President Trump’s executive order this week defending religious liberty is “controversial,” according to CNN and MSNBC.
It’s an interesting description considering many longtime defenders of these rights have criticized the order for being a watered-down disappointment. The American Civil Liberties Union, which was poised to sue the president over the order, said Thursday that the bill signing was “an elaborate photo-op with no discernible policy outcome.”
“The directive to explore religious-based exceptions to healthcare does cue up a potential future battle, but the status quo has not changed,” the group said on its official Twitter account. “The directive to explore religious-based exceptions to healthcare does cue up a potential future battle, but the status quo has not changed.”
All that aside, the decision by these two networks to refer to the executive order as “controversial” is still odd for a number of reasons.
First, practically everything in politics is controversial. There are critics on every side of every issue. There’s no need for CNN and MSNBC to state the obvious.
Secondly, the wording is unusual given that, generally speaking, chyrons abstain from editorializing, which is precisely what that word does.
Lastly, the editorializing stands out due to the fact that other pieces of legislation weren’t given the same treatment in the past.
CNN and MSNBC didn’t, for example, use words like “controversial” in July 2015 after the Obama administration had struck a nuclear deal with Iran. Neither network referred to the extremely contentious Affordable Care Act as “controversial” back when it was passing its way through Congress in 2009.
The networks are obviously free to editorialize as they please. But they should also at least try to be consistent.
