Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: RFK Jr.'s town hall showed the folly of trying to fact-check quackery in real time

America's cable news networks seem determined to prove that old adage defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Case in point: The 90-minute town hall appearance that News Nation, an upward-scurrying cable news wannabe, granted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday night. Kennedy says he's running for the Democratic nomination for president. The ...
Michael Smerconish interviews Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. during SiriusXM Town Hall live broadcast at The Centre Theater on June 5, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

America's cable news networks seem determined to prove that old adage defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Case in point: The 90-minute town hall appearance that News Nation, an upward-scurrying cable news wannabe, granted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday night. Kennedy says he's running for the Democratic nomination for president.

The program served largely to underscore a lesson that the media world should have absorbed from CNN's misbegotten May 10 town hall with Donald Trump: Trying to fact-check anyone who pumps out misinformation and disinformation via a verbal fire hose is a fool's errand.

News Nation apparently didn't get the message.

The network tried to avoid one of CNN's most obvious missteps, which was to place Trump in front of an audience of partisan fans, thus allowing him to evade questions from moderator

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