Have you ever heard of Ben Swann, a Toledo reporter/analyst on local Fox news? I hadn’t. But someone pointed me to one of Swann’s recent four-minute segments, “Reality Check,” in which he asks Obama how he justified having a kill list that includes American citizens who’ve never been charged with a crime-and then concisely analyzes both the constitutional issues and the reasons the national news media are giving Obama a pass. It is well worth your four minutes of watching time.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WrRuNOaNYME

It left me wondering: Why doesn’t every reporter demand answers in this way? Why isn’t local TV news always like this? My lord, this is far more worth discussing than most of what we saw from Charlotte last week.

E.J. Graff writes on social-justice and human-rights issues, particularly discrimination and violence against women and children; marriage and family policy; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center and the author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999, 2004).