BREAKING: The New York Times helps JD Vance Swiftboat Tim Walz

Tell the news media not to privilege Republican lies about Tim Walz's military service

Tim Walz “enlisted Army National Guard in Nebraska in 1981 and retired honorably in 2005,” according to his military records. Months after Tim Walz retired from the Army National Guard in 2005, his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq.

But now JD Vance is lying about Tim Walz’ military service, falsely claiming “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him.”

Again, this is false, as CNN explains:

Walz retired from the Army National Guard in May 2005, according to the Minnesota National Guard. Typically, service members need to submit papers several months before they can retire.

A National Guard article on his unit’s deployment states that it received alert orders to deploy to Iraq in July 2005, two months after Walz retired. The unit first mobilized in the fall of 2005 to Camp Shelby Mississippi to prepare for deployment, according to the unit’s history, and then deployed in March 2006 for 22 months, which the Guard said was the longest continuous deployment of any military unit during US operations in Iraq.

This is an extremely simple situation: JD Vance is lying about the military service of a fellow veteran for political gain. The story is extremely simple, and extremely important — and it is a story about JD Vance being a liar.

Journalists have a responsibility to tell that story, the story about JD Vance smearing a fellow veteran. Vance and Donald Trump want the story to be about a controversy over Walz’s military service. But that isn't the real story, because there is no controversy. There is the truth — Walz retired before his unit was called up — and there is JD Vance lying. Liars telling lies does not make a controversy; it’s just a guy lying.

Predictably, Vance and Trump are already getting a helping hand from the news media, which is privileging their lies.

The New York Times, for example, leads with Vance’s false accusation, not with the truth:

The first seven paragraphs of the New York Times article are devoted to recounting Vance’s false claims — without once even hinting at their falsity. The article portrays this as a problem for Walz instead of for Vance — and thus makes it so.

This is a classic example of privileging the lie, a phrase I developed in 2008 while at Media Matters for America to describe news reports that centers a false claim (rather than centering its falsity) and thus helps the person making the false claim spread their lie instead of holding them accountable for lying.

As I wrote in 2008:

When a candidate makes a false claim, reporters can respond one of three ways:

• They can ignore it, on the basis that a false claim is unworthy of attention.

• They can adopt the false claim as the basis of their report, as they did with this week’s stories about whether or not Barack Obama had made a sexist comment about Sarah Palin.

• They can produce a report centered on the fact that the candidate is saying something that is untrue. If it is the latest of many falsehoods, they can indicate that. If the candidate is telling more and larger falsehoods than the opposition, they can make that clear. In short, they can make the lack of credibility of the person making the false claim the theme of their coverage.

The first option privileges the lie by allowing a candidate to run around saying things that are not true -- but at least it does not help spread the lie further.

The second option -- even if it includes mention of the fact that the claim is false -- privileges the lie a great deal by helping the candidate spread the false claims. At the end of the day, what most people take away from this week's media coverage of the lipstick flap is likely that there is some controversy around whether Barack Obama made a sexist comment about Sarah Palin. That's a clear advantage to McCain -- and thus the media's handling of the episode has rewarded his falsehood.

The third option punishes the falsehood. If you think the media's job is to bring their readers and viewers the truth, this is obviously the best of the three options.

This is where some will say “but then reporters will be taking sides.”

And there is some truth to that: They'll be taking the truth's side.

Reporters “take sides” with everything they do. Everything they do involves a choice, involves a decision that X is more important than Y. When they report a lie five times before reporting the fact that it is false, they are taking the lie's side.

The question isn't whether reporters should “take sides” -- they can't possibly avoid taking sides.

The only question is whether they will side with truth or with fiction.

What Trump and Vance and the New York Times are doing is also a textbook example of “Swiftboating.” During the 2004 presidential campaign, Republicans — led by current Donald Trump advisor Chris LaCivita — smeared John Kerry over his service in Vietnam, where he served on Navy swift boats and was awarded three Purple Hearts.¹

What JD Vance is doing is as disgusting as politics gets. Privileging his lies, as The New York Times has done, is as disgusting as journalism gets.

Contact the New York Times. Tell them not to privilege the Trump-Vance campaign’s lies. Do the same with every news company that joins them.

1. The original swiftboating occurred shortly after we launched Media Matters for America, and we pushed back vigorously against false and misleading news reports that spread the Republican smears of Kerry. We might’ve even been first to use “swiftboating” as a verb; my memory is a little hazy on that. (I am confident I was not personally the first.)