This is an important post. The phenomenon you describe goes back 60 years to the coverage of JFK's first year, when coverage of the "fiasco" at the Bay of Pigs dominated the news for much of 1961. (LBJ wasn't savaged Year One because he came in after JFK's assassination). In 1977, as I explain in my bio of Carter, Jody Powell, Carter's press secretary, said: "We not only didn't get a honeymoon, we didn't get a one night stand." https://www.amazon.com/His-Very-Best-Jimmy-Carter/dp/1501125486 His popularity was strong but the press savaged him for weeks over something his budget director--Bert Lance--did years before he came to D.C. As you mentioned, Bill Clinton got a terrible press until his comeback after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994. Re Obama, I have a lot on his relations with the press in my two books about his presidency. The question is why. The answer is complicated but a lot of it boils down to reporters wanting to prove that they're unbiased so they lean over too far to show their fairness. And many grew lazy and mindlessly accepted that covering the president's popularity--the easiest thing in the world because it's really just covering polls--is always the biggest story in Washington. We need a new media paradigm, as I wrote inn my Substack newsletter, where the biggest ongoing story is the democracy crisis. https://oldgoats.substack.com/p/expose-all-big-lie-republicans
For months the press whined that Joe hadn't held a press conference. Then he stands out there for just shy of two hours(!) taking some of the most inane and insulting questions, and the press whined 1) it took him like 12 minutes to start answering questions and 2) it was "too long."
So many of the pundits love to talk about Joe's "sinking" poll numbers and the negative attitudes towards him since he took office, yet do not mention their own role. It's so disengenuous.
I feel like the political press's misdeeds are on the scale of Trump admin misdeeds—there are just so many every day it's hard to keep up.
Good post. I would argue a slightly different point regarding Ebola. President Obama and his administration did not get the proper credit for averting an international disaster. No one valued public health measures then.
Captive in my car yesterday, I endured yet another NPR negative screed about Biden's first year. It focused on the administration's response to Covid. In their tired Q & A format between anchor and reporter, they carried on about "failures" and "missteps" and even suggested that Biden had a "mission accomplished" moment last summer when touting the success of the vaccine rollout.
NPR largely ignored the mess that Biden inherited, nor characterized accurately how many lives have been saved and the impossibility of anticipating each new variant with unique threats.
Of course it was all predictable, down to the grating, exaggerated delivery filled with faux emotions as if anchor and reporter are Broadway actors.
Excellent article. I laughed at my grandfather when he yelled at the TV -- he hated Ronald Reagan with a passion. Now I find myself doing the same thing when Lester Holt starts another "expose" about Joe Biden's failures. I blame Lester and his fellow TV celebrities for the Trump presidency because they treated an idiot like a real candidate. Now they seem determined to bring Trump back.
"In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere, thoughtful or humane. Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.)
Savviness is that quality of being shrewd, practical, hyper-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political. And what is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Or knowing who the winners are."
People laugh at Peter Doocy for continuing to ask really stupid questions - but they forget Cokie's Law. Once the talking point is out there, the rest of the media feels obligated to run with it. Thanks to the OAN 'reporter' at Biden's recent press conference, the press now is free to openly 'raise concerns' about Biden's mental fitness - after 5 years of giving Trump a pass.
"In the early years of the shebeen, we used to have a semi-regular weekly feature called What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days? It was a survey of the state of our national dialogue. The management abandoned it because, frankly, it didn’t want to watch the damn Sunday Shows anymore. (And because other people, most notably the formidable Driftglass, were doing it better.) But last weekend, a disturbing pattern emerged among the various gobshites that does not bode well for the crisis that presently exists in our democratic republic. Call it the Church of the Savvy. Call it the Both Sides Conundrum. Whatever you call it, this illustrates the fact that, among our elite political press, there is a disinclination towards—or, more accurately, an abject terror of—looking the monster in the eye and calling it by its correct name. The elite political press is not wired for that. It is something beyond its comprehension.
The monster is the Republican Party, and the modern conservative movement that is its animating force. If the Republicans are Medusa, the modern conservative movement is her headful of snakes. It is bound and determined to destroy the current constitutional order and replace it with an autocratic plutocracy, because that is its only clear mission now. It is a party bereft of ideas and driven by a movement that has as its only fuel a reckless, poisonous nihilism. It is a beast to which the Republican Party gave life, and which the institutions of American society and American politics abetted out of denial and fear, leaving the monster to cry out now, in the words of Frankenstein’s Creature:
Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.
Elsewhere in the book, the Creature warns that, "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other."
I have had friends tell me it comes across as egotistical for me to say publicly, as I have been known to do, that I have known for more than a decade that it was impossible to be both a loyal republican and a loyal American, and since I'm not that smart, why are smarter people so stupid that they didn't realize it. But it is not in the least bit egotistical for me to say that I did not then realize, as I should have, that republican treason has benefited from being abetted by another culpable group: the political media. And thanks to Eric Boehlert for making that clearer and clearer. They are, in fact, a graver danger than the political party they support.
CNN had a pre-show to tell you what Biden would say and a post-show ro telo you how right they had been and then Gloria Borger and the crew got out the knives. That's a formula made of false premises and smug self-satisfaction without ever trying journalism.
The USA appears to be in a death spiral as a "free" society, and more and more I'm beginning to think we deserve to be. All the hard-fought gains we have made over the past 250 years toward finally becoming a REAL Democracy are being systematically destroyed by greed, entrenched racism, phony religiosity and plain old belligerent ignorance. At this point, I am beginning to despair that even if Fox News was the ONLY media outlet spouting an endless stream of hysterical nonsense, the same percentage of the populace would be tuned in, wearing their MAGA hats, and eagerly sucking up the latest moronic conspiracy theories being peddled by their narcissistic cabal of so-called "journalists". Sorry to be such a downer, but after the latest developments on Capitol Hill, I'm feeling pretty pessimistic.
The media agenda to knock down Joe Biden was palpable at the presser. As Eric noted, the questions were right from the GOP playbook, complete with negative framing. But what iced the cake for me was Lester Holt teasing the president's response to a question from Kristen Welker, who had asked Biden if he would commit to having Kamala Harris on the ticket with him in 2024. Welker wasn't finished...she also asked Biden if he thought his voting rights speech was "helpful in unifying the country." I accepted NBC's invitation to remove Nightly News from my DVR's to-do list. In the DC media bubble, the guy who sees and comments upon someone planting a bomb has to explain why he can't mind his own business. It doesn't occur to reporters to ask the bomber what he is up to.
The DC Cocktail Party Press seems to desperately want a repeat of 2010 with Republicans sweeping into power and then proceeding to defecate on the country. The press live in their own reality bubble. Nothing will ever touch them the way it does the rest of us. They'll keep going to the same parties and drunken Friday night gatherings at overpriced watering holes.
On the other hand, in CJR this morning it was brought to our attention that Afghans are starving in large part due to Biden's sanctions. Yet the press, after briefly weeping over the "fate of Afghanistan's women" under the Taliban, are MIA in covering this humanitarian crisis caused by the US.
I got a lot of information from The Intercept, which I'm glad to read most of the time since they kicked out Glenn Greenwald, who decamped so that he could be free to be madly in love with poor, victimized Donald Trump.
Anyway, I find myself puzzling over just what trips the triggers of journalists. After praising Biden's press conference, now they're back with their shovels to declare Biden's presidency dead and buried. And what I just cannot get people to understand is that although we can blame Manchin and Sinema for Biden's legislation woes, we should be looking at the Republicans and asking why the eternal fuck has the press normalized the complete stonewalling of everything that comes out of the House? Is this normal? Hell, no. It's collective psychopathy, and normal politics just might be gone for good.
I think what we're seeing, and have seen for decades, is the result of 3 factors: 1) consolidation of national media under a handful of billionaires/corporate owners with a decidedly 'Conservative' bent, 2) young people placed in ridiculously powerful media roles who lack historical context and Constitutional understanding of their roles as the 4th rail in a democracy, and 3) a 'neutral-on democracy' posture...which is as insane as it sounds, considering that a free press is an early victim of autocracy and the groundwork laid (public's perception of media is at an all-time low, irrespective of political affiliation). I'll add a 4th, the Beltway media's dangerous fascination with raw power and access to such power. It's intoxicating and antithetical to accountability journalism, but it accounts for so much of the fawning McConnell reporting.
I thought a President had a 4 year term, but apparently if he doesn’t get everything done in a year, he is a failure. What a bunch of whiny bitches!
This is an important post. The phenomenon you describe goes back 60 years to the coverage of JFK's first year, when coverage of the "fiasco" at the Bay of Pigs dominated the news for much of 1961. (LBJ wasn't savaged Year One because he came in after JFK's assassination). In 1977, as I explain in my bio of Carter, Jody Powell, Carter's press secretary, said: "We not only didn't get a honeymoon, we didn't get a one night stand." https://www.amazon.com/His-Very-Best-Jimmy-Carter/dp/1501125486 His popularity was strong but the press savaged him for weeks over something his budget director--Bert Lance--did years before he came to D.C. As you mentioned, Bill Clinton got a terrible press until his comeback after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994. Re Obama, I have a lot on his relations with the press in my two books about his presidency. The question is why. The answer is complicated but a lot of it boils down to reporters wanting to prove that they're unbiased so they lean over too far to show their fairness. And many grew lazy and mindlessly accepted that covering the president's popularity--the easiest thing in the world because it's really just covering polls--is always the biggest story in Washington. We need a new media paradigm, as I wrote inn my Substack newsletter, where the biggest ongoing story is the democracy crisis. https://oldgoats.substack.com/p/expose-all-big-lie-republicans
For months the press whined that Joe hadn't held a press conference. Then he stands out there for just shy of two hours(!) taking some of the most inane and insulting questions, and the press whined 1) it took him like 12 minutes to start answering questions and 2) it was "too long."
So many of the pundits love to talk about Joe's "sinking" poll numbers and the negative attitudes towards him since he took office, yet do not mention their own role. It's so disengenuous.
I feel like the political press's misdeeds are on the scale of Trump admin misdeeds—there are just so many every day it's hard to keep up.
Good post. I would argue a slightly different point regarding Ebola. President Obama and his administration did not get the proper credit for averting an international disaster. No one valued public health measures then.
Captive in my car yesterday, I endured yet another NPR negative screed about Biden's first year. It focused on the administration's response to Covid. In their tired Q & A format between anchor and reporter, they carried on about "failures" and "missteps" and even suggested that Biden had a "mission accomplished" moment last summer when touting the success of the vaccine rollout.
NPR largely ignored the mess that Biden inherited, nor characterized accurately how many lives have been saved and the impossibility of anticipating each new variant with unique threats.
Of course it was all predictable, down to the grating, exaggerated delivery filled with faux emotions as if anchor and reporter are Broadway actors.
Excellent article. I laughed at my grandfather when he yelled at the TV -- he hated Ronald Reagan with a passion. Now I find myself doing the same thing when Lester Holt starts another "expose" about Joe Biden's failures. I blame Lester and his fellow TV celebrities for the Trump presidency because they treated an idiot like a real candidate. Now they seem determined to bring Trump back.
The press is hard-wired for the GOP at this point. Digby has an excellent piece on "The Church of the Savvy" https://digbysblog.net/2022/01/18/church-of-the-savvy/ She quotes Jay Rosen:
"In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere, thoughtful or humane. Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.)
Savviness is that quality of being shrewd, practical, hyper-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political. And what is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Or knowing who the winners are."
People laugh at Peter Doocy for continuing to ask really stupid questions - but they forget Cokie's Law. Once the talking point is out there, the rest of the media feels obligated to run with it. Thanks to the OAN 'reporter' at Biden's recent press conference, the press now is free to openly 'raise concerns' about Biden's mental fitness - after 5 years of giving Trump a pass.
But the most compelling piece I've seen recently is from Charlie Pierce: "The Elite Political Press Is Incapable of Looking the Monster in the Eye". https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38807280/trump-movement-elite-political-press/
Here's how it starts:
"In the early years of the shebeen, we used to have a semi-regular weekly feature called What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days? It was a survey of the state of our national dialogue. The management abandoned it because, frankly, it didn’t want to watch the damn Sunday Shows anymore. (And because other people, most notably the formidable Driftglass, were doing it better.) But last weekend, a disturbing pattern emerged among the various gobshites that does not bode well for the crisis that presently exists in our democratic republic. Call it the Church of the Savvy. Call it the Both Sides Conundrum. Whatever you call it, this illustrates the fact that, among our elite political press, there is a disinclination towards—or, more accurately, an abject terror of—looking the monster in the eye and calling it by its correct name. The elite political press is not wired for that. It is something beyond its comprehension.
The monster is the Republican Party, and the modern conservative movement that is its animating force. If the Republicans are Medusa, the modern conservative movement is her headful of snakes. It is bound and determined to destroy the current constitutional order and replace it with an autocratic plutocracy, because that is its only clear mission now. It is a party bereft of ideas and driven by a movement that has as its only fuel a reckless, poisonous nihilism. It is a beast to which the Republican Party gave life, and which the institutions of American society and American politics abetted out of denial and fear, leaving the monster to cry out now, in the words of Frankenstein’s Creature:
Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.
Elsewhere in the book, the Creature warns that, "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other."
I have had friends tell me it comes across as egotistical for me to say publicly, as I have been known to do, that I have known for more than a decade that it was impossible to be both a loyal republican and a loyal American, and since I'm not that smart, why are smarter people so stupid that they didn't realize it. But it is not in the least bit egotistical for me to say that I did not then realize, as I should have, that republican treason has benefited from being abetted by another culpable group: the political media. And thanks to Eric Boehlert for making that clearer and clearer. They are, in fact, a graver danger than the political party they support.
CNN had a pre-show to tell you what Biden would say and a post-show ro telo you how right they had been and then Gloria Borger and the crew got out the knives. That's a formula made of false premises and smug self-satisfaction without ever trying journalism.
We need more journalists and more journalism, and less punditry and tabloid journalism.
I think it is very telling that the parody Chris Cillizza generator got a reaction from Soledad O’Brian:
https://twitter.com/soledadobrien/status/1484123175982182402
The thing is that most of the pundits are already parodies of themselves. But they don’t have the self-awareness to see it.
The USA appears to be in a death spiral as a "free" society, and more and more I'm beginning to think we deserve to be. All the hard-fought gains we have made over the past 250 years toward finally becoming a REAL Democracy are being systematically destroyed by greed, entrenched racism, phony religiosity and plain old belligerent ignorance. At this point, I am beginning to despair that even if Fox News was the ONLY media outlet spouting an endless stream of hysterical nonsense, the same percentage of the populace would be tuned in, wearing their MAGA hats, and eagerly sucking up the latest moronic conspiracy theories being peddled by their narcissistic cabal of so-called "journalists". Sorry to be such a downer, but after the latest developments on Capitol Hill, I'm feeling pretty pessimistic.
The media agenda to knock down Joe Biden was palpable at the presser. As Eric noted, the questions were right from the GOP playbook, complete with negative framing. But what iced the cake for me was Lester Holt teasing the president's response to a question from Kristen Welker, who had asked Biden if he would commit to having Kamala Harris on the ticket with him in 2024. Welker wasn't finished...she also asked Biden if he thought his voting rights speech was "helpful in unifying the country." I accepted NBC's invitation to remove Nightly News from my DVR's to-do list. In the DC media bubble, the guy who sees and comments upon someone planting a bomb has to explain why he can't mind his own business. It doesn't occur to reporters to ask the bomber what he is up to.
The DC Cocktail Party Press seems to desperately want a repeat of 2010 with Republicans sweeping into power and then proceeding to defecate on the country. The press live in their own reality bubble. Nothing will ever touch them the way it does the rest of us. They'll keep going to the same parties and drunken Friday night gatherings at overpriced watering holes.
On the other hand, in CJR this morning it was brought to our attention that Afghans are starving in large part due to Biden's sanctions. Yet the press, after briefly weeping over the "fate of Afghanistan's women" under the Taliban, are MIA in covering this humanitarian crisis caused by the US.
I got a lot of information from The Intercept, which I'm glad to read most of the time since they kicked out Glenn Greenwald, who decamped so that he could be free to be madly in love with poor, victimized Donald Trump.
Anyway, I find myself puzzling over just what trips the triggers of journalists. After praising Biden's press conference, now they're back with their shovels to declare Biden's presidency dead and buried. And what I just cannot get people to understand is that although we can blame Manchin and Sinema for Biden's legislation woes, we should be looking at the Republicans and asking why the eternal fuck has the press normalized the complete stonewalling of everything that comes out of the House? Is this normal? Hell, no. It's collective psychopathy, and normal politics just might be gone for good.
I think what we're seeing, and have seen for decades, is the result of 3 factors: 1) consolidation of national media under a handful of billionaires/corporate owners with a decidedly 'Conservative' bent, 2) young people placed in ridiculously powerful media roles who lack historical context and Constitutional understanding of their roles as the 4th rail in a democracy, and 3) a 'neutral-on democracy' posture...which is as insane as it sounds, considering that a free press is an early victim of autocracy and the groundwork laid (public's perception of media is at an all-time low, irrespective of political affiliation). I'll add a 4th, the Beltway media's dangerous fascination with raw power and access to such power. It's intoxicating and antithetical to accountability journalism, but it accounts for so much of the fawning McConnell reporting.
I've recently ended subscriptions to WaPo, NYT and NPR. I've had it. On the bright side, I've added a subscription to Press Run!