Media failure broke the White House renovation story—and America

The ballroom is a partisan mess because mainstream news abandoned facts.

The planned White House ballroom

The story of the White House renovation isn’t just about President Donald Trump remaking part of “The People’s House.” It’s a powerful example of how media failures have left Americans in the dark.

As soon as news broke of the East Wing being razed to make way for a future ballroom, people heard polar opposite versions of what was going on. On the left, it was destructive and crazy expensive; on the right, a long-awaited, necessary change.

How did this happen? It isn’t just about the rise of right-wing media. It’s about the failure of big mainstream media. News giants long ago allowed themselves to turn into “open mic night” platforms in which people lie uncorrected. Seeing that they can’t count on these sites to deliver the truth, Americans have turned elsewhere.

In my podcast and newsletter, “They Stand Corrected,” I provide what’s so often missing in today’s “news” coverage: facts.

I looked into what Americans have been hearing about the renovation. In increasingly popular right-wing outlets, a prominent claim has been that the same people getting worked up over this $300 million project didn’t care about a White House renovation under President Barack Obama. In addition to adding a basketball court, he “did some four-year reno to the White House that cost something like $380 million during his first term,” podcast host Megyn Kelly complained.

On Newsmax, host Chris Salcedo looked back at the 2010 construction, calling it “Obama doing a renovation nobody asked for.” To justify this claim, the network played an old clip from CNN. It’s a story I’m familiar with; I was reporting on air at CNN at the time, doing a lot of fact-checking.

Obama did not ask for that project. It was approved by Congress in 2008, before he was president, “following a report by the administration of then-President George W. Bush, and the renovations aimed to upgrade the building’s aging infrastructure,” Snopes explains, citing reports at the time.

One America News, meanwhile, shared a video of Trump going after a reporter for asking about transparency on the project. “I’ve shown this to everyone that would listen,” Trump says in the clip, holding a mockup of the future ballroom. The OAN post did not explain that the National Trust for Historic Preservation has sent a letter to the White House saying approval is required.

“We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes, including consultation and review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, both of which have authority to review new construction at the White House, and to invite comments from the American people,” the trust wrote.

Right-wing media have also played up the fact that the ballroom is being privately funded, arguing that Trump is sparing taxpayers the expense. These reports have left out what corporate donors stand to gain from Trump.

These reports also fail to inform people that Trump is breaking a promise. “It won’t interfere with the current building,” he previously said of the planned change.

Left-wing reports have also left out important context. In a segment on MSNBC, two hosts and a political analyst assailed the “vanity project” and the size of the planned ballroom. They didn’t mention that people with no clear political agenda have said a large ballroom would benefit the White House. “I wasn’t that surprised,” author Jennifer Pickens, who writes about the history of the White House, said in a CBS interview. “I felt like, okay, it’s finally happening.”

Some of this is subjective, and therefore not fact-checkable—whether people like Trump’s grandiose taste; whether East Wing offices should be kept; whether the planned facility is too big. “We acknowledge the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House, but we are deeply concerned that the massing and height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself—it is 55,000 square feet—and may also permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House with its two smaller, and lower, East and West Wings,” The National Trust for Historic Preservation wrote.

On these questions, there is room for opinion. But opinions are useless when they’re built on a foundation of lies and half-truths. America needs to knock down big legacy media and construct something new: an information space in which truth is clear, trustworthy, and celebrated.

Josh Levs is host of They Stand Corrected, the podcast and newsletter fact-checking the media. Find him at joshlevs.com.

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