“Critics have for many years inveighed against ‘false equivalence’ or ‘false balance’ in the mainstream press. This long crusade has finally achieved its grail, or at least a version of it: In this campaign season, political reporters have been shucking the old he-said-she-said formulation and directly declaring that certain claims are false,” The Atlantic’s Bennet writes, adding, however, “But what if it turns out that when the press calls a lie a lie, nobody cares? … Instead of being able to stand above the fray as some sort of neutral arbiter of the truth, the press may be finding that it is winding up on one side of a new kind of he-said-she-said argument.” 

“South Carolina state Rep. Alan Clemmons (R), the author of a voter ID law considered discriminatory by the Justice Department, testified in federal court that, ‘while crafting the bill, he had responded favorably to a friend's racist email in support of the measure,’ McClatchy reports,” Political Wire clips. “An email from Ed Koziol said that if the legislature offered a reward for voter identification cards, ‘it would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon.’ Clemmons responded: ‘Amen, Ed, thank you for your support.’”