In my house, we generally watch 9News. My family are big fans of Kyle Clark, and he is more often than not talking at us in the early evening, whether anchoring the station’s newscast or hosting NEXT. 9News reporting is good and generally reported in a thoughtful manner.
That is why I found its social media coverage of President Joe Biden’s NATO news conference so disheartening — it was “gotcha journalism” meant for little more than clickbait. Frankly, it was beneath their standards.
The only X/Twitter post made on the 9News feed after the presser read, in its entirety, “At one point, Biden mixed up Harris and Trump, saying, ‘I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be Vice President if she wasn’t qualified.’” That’s it. That was all.
Biden took questions from the White House press corps — a group of the smartest, most followed reporters in the world — for an hour. He answered 19 questions from 10 different reporters. His answers to complex questions were nuanced and demonstrated both his breadth of knowledge and command among world leaders.
And yes, he made a verbal gaffe.
I am not saying that 9News should have ignored that. Biden has been prone to gaffes his entire career. That proclivity is exacerbated by his documented difficulty with a stutter, spontaneous speaking situations, and, yes, his age.
Given the national debate that has taken place since Biden’s halting performance during the first presidential debate on June 27, those gaffes understandably attract outsized attention. For example, more airtime has been spent analyzing that flub than former President Donald Trump confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi on multiple occasions in less than a minute.
But posting solely about that? It is a disservice to Coloradans.
Of course, 9News was not alone. For example, The Denver Post’s first social media missive after the news conference was nearly identical; and it followed up with another post highlighting the flub as a part of the “key takeaways.” Meet the Press host Kristen Welker opened her show lambasting Biden for his error on national television — before she transposed Trump for Biden during the same show in which she lambasted Biden for his error. Because we focus on 9News at our house, I can’t speak with certainty about how other local news stations handled the coverage, but CBS was among those that also emphasized Biden’s gaffe.
What galled me about 9News was that I have come to expect better. While many have accused the media, and particularly Clark, of artificially balancing coverage, I have never bought into that narrative. Clark in particular has explained that he believes in principled accountability journalism rather than access journalism. The former is intended to hold public officials and entities accountable to voters and viewers. The latter trades journalistic integrity for exclusive access — it leads to softball questions and fawning more than transparency. Just about a year ago Clark expounded on the difference in an hour-long interview that is worth watching in its entirety.
But gotcha journalism is not accountability journalism. It is something different.
Gotcha journalism is looking to catch and highlight soundbites out of full context. It focuses on the sensational over the substantive. Frequently it is meant to help clickthrough rates or foment reactions rather than exploring subjects in a thoughtful manner. That is what it looked like 9News did on the night of the news conference.
I did not see discussion about the answers given by Biden on munitions policy in Europe. I did not see fact-checking on Biden’s assertions about meetings with China’s President Xi Jinping. There was no follow up on his response to Vladimir Putin and aggression toward Ukraine. There was no comparison between Biden meeting with NATO leaders as Trump prepared to host Hungarian Prime Minister and strongman, Viktor Orban.
Their feed just focused on a verbal miscue.
I should note that Clark himself was on vacation and not actively engaged the night of the news conference. Since returning, his coverage has focused on the chattering class parlor game of whether Biden will withdraw from the race.
Clark explained that it was due to a very short window in which Democratic voters can decide whether they are comfortable with Biden. Even that seems a little misleading since it is the Republican convention that begins next week, the primaries are over and the majority of Democratic delegates are pledged to Biden, and the only person who has any say in what Biden does is Biden himself. For this part, Biden has been very clear he will not withdraw.
I am, of course, biased. I think Trump is a danger to democracy. I would vote for a garden slug over Trump.
But, again, this is not about 9News criticizing “my guy.” It is about doing better than the cheap, lazy shot. It is about going the extra mile and digging into substance and policy, not just manufacturing a horse race.
Hopefully this was just a blip and we can get back to the informative journalism I have come to expect.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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