Republican Governor Candidate North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson speaks at an election night event in Greensboro, N.C., Tuesday, March 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

Firebrand, doozy or Hitler-quoting antisemite? That depends upon which news story you read. Mark Robinson is the newly nominated Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, and he has a long and well documented history of sharing his extremist views. Yet when he won the Republican nomination this week, too many news outlets seemed hard-pressed to give that information the prominence it required.

Describing Robinson as a firebrand is just not the same as saying he’s an antisemite, especially when he is an antisemite. He’s also in lock step with the worst of the worst in the MAGA movement, including his long-time support of total abortion bans with no exceptions. But the media is making the same mistake it’s made repeatedly with Donald Trump: minimizing extremism and, in some cases, even ignoring it.

The North Carolina gubernatorial race which pits Robinson against the state’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein (who would be the state’s first Jewish governor) will undoubtedly be one of the most closely watched statewide races in the country. Covering it accurately will be critical, but so far, some of the media are not off to a good start. Take The New York Times for example, which described Robinson as a “fiery outsider” in the headline of its “meet the candidate” profile published today.

The story itself says Robinson is a “political firebrand, and forged a path to the executive mansion in Raleigh partly through incendiary comments on social issues, which have mobilized his Trump-aligned base and repulsed Democrats.” Buried in the story are some details about his support for an abortion ban and his repeated attacks on the LGBTQ community, but nowhere in this piece do we learn about how Robinson quotes Hitler and believes the Holocaust was fake. The story is a failure, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes wrote: “This utterly fails to accurately convey this man’s views and role in public life.”

A second Times piece on Robinson again calls him a “political firebrand,” but this time adds that he uses “harsh rhetoric,” and it does mention the antisemitism within the story. Still, the coverage seems somewhat muted in the same way the Times often minimizes Trump’s incendiary threats.

It’s especially jarring to see the Times coverage of Robinson up against news outlets like The New Republic. The New Republic is completely clear about Robinson’s extremism with its “meet the candidate” piece. Just look at the TNR headline compared with the NYT headline. It’s almost as if the stories are about two different people.

The difference is even more pronounced in the opening paragraphs of the competing stories. You can probably guess which one of these was published by the Times.

It gets worse. Over in the opinion section of the Times, there’s this headline: “North Carolina Republicans Pick Their Man, and He’s a Doozy.”

Doozy? Doozy actually means “extraordinary, one of its kind,” but we know that’s not true.  Sadly, Robinson supports the same dangerous ideas that other MAGA politicians do. As for the article itself, it has some good information, but the whole thing has a bit too much snark for this serious issue.

Across the media spectrum today, the normalization of this candidate is fairly widespread with headlines, like this one from the Associated Press more common than not: “Heated North Carolina governor’s race ahead with Democrat Josh Stein vs. Republican Mark Robinson.” This news story — which is being republished by news outlets around the country — briefly mentions Robinson’s extremism with this line “ongoing controversies, especially Robinson’s harsh comments about LGBTQ+ issues, women in Christian leadership and other topics.”

That’s not quite detailed enough for the story that is basically introducing Robinson to the rest of the country. This Guardian overview of the campaign does a much better job reporting on Robinson’s dangerous rhetoric:

“Robinson has a history of controversial statements. He has described Covid-19 as a “globalist” conspiracy to destroy Donald Trump. In 2021, he criticized efforts to teach LGBTQ+ issues in sex education, referring to transgender and homosexual people as “filth”. He has also said people who are gay are equivalent to “what the cows leave behind” as well as “maggots” and “

flies”. He implied at a campaign event last month that transgender women should be arrested if they use women’s restrooms.

He once described the movie Black Panther as “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by [a] satanic marxist”. He then said it “was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets”.

In 2014, he quoted Hitler on Facebook in a statement about racial pride. He defended the post in a speech last July, saying quoting the Nazi leader doesn’t equate to supporting him.”

This is not the first time I’ve written about the media’s failure to report the facts or to provide the context we need to clearly see the outrageous behavior of right wing candidates. Then again, it is not a new problem for the press. Back in 1943, The New York Times ran a book review of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” The reviewer panned the writing but hardly commented on its hateful content. The headline? “German Best Seller.” Have they learned nothing?

Jennifer Schulze is a former Chicago journalist who talks media every month on WCPT 820AM on “Live, Local & Progressive with Joan Esposito” with former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob. You can follow her on Threads @jenniferschulzechi or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.