On Sunday, Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation’s editor and publisher, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter to criticize leading media outlets for their failure to confront politicians’ “misstatements” as outright lies, and especially for shortcomings in coverage of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Vanden Heuvel observes that the “post-truth” paradigm in American politics isn’t a new one—it dates at least to the run-up to the Iraq War, when Dick Cheney and others’ discourse around weapons of mass destruction was used to mislead the public into supporting military action.
“The system itself leads to a politeness that, in these times, I don’t think we can afford,” vanden Heuvel said, pointing out that many media outlets’ parent corporations do business in Washington and have a vested interest in nonconfrontation.
“There is an art form called the big lie,” she added.
—Daniel Moattar
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Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and US politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to The Guardian. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.