The QAnon problem facing local journalism this election season
The 16 candidates who sought the Republican nomination in the open race for Tennessee’s 1st Congressional District this year included a former state senator, two former mayors, a pharmacist — and two supporters of the bogus conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
The quandary, then, for the Knoxville News Sentinel: How on earth to responsibly explain QAnon — a murky cultlike belief system that, according to law enforcement, has inspired violence among some of its proponents — to the newspaper’s readers?
Ultimately, said executive editor Joel Christopher, the newsroom made a calculation that both candidates were extreme long shots. So they punted on the question entirely — and devoted no ink at all to the QAnon connections. In the end, the two candidates only received 3.3 percent of the total vote.
“But if anyone thinks this is going to vanish, they’re delusional,” Christopher said. “We’re going to have to tackle it at some point.”
Identified by the FBI as a potential terrorism threat, QAnon has spread since 2017 from fringe message boards to more mainstream pro-Trump communities active on some of the largest social networking sites, including Facebook. At the center of the convoluted belief system is the false notion that President Trump is waging war against a cabal of “deep state,” satan-worshipping actors who traffic children for sex, with the promise of mass executions to punish them. The worldview originates from posts by a self-proclaimed government insider using the pseudonym “Q,” whose predictions have repeatedly failed to come to pass.
Charting QAnon’s rapid growth and twisted theories has been challenging enough for the national reporters on the beat. But now that dozens of candidates expressing varying levels of interest in QAnon have mounted political campaigns, journalists at smaller local news outlets across the country are suddenly having to make sense of it, too. Liberal watchdog group Media Matters has been tracking these candidates, and by its tally, 21 of them will be on the November ballot. At least one — Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia — will very likely serve in the next Congress.
Frequently, it seems, local news outlets deal with a candidate’s QAnon affiliations by mentioning them only fleetingly or not at all.
A long story in the Los Angeles Daily News with short blurbs about local congressional candidates in February described Mike Cargile simply as “touting gun rights, border security and taking on Democrats who voted to impeach Trump.” Cargile, who will appear on the November ballot for California’s 35th district, also touts the QAnon motto (#WWG1WGA, standing for “Where We Go One We Go All”) on his Twitter bio while sharing conspiracy theory memes.
Alison Hayden, who beat five other primary candidates in California’s 15th District to make it onto the November ballot, has also shared QAnon hashtags on Twitter and articulated some of its beliefs in an interview with Los Angeles magazine. The East Bay Express, though, in February described her simply as believing “in small government and civil liberties and want[ing] to limit the ‘fiesta of fees and taxes’ that states and the federal government impose through environmental regulations.”
Both Cargile and Hayden are considered long shots in heavily Democratic districts. Others, though, could enjoy closer races. Republican Buzz Patterson, who captured 37 percent in the crowded March primary to challenge Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), replied “yep!” in April to a tweet about whether he supports “the Q movement.” Yet the QAnon question hasn’t come up in several local newspaper stories about him, even as they have reported on his role in spreading rumors about violent protests in his district and his defense of the phrase “Kung Flu” to describe covid-19. (Patterson’s QAnon tweet was later deleted, and he told Axios he didn't remember sending it, adding he doesn’t “follow or endorse anything he/she/them say.”)
The fact that some candidates who once praised QAnon later deny any connection presents another layer of complication for journalists. One example is restaurateur turned gun rights activist Lauren Boebert, who upset incumbent Rep. Scott R. Tipton in the June GOP primary. In a May appearance on a webcast, she said the conspiracy theory wasn't “her thing,” but added that she hopes “some of it is real, because it only means America is getting stronger and better and people are returning to conservative values.” She later denied being a QAnon follower but affirmed her belief in a deep state conspiracy against the president.
QAnon inspiration behind these in-person events.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/the-qanon-problem-facing-local-journalism-this-election-season/2020/09/03/5ec2ee9e-e340-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html