Media watchdog: Press is 'lying to you about elections' as debate heats up over Democratic voting bills

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Georgia secretary of state rips Biden, Harris for speeches mischaracterizing voter law

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defends Georgia election reform law.

A new video from a conservative media watchdog charges that the press is lying to the public about the debate over election laws as Democrats seek to push through sweeping voting legislation.

"The media are lying to you about elections," NewsBusters media editor Bill D'Agostino said in his latest video combining news clips and commentary about the press. "And they have been for about a year now."

D'Agostino argued the "big lie" from the liberal press boiled down to the ubiquitous use of the term "voting rights" in press coverage of Democratic election legislation and suggesting those rights were being curtailed by Republicans. For instance, he said, CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell's use of the term "rolling back voter rights" in a tease to describe proposed Republican state laws last year was dishonest. In another instance, he quoted MSNBC host Joy Reid fretting over "the big lie's corrosive effect on voting rights."

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President Biden and Democrats are currently pushing two expansive, progressive bills that would overhaul U.S. voting elections and procedures, which Republicans have argued would be an unconstitutional usurpation of states' rights. Biden and media allies have framed the debate in stark terms, saying democracy is at stake, with the former even comparing foes of the legislation to segregationists.

President Biden arrives to deliver remarks on voting rights during a speech on the grounds of Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, Jan. 11, 2022. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo)

D'Agostino said no GOP voting laws implemented over the past year, such as Georgia's election reform that Biden said was akin to modern-day Jim Crow, had curbed anyone's right to vote. Instead, he said things like voter ID laws, cutting down on pandemic-era dropboxes and decreasing the absentee ballot application period – which MSNBC said was all part of Georgia's "voter suppression" law – were demonized in the media even though they didn't infringe on actual voting rights.

"The media are intentionally missing the point here," D'Agostino said. "Making voting slightly less convenient isn't even the goal of these laws. It's just an unavoidable byproduct. Again, the goal is security."

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He accused the press of framing the debate over voting as one between bad Republicans trying to dismantle voting rights and good Democrats preserving them, and played examples of the press promoting the latter's bills. 

"This is a self-inflicted death blow to their credibility … The brazen lying has to stop," he said.

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Kevin Kosar told Fox News Digital that Democratic rhetoric around election laws had led to a "toxic conversation" and it was wrong for the press to depict Republicans as stomping out ballot access out of fealty to former President Trump and his continued stolen election claims.

"It's instantly polarizing when you frame something as for voting rights or against them," he said. "Last I checked, there is nobody campaigning to enact legislation to abolish anybody's voting rights or even to make it particularly difficult to vote, and that's where when you dig past the rhetoric and look at the changes in voting laws, a lot of it is extremely incrementalist and not objectionable."

President Biden speaks in support of changing the Senate filibuster rules to ensure the right to vote is defended at Atlanta University Center Consortium, on the grounds of Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022, in Atlanta.  (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Fox News contributor and progressive radio host Leslie Marshall said framing the debate as being about voting rights was "absolutely" the right thing for the media to do, however.

"When you look at polling and focus groups, they show that if you state Republicans are trying to take away your right to vote, it's more effective in messaging as a direct warning than talking about defending democracy," she said. "I don't think that voting rights is the wrong phrase because that's exactly what these two pieces [address]."

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A Democratic strategist, Marshall said her party was right to combat GOP election laws, which were passed in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Trump continues to claim was rigged against him. Democrats have said his false claims about widespread election fraud have prompted unnecessary changes by Republicans who want to placate him.

Voting rights activists rally at the Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon following a three-day, 70-mile "Freedom to Vote Relay" from West Virginia, in Washington, Oct. 23, 2021. (REUTERS/Shuran Huang/File Photo)

Given the complexity of voting laws, Marshall said it was important that voters fully understood their rights and how elections are run.

"Most people don't understand what their rights are as a voter," she said. "Most people don't fully understand the process and who's in charge … I think it's very important – it's a cliche, but knowledge is power – that all Americans are educated on the voting process."

Kosar said Trump's stolen election myths had generated eyebrow-raising proposals at times in some Republican-led states, but he said the actual GOP reforms were not the threat to democracy so often depicted.

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"A lot of reporters have brought into the fundamental line that Trump took over the Republican Party and turned it into a quasi-authoritarian outfit, and therefore when you look at election rules changes, you have to look at it as a march on the road to authoritarianism," Kosar said. 

"In some cases, it's an effort to strike a balance between popular concerns about ballot access and ballot security. … Sometimes it is an instance of, 'Hey, we did some radical expansions of the way we do election administration during the pandemic. We're past that point, we have vaccines, let's revert back to the older policies.'"