There is no ‘War on Easter.’ It’s an outrage campaign fueled with misleading media coverage
It’s been hard to miss the recent news headlines about the latest campaign controversy between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It sure sounds pretty serious: The New York Times says it’s a ‘partisan storm.” AP calls it a ‘clash.’ Politico labels it a ‘culture war.’ Other news stories use dramatic descriptions like outrage, fury and some even describe it as a “War on Easter.”
But wait. Is this a legitimate ‘both sides’ story with Republicans on one side of an issue and Democrats on the other? Or was it a right wing disinformation ploy to create manufactured outrage over religious and gender issues in an election year? I’m picking door number 2: faux outrage built on lies. That’s a tried and true Republican political strategy that typically starts on social media, gets amplified by right wing propaganda and then oozes its way into mainstream news coverage. But once again some reporters -and headline writers- aren’t doing nearly enough to report these efforts with meaningful context and so Republicans are scoring another win in their disinformation war.
Like most lies, the ones about the so-called “War on Easter” began when Republican partisans started outrage posting last week. (Chris Geidner of Law Dork has a good look at how the phony issue caught fire.) They attacked President Biden for ‘disrespecting or even replacing Easter’ because Trans Visibility Day happened to fall on the same date. Here are the facts. Trans Visibility Day is not new, and Joe Biden did not schedule it to conflict with Easter. It has been on March 31st since its inception nearly 15 years ago. Last week, Biden shared a public proclamation noting the Trans Visibility Day. As Parker Malloy’s newsletter points out, Biden also issued 10 other proclamations that same day. Plus, for anyone keeping track, March 31st is also National Farm Worker Day, Eiffel Tower Day, National Crayon Day, etc. Easter is fixed to the calendar. This year the holidays coincide. Next year they will not.
This “War on Easter’ lie was a two-fer. Many Republicans & propaganda outlets were also venting over what they claimed were discriminatory decoration protocols for eggs used in the annual White House Easter Egg roll. Angry screeds claimed the Biden administration was prohibiting religious designs on those eggs. But guess what? That was also false. The Chicago-based National Egg Board has had the same rules for over 50-years so that means these very same policies that set Republican’s hair on fire were in place during Trump’s administration and beyond.
Photo Credit: Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI
In a surprising turn of events, the right wing “Daily Caller” has actually retracted its angry story on the egg decor saying it “became aware of additional context that undercut the central assertion of this article and its newsworthiness…” Why it published a false story in the first place we’ll never know but the Daily Caller should get some credit for the retraction. I wonder if other news outlets will do the same?
The ‘war on Easter’ falsehoods got the biggest push from the Trump campaign. Once Trump weighed in, the mainstream news coverage started treating this like a campaign dispute and we got the ‘partisan storm’ type headlines. Biden and Trump do have very different points of view on the transgender community and that would make an interesting news story. But these so-called “Easter’ issues are not about that. Instead, this yet another example of Trump latching on to lies to try to damage his political opponent. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: when Donald Trump creates a fake issue, it is a disservice to the public for journalists to treat it as real and cover it as legitimate disagreement.
But it’s not all bad news. These news outlets didn’t fall for the both side framing on the faux Easter outrage and are worth a read:
● Fake right-wing panic about "trans" Easter is part of Trump's push for Christian nationalism
● The ‘War on Easter,’ a New Holiday for the Trump Cult
● Fox News Runs Wild With Two Very Dumb Easter Outrages
I was also impressed to see some reporters do what I think was actually a solid story about Biden and Trump on Easter: the contrasts between their holiday messages. Take a look at their posts:
Imagine if instead of the nearly hysterical news headlines about a phony war on Easter, we had more stories like this one from David Cohen of Politico. This reports on the drastically different Easter messages from the candidates but there are dozens of other compare/contrast stories to be done as well. Now that would be meaningful journalism.
Jennifer Schulze is a former Chicago journalist who writes about the media. You can follow her on Threads @jenniferschulzechi or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.