Letter to the editor: Report on Trump and 2020 election fairly, please

OPINION:

I have noticed in recent news reporting the use of phrases such as “falsely claimed,” “false claims” and “unproven claims” in reference to President Trump’s longtime assertion that the 2020 elections lacked integrity.

Sometimes, these statements have been accompanied by the qualifier “without any evidence.”

After looking at the bylines on these stories, I have been surprised that they were not from The Associated Press (a news service from which I would expect such statements of opinion purporting to be statements of “fact”). These, however, have been Washington Times pieces.

Whether the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen,” the 2020 election was, by any reasonable standard, a mess. There were problems with mail-in ballots, drop boxes, the Philadelphia vote-counting center being closed to Republican observers in blatant violation of election law and a commonwealth court order, firsthand accounts of photocopied ballots being counted, and a host of other problems.

All are recounted in Mollie Hemingway’s excellent book, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.”

The fact that it took weeks for Joseph R. Biden to be declared the winner indicates the election was not run smoothly. The oft-cited defense that none of the court cases surrounding the election succeeded means little, because most of these cases were ultimately either dismissed for “mootness” or dismissed with the blanket claim that any fraud found would not have been sufficient to change the election’s outcome.

When a reporter is writing a news story on this topic, good journalistic practice should allow for the statement such as “President Trump claims that the 2020 election was stolen” — without editorial comment on his claim. Even “President Trump asserts the unproven claim” that the election result was invalid would be preferable.

To state that someone “falsely” makes a claim implies that he or she knew the claim to be false when the claim was made. Such is not the case here, because President Trump strongly believes his claims about the 2020 election to be true.

SAM SLAYMAKER

Lancaster, Pennsylvania