The natural instincts at the broadcast network news divisions are to play up Republican scandals and controversies and bury troubling stories about Democrats. So, it’s interesting when they pick up a Democrat scandal, drive a Democrat out of office, and then drop the story like a hot potato.
This is what happened with Rep. Eric Swalwell, who recently was the leading Democrat in California’s “jungle primary” for governor. On Friday night, April 10, CNN broke the story that four women accused him of sexual harassment. On Sunday night, Swalwell dropped out of the governor’s race. On Monday night, he resigned from Congress. That’s two news cycles and he’s gone. The networks seemed to lose interest after Wednesday morning.
The Washington Free Beacon reported these charges were coming on April 6, so the network bias by omission for four days was unsurprising. But clearly within Democrat circles, wheels were turning. The polls in this primary often showed two Republicans winning the top two seats for the general election. So, it looked like time to shrink the Democrat field of candidates.
On Saturday morning, CBS anchor Kelly O’Grady announced: “Under fire! Eric Swalwell faces calls to end his campaign for governor of California after the Democratic congressman is accused of sexual assault. The leading members of his party who are pulling their support, and what Swalwell is saying about the accusations.” Even with this promotional introduction, the apparent bombshell drew only 88 words when it surfaced late in the show.
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The Sunday shows threw in quick, sometimes nebulous questions about Swalwell’s fate. On ABC, “This Week” host Jonathan Karl couldn’t be more specific than “serious sexual misconduct allegations.” NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker asked both Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds and Washington Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal about Swalwell, and both said Swalwell should go. CBS’s “Face the Nation” didn’t bring the scandal up.
On Sunday night, CBS “Weekend News” sounded the notes of doom, that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wanted Swalwell out, and Adam Yamaguchi reported, “All 21 Democratic endorsements for Swalwell [for governor] have been withdrawn.”
The broadcast reports would include Swalwell’s insistence that the allegations were false, but their overall tone was funereal. He was gone, and the problem was the atmosphere for young women working as staffers on Capitol Hill. This could also reflect several days of considering the allegations without airing them. By the time the allegations were breaking TV news, Swalwell’s fate had been decided.
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On ABC’s “The View” on Monday, only Whoopi Goldberg protested this abrupt result, insisting Swalwell denied the allegations, and that he shouldn’t have to resign before Trump does: “55 people can come out and say they should drain the swamp, but if you are not draining from the top, I don’t know if people are going to take it seriously.”
Strangely, the late-night comedians completely avoided mocking Swalwell as his career came apart. This was especially shocking from ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted Swalwell making his announcement that he was running for governor last November, vowing to be a “fighter and protector.” That sounds bizarre now. On Thursday night, Kimmel referred briefly to Swalwell’s resignation … in a joke about Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert.
The Washington Post tweeted this:
“Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D) fall left many asking how someone who was dogged by persistent rumors of inappropriate behavior toward women could have risen so high and so fast in a party that says it supports women’s rights.” One obvious reason is the typical bias by omission.
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Democrats – including his mentor former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his best friend in Congress, Arizona Democrat Sen. Ruben Gallego – professed complete ignorance until the last minute of Swalwell’s so-called “double life.” These kinds of denials explain why the press lacks any investigative ambition. None of them want to be on the wrong side of Pelosi.
Reporter Bethany Allen said on X that she heard information on Swalwell’s behavior in 2020 when at Axios, but because it wasn’t her beat, she simply passed it along and never reported it. When conservatives pounced on that, she blamed the conservative media, like it’s supposed to be their job to expose Democrats, not the liberal media.
Democrat strategist Michael Trujillo posted on X Thursday morning that a reporter with Politico was working on verifying the rumors on Swalwell when he was running for president for a few months in 2019: “Two days before he was scheduled to sit down with this reporter Swalwell dropped out of the race. The energy disappeared to potentially take him out.”
Journalists could say there’s a chasm between rumors of sexual misconduct and verifiable allegations. But it could be argued that the broadcast networks didn’t wait for verification before spreading wild rumors about conservatives, as in the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process. The burden of proof is much lighter on the right. It didn’t matter that one of the most aggressive pushers of wild Kavanaugh allegations was one Eric Swalwell.
