Speaker 1: OK, this is something you should see. As you know, this week, the House took this very rare step of voting to censure one of its members. Republican Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona censured and stripped of his committee assignments because he posted a video online which showed him killing Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In the lead-up to that vote this week, it was a pretty compelling presentation. Among other things, we saw very powerful speeches from the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and from Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez herself, talking about the consequences of normalizing violence against members of Congress, particularly in this environment. But it should also be noted that in the lead-up to that vote, we also heard from a number of Republicans who defended and excused what Congressman Gosar did. Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert then took it one step even further. She didn't just defend Congressman Gosar, but she decided she would take that moment to attack some Democratic members of Congress with unfounded conspiracy theories, and she did it from the House floor. And here's the thing I really want you to see. I want you to see this response to what Congresswoman Boebert did. This is from a leading anchor at 9 News Denver, back home in Colorado. Just watch this.

Speaker 2: Representative Lauren Boebert launched an Islamophobic attack against fellow Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on the House floor today, suggesting that the Congresswoman from Minnesota is involved in terrorism, calling her a member of the Jihad Squad, and repeating an unsupported smear that Omar had married her brother.

Speaker 3: The Jihad Squad member from Minnesota has paid her husband, and not her brother-husband, the other one, over a million dollars in campaign funds. This member is allowed on the Foreign Affairs Committee while praising terrorists.

Speaker 2: It's time that we acknowledge something that may be obvious by now. We hold Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert to a different standard than every other elected official in Colorado. We hold Congresswoman Boebert to a far lower standard. If we held her to the same standard as every other elected Republican and Democrat in Colorado, we would be here near nightly chronicling the cruel, false, and bigoted things that Boebert says for attention and fundraising. This is not about politics, assuming politics is still about things like taxes, national security, health care, jobs, and public lands. This is about us, as journalists, recognizing that we'll hold a politician accountable if they say something vile once, but we won't do it if they do it every day. Our double standard is unfair to all the elected officials in Colorado, Republicans and Democrats, who display human decency.

Speaker 1: Remarkable commentary about Congresswoman Lauren Boebert that she's facing back home in Colorado. Joining us now is 9News Denver anchor Kyle Clark. He's the managing editor and anchor of Next with Kyle Clark, where he made that commentary this week. Mr. Clark, thanks for making time to be here tonight. I know you've got a really, really busy night.

Speaker 2: Rachel, thanks for the invitation.

Speaker 1: I feel like, as soon as I saw that, I wanted to talk to you about it, because I feel like you have hit something that has been driving me crazy for a long time, which is the last point that you made. If we'll hold the politician accountable if they say something vile once, but we won't do it if they do it every day. And the reason, of course, as you know, the reason we don't do that is because of the word new in news. It becomes the same old, same old thing with some members of Congress, with some elected officials, with some people who have made that their stock and trade. I wanted to know if you felt like you had a proposed solution to this, in addition just to the diagnosis.

Speaker 2: I don't have a proposed solution. We have some ideas, and we're engaging our community in Colorado to find a better way forward. But it seemed to me like we could no longer wait to acknowledge the problem until we had a solid solution, because the problem, the fact that we will hold an elected official accountable if they say something vile once, but so long as somebody is willing to make it their personality, we'll just kind of bake it into the cake, that is deeply corrosive to the way that our communities function, the communities that we serve. And even if we're not sure what the answer is, we need to acknowledge the double standard so that we can do something about it.

Speaker 1: Right. And I do think it's really smart of you and really insightful to point out that this is unfair to people who comport themselves in a decent way, that if they said something once that was vile, then all the attention, all the opprobrium would come down on them, whereas all you have to do to avoid that is to say it all the time. It also creates, I think, a sort of cycle in which members of Congress, other elected officials, people in the public sphere who realize that they benefit from always being over the edge, always being, in the words that you put it, cruel, false, bigoted things. Those folks know that they create a dilemma for the local news, for the national news, into whether or not to even cover these remarks, whether or not to play them, because, I mean, even in your commentary, playing Congresswoman Boebert's speech, you, in effect, repeated the claims that she made against Congresswoman Omar, which are false claims, but you can't talk about and criticize what she said without also advancing the thing that she's trying to spread.

Speaker 2: And I think, Rachel, the elected officials who do this, and there are very few of them in Colorado, at least, know exactly what they're doing, that it doesn't matter if we put something on television and say it's false, they still have the opportunity to get it out there. It doesn't matter if we put it out and say it's bigoted, they still get to put it out there. So the trick for us going forward, and I think the challenge for a lot of local journalists covering elected officials and members of Congress, is to figure out how do we report on what they're saying, if it's cruel or false or bigoted, without just relentlessly amplifying it, but also without simply ignoring it. So for us at 9 News, the NBC station in Colorado, we've gone public with the double standard, to acknowledge how it benefits politicians like Congresswoman Boebert, who is willing to say things that aren't true or are bigoted or are cruel, and at the same time is unfair to all of the other public servants who choose to hold themselves to a higher standard.

Speaker 1: And in so doing, and in doing it in the way that you have, I think you've started a really, really important conversation that's important, not only in locations where there are a lot of individual politicians playing that game, but for all of us who are trying to think about how to responsibly, accurately and effectively cover what is literally news. Kyle Clark, KUSA anchor, the managing editor of Next with Kyle Clark. Kyle, I really appreciate you making time to join us, and congratulations on starting this conversation. I think it's brilliant, and I think you've done a great job. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thank you.