"As noted by commentator Lindy Li on Twitter, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has written 265 stories about 'Hillary’s emails' and 141 articles about Joe Biden’s age. Certainly, Trump's Nazi leanings deserve as least as much coverage as the non-story about Hillary’s emails. To date, the Times has published one story on Trump's use of Hitler’s language."
“In a fair world, in a just world, the mainstream media would be covering these cases with the weight they deserve, with at least some of the intensity they have devoted to Biden’s age, how much milk has cost under his presidency, or how the withdrawal from Afghanistan was executed.”
“But we don’t live in a fair world and while the media needs constant and intense criticism and oversight, the likelihood of them getting better at their jobs is remote — at best.
So the task falls to the opposition party. That is not ideal but it is where we are.”
"Steve Bannon is reiterating threats to weaponize the U.S. justice system against perceived MAGA enemies if Donald Trump is re-elected. 'The criminals and traitors around Biden, you should be very worried,' Bannon said Thursday on his 'War Room' podcast, explicitly naming Hillary Clinton and Christopher Wray."
"'You're a target, you are corrupt, you are a traitor to this country, the people around you, the Clinton Foundation, the crimes you had, the sexual predator husband of yours,' Bannon ranted at one point. And yet, Bannon's disturbing tirade has, thus far, elicited almost no coverage from the press. Which left me wondering: How would newsrooms react if Biden's top allies were making such overt threats to jail political opponents?"
"The college campus protests against Israel’s destruction of Gaza have been overwhelmingly peaceful. But elite reporters– following the lead of politicians of both parties – continue to refer to them as violent and chaotic."
"With almost no exceptions, the only violence involved in these protests has been the violence perpetrated upon the protesters – either by police in riot gear, or by counter-protesters, or in some cases, like at UCLA, both. …
Student journalists, who base their reporting on what they see with their own eyes, have done a vastly superior job of covering the protests."
Looking at Columbia, Zito Madu agrees with Dan Froomkin that coverage of the student protests from right on the spot by student journalists has been vastly superior to what the corporate media are providing as they have "repeatedly laundered NYPD and other government propaganda."
"IN THE FIRST WEEK OF HIS CRIMINAL TRIAL, Donald Trump raised about $5.6 million online by warning his small dollar-donors that the 'Deep State' was out to lock him up."
Trump sent out an email when jury selection began, saying Biden's attacking him, and his disciples responded by sending $1.6 million in response to the email. He took in another $1 million the rest of the week, mostly from small donors.
Noah Berlatsky on how the corporate media and not just Fox help serve Trump's interests:
"Trump is a creature of publicity and propaganda, with a talent for shameless self-promotion and self-marketing. He’s put his brand on everything from Trump steaks to Trump bibles. As a recognizable figure who regularly says controversial and shocking things, he’s a riveting story for journalists."
On Monday, with prosecutors beginning to make their case to the jury that Donald Trump committed 34 felonies, Trump didn’t get angry, animated or antagonistic. Instead, he fell asleep."
But the media:
"As the media watchdog group Media Matters noted last June after Biden announced his re-election run, corporate media was quick to cover Biden’s age and stamina issues but not Trump."
Charles Sykes on what the media could – if they chose to do this – do far better in covering Donald Trump and Biden:
"An exaggerated report about Biden’s memory lapses, for example, should not be a bigger story than Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin to invade European countries."
"[Polls] have been weaponized, cheapened, commoditized, and mass-produced to tell the American public what to believe . . . rather than reporting on what the American public actually believes.
Why does the media engage in such amoral and deceptive practices? To reinforce their editorial bias and increase sales."
Mark Sumner discusses Trump's Gettysburg speech, in which Trump stated,
"Gettysburg, wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look, and to watch, and, uh, the statement of Robert Lee—who's no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor—'Never fight uphill, me boys. Never fight uphill.'"
And:
"What an unbelievable, I mean it was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious, and so horrible—and so beautiful in so many ways."
"The only thing more amazing than Trump’s Gettysburg address may be how PBS, The Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post all managed to cover Trump’s rally without mentioning one word of this historic statement. Because the national media covering Trump without telling Americans how disjointed and nonsensical his statements are is not historical—it’s what they do every day."
Brian Klaas on why we need press objectivity, not "balance":
"When the news is 'balanced' in an unbalanced world, it becomes an instrument of deception. This has made producing the news extremely difficult in an era of mass delusions and hyper-polarization."
When one side is spewing toxic nonsense and the other is trying to carry on real conversation, false equivalency by media normalizes the toxic nonsense.
"We stand at a stark divide in the fight to protect the reproductive liberty of women. One candidate, Joe Biden, promises to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade if he is given a majority in both chambers of Congress. The other, Donald Trump, is okay with a total ban on abortion and jailing doctors as long as gerrymandered state legislators pass a law banning abortion."
"The positions of the candidates could not be more different.
So, imagine the surprise of receiving a newsletter from the NYTimes by Jess Bidgood with the headline, 'Two Imperfect Messengers Take On Abortion.' (This article is accessible to all.)
The headline—and the article—create a false equivalency between President Biden and Donald Trump that does not exist."
Jay Kuo interviews John Gartner, founder of Duty To Warn, a group of mental health professionals who have been raising the alarm about Trump’s increasingly sociopathic behavior since 2017. Gartner says he couldn't believe his eyes at what the press did after Biden became president: he states,
"Day after day the press was gaslighting the American people: Pathologizing Biden’s normal signs of aging, such as forgetting names, and normalizing Trump’s flagrant signs of dementia. That false narrative was having a real impact on the polls, and no one with the right letters after their name was stepping in to correct the record."
"Pathologizing Biden’s normal aging is the first lie. Normalizing Trump’s dementia is the second. The sorts of small lapses we’ve seen in Biden are part and parcel of normal aging. …
The evidence for Trump’s dementia is this: Trump shows an overall decline from his own cognitive baseline, with marked progressive deterioration in 4 areas: memory, ability to use language, behavior, and gross and fine motor skills."
Dan Froomkin notes that "almost everybody in the mainstream media completely fell for Trump’s abortion fake-out."
And when corrected, the major corporate media outlets were too arrogant to retract their mistaken headlines claiming Trump said abortion "should" be left to the states – when he didn't say that at all.
"No, Trump did not say that abortion rights should be “left up to the states,” as the New York Times and the Washington Post reported.
No, there was no shift to some sort of more moderate position.
If you actually listened to the video, rather than to the spin, all Trump said was that states are currently deciding abortion policies for themselves – a statement of fact, not intent."
The media know better. They know exactly what they're doing.
"Unless we summon the political will to stop Trump, MAGA extremists, and reactionary judges, hundreds of millions of women will be denied their right to make the most fundamental decisions regarding their lives and bodies."
"Trump will say anything one day and change it completely the next. His only North Star is his own self-interest. His instincts now tell him abortion is a losing issue so he’s playing this game as part of his stay-out-of-jail campaign."
"Donald Trump is the reason Roe vs. Wade fell. There is no way around this fact. …
The public has rejected this extremism, from coast to coast, in red states and blue states. Trump understands audience feedback like he understands little else, and he is trying to keep away from the blowback. The mainstream media is giving him able assistance in this by presenting his abortion about-face as if it has no context."
"Laid bare here is the media’s habit of cleaning up for Trump, presenting an image of a malevolent force in America that bears little resemblance to the man and the movement behind him. Trump is no idle observer of the strife now occurring in America under Republican efforts to restrict abortion. He is the architect."
"The media isn’t making a mistake here. They aren’t naïve babes in the woods who just don’t understand how to cover this topic and Trump’s role in it. Nobody is this repetitively ignorant. This is on purpose. …
The press clearly understands that Trump’s role in the abortion rollbacks is key, and that voters hate it. So in an informal joint operation, Trump is lying about where he stands and the press pumps out the lie."