https://news.yahoo.com/60-minutes-mark-finchem-problem-005144295.html
AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
'60 Minutes' to Mark Finchem: Problem with election denial in Arizona is
'people like you'
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
Sun, October 30, 2022 at 6:48 PM
Now this is how you do it.
There is a sequence near the end of a “60 Minutes” segment that aired
Sunday about election deniers running for office in Arizona that knifes
through all the two-sides-to-every-story nonsense when it comes to
reporting on lies and disinformation.
Scott Pelley, the reporter for the segment, is interviewing Mark
Finchem, the Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state who
claims Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
For the record, again, Trump didn’t.
“You called Arizona the epicenter of fraud — it’s scaremongering,”
Pelley says to Finchem's face. “It’s not the fraud that is breaking
people’s faith in our elections, it’s people like you.”
Amen.
“So you say,” Finchem says.
Exclusive: How national media turned Kari Lake into Trumpism's 'leading
lady'
It's about time: Reporting on Finchem, Lake as threats, not curiosities
This appears near the end of the piece, in which Pelley allows Finchem
to make claims and then methodically shoots them down with facts. It’s
outstanding.
It’s also about time.
Let’s just hope it’s not too late.
Arizona hasn’t been a stranger to national media during the run-up to
the 2022 midterm election. When the Republican candidates for the
state’s top three offices are all election deniers who use the lie as a
central part of their campaign, it’s newsworthy.
But much of the coverage has treated the state as a curiosity, an
interesting shiny object in the middle of the desert where some weird
things are going on.
The coverage of Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor, is a
case in point. Her torched-earth Trump-like campaign during the primary,
somewhat muted during the general election — along with her previous
career as a local TV news anchor — has made her a media star.
It’s understandable why media are all over this angle, but it's not
particularly useful. So Lake is good on camera and MAGA types love her.
So what?
Reporting what candidates are saying, not just how they're saying it
What’s more important than how candidates in Arizona are saying things
is what they are saying. Some big-name outlets are coming around to that
— “60 Minutes” isn’t the only one.
Trevor Noah spent a segment of “The Daily Show” examining Lake and the
dangers that denying the 2020 election poses for the 2022 one — and the
one in 2024.
During a recent segment of “The Problem,” host Jon Stewart invited
Adrian Fontes, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, to a
panel discussion about the threats election workers face. Stewart also
visited Arizona and tried heroically to get Mark Brnovich, the current
secretary of state, to say that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen or
fraudulent.
Nice try.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich
Oddly, Brnovich is more forthright in the “60 Minutes” piece, saying,
“We, as prosecutors, deal in facts and evidence. And I'm not like the
clowns that throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.”
(Stewart may disagree.)
Even humorous stories about Arizona politics point to the problem
Even “Saturday Night Live” finally got around to lampooning Lake, whose
behavior seemed like such an obvious target for satire for so long. (In
fairness, it’s difficult to satirize something that’s so ridiculous to
begin with.)
There is a lot of humor in these pieces — no surprise, given who
produced them. But there has also been a lot of substance. Even the
“SNL” segment talked about the threat of election denial and restricting
voting rights. (“If the people of Arizona elect me,” Cecily Strong,
playing Lake, says, “I’ll make sure they never have to vote, ever again.”)
The “60 Minutes” segment was more serious, of course. In fact, it
couldn’t be more serious.
“It’s the vote that holds America together — belief that with a ballot
voices are heard, disputes are addressed and there’s always another
chance,” Pelley says at the outset. “Countries without this belief tend
to be in bondage, or at war.”
This is point exactly. Democracy is under fire, especially in Arizona
but in other states around the nation, as well. The threat is especially
grave in Arizona, and deserves to be covered as such. That makes the “60
Minutes” segment important.
We need more journalism like this. And we need it now.
We've needed it for a while.
