Linda McMahon should ignore the media’s kayfabe attacks

A principle of responsible journalism is to get both sides of the story. Well, we suppose the New York Times technically managed that. In its article on McMahon’s nomination, they did interview one Republican alongside five Democrats.

The74, an education-focused publication, couldn’t even manage that much. In its McMahon story, the token “conservative” was a fierce critic of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s first secretary of education and a self-described “Never Trumper,” who has publicly renounced his Republican affiliation. The74 also labeled the America First Policy Institute, which McMahon leads, as a “far-right” think tank. It’s “far-right” because, The74 noted, it supports curriculum transparency (a policy that enjoys 84% public approval, for what it’s worth).

The Washington Post put three reporters on what it apparently thinks should be a scandal. You see, McMahon earned a teaching certificate while pursuing her college bachelor’s degree. About 40 years later, back in 2009, she filled out a questionnaire by noting that she had a B.A. in teaching rather than a teaching credential and a B.A. in French. When this was pointed out, she corrected the record. 

That was the “scandal.” No kidding. Less than 24 hours after McMahon was nominated, the Post featured this prominently on its site.

A day later, the whole of the legacy media started to uncritically relate the contents of a lawsuit filed last month, which alleges that under McMahon’s leadership, the WWE inadequately addressed allegations of child sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 90s. 

The judicial process is at its best when it is used to carefully parse facts and dispense justice. It is at its worst when filings are used to score political points before the evidence has been weighed and the various claims adjudicated. It would be reassuring if we could trust the media to handle allegations deliberately or at least by a consistent standard, but we can’t.

After all, we already have a senior official at the Department of Education who led an organization that faced multiple lawsuits for the exact same thing: failing to address allegations of child sexual abuse adequately. That would be the department’s No. 2 official, Deputy Secretary Cynthia Marten.

Marten was formerly superintendent of San Diego’s public schools, which faced lawsuits for, among other things, covering up the rape of a non-verbal special education student, refusing to discipline a teacher who reportedly groped female students, and firing an investigator who found evidence of sexual abuse of a kindergartner. One lawsuit called for Marten’s termination “due to her neglect and bullying of previous victims.”

Unlike with McMahon, where we only have a complaint filing, President Joe Biden’s deputy secretary faced a sworn deposition about how she and her institution handled these situations. During one deposition, she was asked whether forcing a kindergarten student to perform oral sex would be a “serious incident.” She answered, “It depends … Are other disabilities involved? … I need to know all of the facts before I determine the seriousness of it.” 

Apparently, it might not be “serious” if a student who experiences or commits sexual assault has a disability.

We’ll bet you didn’t know any of that. But that’s not because the media didn’t know it. ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN all had the deposition. It fell to one of us to report it. And after we did, not a single legacy media source ever covered it. For Republican Linda McMahon, every allegation deserves to be breathlessly reported. For the Democrats, documented evidence can be casually dismissed.

There’s no need here to rehash further the double standard that suffused the unremitting hostility that DeVos faced during her tenure as secretary of education or the free pass enjoyed by Biden’s secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, who has proven to be the worst, most partisan, and most lawless secretary in the department’s history.

The question is how to move forward. The media has already signaled that it will, in WWE parlance, portray McMahon as a “heel” no matter what she does. Citizens should keep open eyes, of course, but should also treat media narratives with the skepticism they’ve earned. 

As for McMahon, we suspect that she already knew the media would treat her like the devil for the next four years, regardless of what she says or does. And that, in turn, should empower her to adopt a devil-may-care attitude when it comes to what the press has to say.

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Max Eden is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frederick M. Hess is the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.