"That big poll showing Trump and Biden are evenly matched? Trump helped pay for It. The Wall Street Journal poll is being cited in all the mainstream media outlets, with no caveat that Donald Trump’s Super PAC paid one of the pollsters."
As Mark Sumner states, the media are intent on making Biden's age (he's THREE YEARS OLDER than Trump) the "but her emails meme" of the 2024 election cycle.
I've said it before and will say it again: the media are a huge part of what's wrong with the US today and what's threatening the very existence of democracy. And I'm not talking just about the right-wing media as I say that.
"Consider: Over the last several days, Donald Trump has called for the execution of one of the nation’s top generals, threatened prosecutors, mocked the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s elderly husband, and endorsed more extra-judicial killings.
"The political reporters at our most esteemed newsrooms who went to great lengths to portray the Biden impeachment investigation as a serious inquiry seem unable to change gears.
I’m not surprised. It would require them to admit they were wrong. They don’t do that."
"This is now a major scandal, worthy of the kind of multiple-day front-page pile-on involving legions of reporters and opinion writers that Biden’s age got recently.
But the response from the Washington Post and the New York Times has been tepid, with a grand total of one buried print story since the news about Alexander Smirnov’s Russian connections emerged in a Tuesday afternoon court filing by special counsel David Weiss."
"Ronna McDaniel’s hiring illustrates the normalization of the insurrection and coup among the media and political class. …
By reducing the attempted coup and insurrection to mere 'partisan politics,' NBC is misleading the American people about the stakes in 2024 by denying the reality of what happened in 2020."
Lucian K. Truscott says the media totally missed the story of Trump's visit to a gun store in South Carolina, which was this:
"He made a decision to stop at Palmetto State Armory in Summerville, South Carolina, because he knew that that specific gun store was where the racist shooter in Jacksonville, Florida bought the guns he used to kill three Black people at a Dollar General store in late August."
"Reporters don’t do safaris to 'Biden Country,' seeking to understand the voters who put him in the White House. While there are pieces explaining how, for example, black women in Georgia suburbs made a big difference in the 2020 election, there’s nothing approaching the ongoing coverage of white men in Ohio diners."
~ Nicholas Grossman
Media frame white male working-class voters as "real" Americans. The rest: invisible, ignored.
"It was hard to watch [Welker with Trump] and come away with any impression other than that the press hasn’t learned very much from 2016. Then as now, the thirst for ratings persuades legacy media outlets to normalize the depraved, and the desire to appear unbiased results in a warped portrayal of Trump as a normal politician."
~ Aaron Rupar
The media are a huge part of what's threatening US democracy. Arrogant and unable to learn….
Will Bunch writes that the young man who drowned in the Rio Grande the first week of August due to Greg Abbott's buoy barrier had a name:
Norlan Bayardo Herrera.
But he adds,
"If I had waited on the American mainstream media to write about the human beings lost to the barbaric policies of the governor of the nation’s second-largest state, I would still be waiting."
"While political reporters obsess over the anger and resentments felt by blue-collar white men in Rust Belt diners, liberals’ emotions are seldom considered worthy of the same kind of exploration."
"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."
Why are mainstream media outlets — looking at you, New York Times — arrogantly insistent on continuing their both-sides framing of Trump's current behavior? Dan Froomkin has some thoughts about this:
"On one side, you’ll find the traditionalists: the older, whiter, and supremely comfortable elite national and political writers and editors who are deeply invested in the current order."
"not just the younger and more diverse journalists but the ones from other desks – like international, investigative, business, lifestyles, culture – whose sense of self is defined by more than just not taking sides. It’s defined by informing the public of the truth.
Call them the silent journalistic majority, if you will."
"'Not taking sides' defines them, to a fault. These are the kinds of people rallying around former New York Times editorial editor James Bennet‘s endless whiny screed accusing the Times of insufficient bothsidesism and, at the Times, actually forming a group I call the smug caucus.
On the other side, you’ll increasingly find everyone else:"
"Call them the silent journalistic majority, if you will. They are doing real journalism – sometimes great journalism — and they are growing increasingly frustrated by their political colleagues’ inability to reckon with the current threat environment. …
For now, however, the traditionalists are very much in charge. Literally."
"Nothing about the New York Times’ conduct over the past three days, three years, or three decades should surprise anyone who has been paying even a little attention to the paper. The Times is a newspaper that falsely portrayed Al Gore as a serial liar and George W. Bush as a straight-talker; treated Hillary Clinton’s email hygiene practices as the most important issue in 2016;" (continued in /2)
Back of Bourke on what the New York Times is ALWAYS about when it comes to Biden, the Democrats, the left — and is about all over again with its latest poll of 980 people out of a population of 161.42 million, 30% of whom said they get their news from Fox:
"Sowing doubt. Always sowing doubt."
Yes. That sums it up. Sowing doubt. Undermining. Attacking. Trying in every way possible to move the needle to the right.
"Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that’s what the publisher wants. …
Publisher A.G. Sulzberger — perhaps unintentionally — showed his hand in a speech on Monday at Oxford University on 'Journalistic Independence in a Time of Division.'"
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,
"The national media has lost its mind. Don’t get me wrong: they were pathetic, lazy, and unprofessional before yesterday’s special counsel report. But the political hatchet job by special counsel Robert Hur was simply too much. They melted in a puddle of vibratory ecstasy that caused them to literally—literally, not figuratively—take leave of their senses."
"As I write, the NYTimes has five stories about Biden’s age on its front page. Five. Not to be outdone in misleading the public, the Washington Post created a chart comparing how old Biden will be at the end of his second term with how old Trump will at the beginning of a second term. CNN abandoned coverage of yesterday’s Supreme Court argument to discuss the special counsel’s report non-stop. Most of the media is rooting for Trump to win…"