Philippa Kaur

After nearly a year of investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021, the Democrat-led House Select committee is holding a series of public hearings to present its findings to the US public. These findings include that the former US president, Donald Trump, and his allies engaged in illegal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The committee, which has a Republican co-chair, Liz Cheney, also found they knowingly spread lies regarding the integrity of the electoral system, which culminated in the attack on the heart of American democracy.

According to one report in the New York Times, at least 20 million people watched the first primetime hearing. It was carried live by all major public and private news outlets in the US, with the notable exception of Fox News.

It bears repeating that, by all measures, the 2020 general election was one of the most secure elections in American history, with no evidence of widespread voter fraud. These facts have been confirmed over and over again by federal agencies and courts – most recently by the Trump administration’s attorney general, Bill Barr, via video testimony presented at the hearings. Barr recounted telling Trump following the election that his claims of fraud were “bullshit”.

Notwithstanding these facts, Trump led an aggressive disinformation campaign for the purpose of undermining the public’s faith in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. It’s a campaign that continues to this day. Trump and other Republicans, including those running for elected office, continue to spread lies regarding that election.

During its convention in mid-June, the Republican Party of Texas approved its 2022 policy platform, which relies on false claims of voter fraud to formally reject the results of the 2020 election and proclaim Joe Biden’s victory as illegitimate.

Party lines

While much attention is being paid to Americans’ attitudes generally, more focus on partisan divisions is warranted. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released on January 19 found the American public’s attitudes about Trump’s culpability in the January 6 attack remain largely unchanged.

Partisanship appears to be the largest factor driving Americans’ views of the attack. For example, 91% of Democrats believe Trump is responsible, versus only 19% of Republicans.

Democrats are also more likely to be following the committee hearings – 43% versus just 22% of Republicans. Additionally, while 88% of Democrats approve of the work of the committee, only 32% of Republicans share this view.

Polling also reveals the enduring success of Trump’s disinformation campaign. For example, in January 2022 only 17% of Republicans said they would consider voting for a candidate who accurately characterised Biden’s victory as legitimate. Additionally, while there is no legitimate basis for concerns regarding voter fraud at the state level, Republicans are three or four more times more likely than Democrats to say voter fraud is a problem in their state.

Divergences in the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans concerning January 6 and Trump’s false election claims, while deeply concerning, are unsurprising given partisan differences in how and where Americans access information on matters of public concern.

For example, a Pew Research Center report published in January 2020 revealed that Republicans and Democrats place their trust in two “nearly inverse news media environments”. Republicans place less trust in – and are growing increasingly alienated from – more established news sources, while Democrats’ confidence in them remains stable.

The study also found that Republicans use news sources less frequently than Democrats. Recent declines in trust in, and engagement with, traditional media by Republicans coincide with a recent increase in illiberalism of the Republican Party.

Media polarisation

Such a concerning trend is not evident in European democracies. Comparative research suggests the US has much higher levels of partisan news production, consumption and polarisation than Europe, and lower levels of trust in traditional media.

Sitting in judgment: members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol.
EPA-EFE/Shawn Thew

Even when accounting for the differences within European states and the rise in the use of social media as a news source across Europe, the American information ecosystem is significantly more polluted, fragmented and polarised. For example, according to Ofcom, BBC One remains the most-used news source for people living in the UK. This contrasts starkly with the US, where the largest public news outlets rank far lower than many of the country’s private news outlets.

The declining level of trust in – and disengagement from – traditional media is worrying. Traditional mainstream media serves the important democratic functions of accurately informing the public regarding matters of public concern and holding those in power to account. Without these safeguards, democracies become more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns and other threats to democracy, particularly from politicians.

Democracy at work?

The committee hearings offer an opportunity for the US to share a collective experience that facilitates public understanding of the events surrounding January 6, and the ongoing threat to American democracy from those seeking to undermine democratic institutions. This includes the spread of disinformation and the laying of foundations for overturning future elections if Democrats prevail.

However, so far we have seen only a relatively small percentage of Americans – mostly Democrats – closely engaging with the hearings. Opinions regarding the legitimacy of the investigation and the lies that fuelled the attack tend to be more reflective of party affiliation than engagement with facts and the search for truth.

This demonstrates the enduring viability of disinformation campaigns led by leaders and politicians, particularly when the public’s access to information is heavily informed by party affiliation and one party is actively endeavouring to misinform its base. It further suggests that, while the US prides itself on maintaining a marketplace of ideas where truth ultimately prevails, such faith in the power of unencumbered public discourse is a folly.

This raises the question of whether the committee hearings will bring the political and legal reckoning required to neutralise the threat to American democracy posed by Trump and his allies. So far, there is little reason for optimism. More

One of the more curious legacies of the Watergate scandal is so obvious that we barely notice it.

Watergate was the name of the Washington office complex where five men – later revealed to be working on behalf of US president Richard Nixon’s administration – were discovered burgling the Democratic Party’s national headquarters. Their arrest on June 17 1972 – 50 years ago today – not only led eventually to Nixon’s resignation but also fuelled an international tendency to add “-gate” to anything that looks scandalous.

The fashion was started by New York Times columnist William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter, apparently to defend his former boss by showing just how prevalent scandals were. Early cases included Koreagate (following revelations of secret Korean donations to congressional candidates in the 1976 elections) and Billygate (named after president Jimmy Carter’s wayward younger brother, whose high-profile antics included promoting a new beer, Billybeer, and receiving money from the Libyan government) and Lancegate (sparked by the dubious business affairs of Carter cabinet member Bert Lance).

Fifty years later, the suffix is as popular as ever. When Will Smith dashed on stage and slapped MC Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife at this year’s Academy Awards, the incident was immediately labelled Slapgate.

More seriously, when British prime minister Boris Johnston and his colleagues defied government bans on social gatherings designed to curb the spread of COVID, the term Partygate was quickly, and damagingly, coined by the media.

Where it all began: the Watergate complex in Washington.
Wikimedia

Sometimes “-gates” go head to head, most famously during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. Around a month before the election, a tape emerged of Trump boasting to a male colleague about the things you can do to women if you’re a star. Inevitably it attracted the distasteful label, Pussygate, and so dominated the news that many thought Trump would have to withdraw his candidacy.

The other side of the equation came a couple of weeks later, when Emailgate made a comeback. It had been revealed some years earlier that Hillary Clinton had used private email rather than the official government server when she was secretary of state. Now, FBI director James Comey announced he was re-opening investigations. By giving Trump licence to denounce Clinton’s “corruption”, the decision guaranteed that the last weeks of the campaign would be dominated by this issue. Days before voting day, Comey cleared Clinton.

The prominence of the issue, highlighting what many thought was the tendency of the Clintons to make their own rules, may have caused some potential supporters to stay home, and so affected the election result.

Read more:
From irreverence to irrelevance: the rise and fall of the bad-tempered tabloids

My favourite “-gate” emerged from the scandal engulfing America’s most famous TV evangelist, Jim Bakker, and his wife Tammy after their multi-million dollar empire collapsed. Jim was eventually imprisoned for fraud and various sexual liaisons. The scandal was dubbed Pearlygate.

Perhaps the ultimate in wordplay came during two scandals labelled Gategate. The first was a brief episode in the colourful career of Colonel Oliver North, a Reagan administration official closely associated with the Iran-Contra scandal (sometimes called Irangate). During the furore, North was given taxpayer assistance to increase security at his home; the extravagance involved was labelled Gategate.

The other Gategate stretched on for a couple of years. In 2012, conservative MP Andrew Mitchell attempted to leave Downing Street by the main gate, only to be told by a police officer to use another one. He allegedly lost his temper and, amid his stream of abuse, called the officer a “pleb”. The subsequent uproar forced Mitchell to resign. Both politician and police officer launched defamation suits against the other, but the judge ruled in the police officer’s favour. British media used both Plebgate and Gategate as shorthand for the affair.

The scandal that wasn’t: opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull (bottom left) in 2008.
Alan Porritt/AAP

The term also spread to Australia, though not always to describe allegations with a solid basis. Utegate involved a charge of corruption launched spectacularly in 2009 by opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull against prime minister Kevin Rudd and treasurer Wayne Swan. Turnbull’s claim that they had acted improperly on behalf a Queensland car dealer seemed dramatic and damaging, but it turned out the key evidence was a forgery by Treasury official Godwin Grech. The charge collapsed in ignominy.

The list of scandals goes on. When NSW premier Barry O’Farrell was shown to have misled the Independent Commission Against Corruption by denying having received a $3000 bottle of Grange Hermitage from a Liberal colleague, Grangegate was the obvious shorthand. O’Farrell resigned as premier. When the speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, used taxpayers’ money to fly to a Liberal Party fundraiser at a cost of around $5000, Choppergate was born. Bishop resigned as speaker and lost preselection at the next election.

When Australian cricketers were found to have tampered with the ball during a test match in South Africa in 2018, the affair was labelled Sandpapergate. Three players, including captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner, received suspensions.

Coming full circle, Australia had its own Watergate in 2019. A water buyback payment of $80 million under the Murray–Darling Basin scheme went to a company registered in the Cayman Islands. Minister Barnaby Joyce approved the payment, but it emerged that the company had been founded by another minister, Angus Taylor.

Read more:
Australia’s ‘watergate’: here’s what taxpayers need to know about water buybacks

After 50 years, though, “-gate” has lost much of its force – and might even be an obstacle to rational debate.

On one notorious occasion, for example, the suffix was used widely to impute serious wrong-doing when none had occurred. In the lead-up to the Copenhagen summit on global warming in late 2009, emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were hacked and snippets selectively publicised by a group of climate sceptics.

A series of inquiries eventually confirmed the integrity of the Centre’s research, but the hackers had succeeded in casting aspersions on climate science at a strategic moment, and part of their success was in the almost universal use in the media of the derogatory term, Climategate.

What these 50 years of examples show, above all, is that we’ve become increasingly desensitised to scandalous behaviour of many kinds. In a long-running scandal with several twists and turns – such as Boris Johnson’s Partygate, or Watergate itself – the label can be helpful shorthand. Most often, though, what was once attention-grabbing and sometimes an amusing gimmick has become a stale cliché. More