworthiness of Nunberg’s interviews. Politico’s Jack Shafer maintained that it would be negligent of the media to look away from a source of important news regardless of the source’s mental state. A former aide to the President refusing to cooperate in a federal investigation of the integrity of an American presidential election should be considered absolutely newsworthy and would understandably command the attention of various networks and publications, not to mention the entire country.
Nunberg’s interviews were certainly disconcerting and painful to watch. He contradicted himself often, plunged into a slew of non-sequiturs, and made many self-incriminating comments. Was Nunberg having a breakdown? Was he drunk? (He maintained he was not). This raises more questions. If the interview could provide information the public deserves access to, should the journalist stop or prevent that interview because the source seems unstable for one of the above reasons? Every journalist’s approach is different in regard to ethical concerns such as these, but a resounding “No” has come from many publications. The public’s right to information often wins out.
We mostly hear debates about who qualifies as a public or private figure in regards to defamation cases, but this instance calls for a consideration of the distinction. The media does have an ethical and legal responsibility to treat private citizens differently than public figures, but Nunberg can only be classified as a public figure. He has long worked in the political sphere and certainly has garnered an understanding of how the media works. He knows the power of the media and very well may have calculated the waves he would be making before conducting any of his interviews.
Some claim that critics of the Nunberg interviews are only looking another reason to rally against mainstream media. The 24-hour news cycle certainly has its issues, mostly an excessive amount of repetition and a focus on whatever content will rope in the most viewers and increase ratings. Mark Bowden pointed out some of these issues in a 2009 piece in The Atlantic. Bowden offered criticism on networks using the same clips to cover Obama’s then Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, saying “… they had the exact same two clips. I flipped to CNN… same clips. CBS… same clips. ABC… same clips…None bothered to say who had dug them up; none offered a smidgen of context.”
If a primary issue with the 24-hour news cycle is that networks recycle the same clips and do not bother with seeking to provide context, isn’t the Nunberg episode the antithesis of that? Sure, it was an easy grab for the networks, but each journalist likely thought that their line of questioning could have be the one that would have made sense of Nunberg’s nonsense narrative. Or maybe they didn’t. But at least there was the opportunity for more content and more context, which is something we should be striving for.