Colby Hall Slams Media for Fear-Mongering, Promoting ‘Extremist Behavior’ Before Midterms: ‘That’s Not a Threat to Democracy’

Mediaite Founding Editor Colby Hall chewed out broadcast and cable news outlets for over-inflating public fears with narratives of rampant violence that don’t reflect broader reality.

Hall joined Leland Vittert on Monday to talk about recent news stories that have suggested imminent violence as the country heads into the midterm elections. He began by accusing reporters of forgoing straight newscasting to “create a narrative” and “cherrypick evidence” to reinforce notions about threats of violence.

If you look for something, you can find it and prove your point. That doesn’t mean that it’s actually sort of a widespread thought. It’s not just political violence. That’s something that occurs across the political spectrum. I take the New York City subway every day with 4 million other New Yorkers. I never see a crime. I feel safe. But if you watch some cable news outlets, you would think that I’m crazy to do that because crime is so rampant. And the truth of the matter is that the current landscape rewards the extremist behavior. People tune to that division and unfortunately, the reasonable safe approach that most people want to hear, it gets lost in the shuffle.

Hall emphasized that he was not trying to dismiss political violence in the wake of the attack on Paul Pelosi. He stressed, however, that such cases were “isolated” incidents and that even with pre-election tensions around the country, “it doesn’t mean that every poll watcher is about to be attacked.”

“I think that there is a certain sort of mindset that people are almost — not looking to be victims — but they’re just almost a little bit too tense and aware of things, and therefore they see things that are just normal interactions as possible threats,” said Hall suggesting a self-fulfilling prophecy effect from cable news.

Hall and Vittert discussed a CNN report that 3,400 mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania might be rejected for bearing incorrect or omitted information. While the outlet framed the story around the theme of voter disenfranchisement, Hall accused the network of “sowing that very doubt” in elections by not keeping the focus on how the ballots are incorrect in the eye of the law.

Watch above via NewsNation.