WaPo did a big "poll" including opinions by pundits, and although the poll gave Biden a B-, not a word was mentioned about the two buried articles they published at the end of Trump's first year giving him a grade of "F." Sally Buzbee probably wouldn't allow it.
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
From CJR (originally published in Sept but relinked in a piece about the press conference yesterday), a story from last Sept: "The Trouble with Frictionless Briefings" by Hunter Walker:
"For me and more conventional outlets alike, it’s crucial to recognize that we can only deliver on behalf of the public if we’re forcefully challenging the White House. The press corps learned to be more combative in the Trump era. We can’t lose that friction now."
Delivering for the American public? Certainly not the WHCA. This final graph is just ludicrous in so many ways. We went from the most corrupt, lying, nefarious administration to one that isn't perfect but is trying to clean up the mess and put our democracy back to together, yet the attitude is that journalists must treat them the same. American Journalism is, with few exceptions, broken.
I seem to remember the press being so forceful in challenging Clinton that they willing spread right wing slanders like Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate. All were made up by right wing operatives but sold to the public by the NY Times. Because the Times gave credibility to those lies the rest of the media followed its lead. As Gene Lyon’s book made clear the media really were “Fools for Scandal”.
HRC's comments about the vast right wing conspiracy were true then (to anyone who was actually paying attention) and even more so now. And yet the press still smugly mock her for it.
Saint Comey broke FBI and DOJ rules when he made that extremely damaging public announcement about reopening that investigation. He did that because he knew the pro-Trump agents in the NY FBI would leak it if he didn’t and he was trying to appease them.
The IG report about the FBI handling of the email “scandal” describes the pressure Comey and McCabe felt from those agents who were openly defying DOJ and FBI rules by leaking to people like Rudy G, James Kallstrom and others in the media. Funny how the media has refused to cover that story or the fact that the IG later opened a separate investigation of those leaks. Who knows if that investigation ever concluded.
Interestingly, Comey didn't really talk about why the investigation was reopened - that it had to do with whether Huma Amedin had used Hillary's laptop to communicate with her pedophile ex-husband. That was not something anyone cared about clarifying at the time, not even Comey.
The reason those investigations pooped out may have been due to the fact that Comey chose not to pursue them after he finally closed Hillary's case for good.
Jeff Gerth covered the McDougal (Whitewater) trial for the NYT. He seems to have been the only guy in the room who didn't hear the prosecutor tell the jury that "the Clintons were victims of Jim McDougal." The narrative was already set, and the Times continued to flog Whitewater as a Clinton scandal.
Practically no one in the media reported on all the investigations of Whitewater that cleared the Clintons of any wrongdoing. All were lead by Republicans — Jay Stephens for the Resolution Trust Corporation’s investigation of the collapse of Madison Guaranty S&L, Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske’s investigation, Independent Counsels Ken Starr and Robert Ray, the House Banking Committee investigation headed by Jim Leach and the Senate Whitewater panel chaired by Al d’Amato. Not one of those investigations found any support for the accusations that had constantly been made about the Clintons in the media. As a result most of the public never knew about most of them either.
You are overlooking one glaring fact — the media gave Bush far more positive coverage than they did Clinton, Obama or Biden. Even when his polls were tanking because of his disastrous decisions they did what they could to frame him in a positive light. I spent the recent ice storm revisiting the press coverage from the Clinton and Bush years by listening to one of Eric’s talks about his book “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled over for Bush” and another book talk by Gene Lyons about his book “Fools for Scandal.’ I then reread parts of Eric’s book.
As Eric documented during Clinton’s first months in office after his approval ratings has dropped the Washington Post published an article “The Failed Clinton Presidency: It has a certain ring to it”. The media coverage he received after that, throughout his presidency (even well before Monica) was not only brutal most of it was deeply dishonest.
In contrast in December 2005 Ted Koppel and Tom Brokaw were giving Bush cover by declaring on Meet the Press that Clinton would have also invaded Iraq after 9/11. By January 2006 when Bush’s ratings were at 41%, in part because of the illegal wiretapping scandal, Time declared that Bush had “found his voice”. At the same time the NY Times was painting a pessimistic picture of Democrats’ chances in the upcoming election despite polls showing they had a 15% lead over Republicans.
By March of that year Bush’s approval ratings had plunged further, into the 30s because of bungling the handling of Cheney’s shooting a man in the face, of homeland security port protections as well as more evidence of failures in reacting to Katrina and violence in Iraq. Bush’s ratings had even dropped a whopping 18 points in deep red Indiana! Despite all that the media did not declare Bush a failure as they had done Clinton, then Obama and now Biden. Instead they were spinning in Bush’s favor. ABC’s The Note was asserting that Bush’s new messaging would soon get his approval ratings over 50%.
That being said I was thrilled by your new bio of Jimmy Carter documenting the many things he accomplished as president. It contradicts the preferred media narrative that Carter was a failed president. Too bad it isn’t getting more attention from the media.
I will never forget that up until the Abu Ghraib horror, the press was behind Bush 110%. It made me so furious that I stopped following the news. And when the Abu Ghraib story broke, they covered his ass.
Oh yes the Presstitutes all beat the war drums and nobody beat them more than Fred Hiatt at The Washington Post & Judith Miller at the Times. The rest of the Press Corpse all fell into line except for Phil Donahue who got fired by MSNBC.
Those lies brainwashed my son into gladly going to Iraq to kill them Muslims for Jesus...and he was killed in battle thanks to those goddamed liars.
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.
Yesterday, someone on MSNBC actually raised the issue of ageism and that there is bias among the press corps. Funny, they didn't have that problem when it came to TFG. Before the election, a CBS reporter actually asked Biden if he'd had a cognitive test.
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.
Though, sadly, I don't think enough people value public health measures now (too many see them as an intrusion)—including members of the press who are just "tired" and "bored" of the pandemic and have declared it all but over: "we just need to get used to it cause we're all gonna get it."
I agree. I worked in vaccine advocacy well before Covid and people do not value public health. I admit I get very frustrated at people who refuse to be even slightly inconvenienced for the sake of the community. Who raised them?
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.
All because Trump is insecure & attention-hungry which makes him an easy source of content for media outlets that fulfills the financial bottom line of their corporate owners.
They spent four years getting endless content from Girth, Wind & Liar's Twitter account, and the more inflammatory tweets led to their followers, subcribers, viewers & audiences into doomscrolling & doomwatching over what Butternut Berlusconi would say or do.
However, the more normal & competent Joe Biden isn't as insecure & attention-hungry compared to Dingus Con so that requires much more work & energy to get stories.
So, they've decided to focus on sensationalizing the Biden administration's faults and downplaying its successes. Once again creating the cycle of doomscrolling & doomwatching this time among Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters that a Republican House & Senate takeover is at hand in the upcoming midterms.
"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.
I stopped watching the Sunday Shows and really started paying attention to the bias after reading Eric Alterman's Sound & Fury, which was originally published back in the early 90s (when many of today's reporters were still in footie pajamas). He's still around and just as whipsmart.
For me it was Gene Lyon’s “Fools for Scandal”. Up until I happened on that book in my local bookstore I had assumed there must have been something to the accusations since the NY Times told me there was. It did seem off though. I found it hard to believe that if two brilliant people like Bill and Hillary were that corrupt and greedy that they wouldn’t be rich — something everyone agreed they weren’t.
The book he later did with Joe Conason “The Hunting of the President” really should be read by anyone who wants to know when the Republicans turned against democracy and went completely off the rails. The facts documented in that book are deeply disturbing.
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.
Imo, we’re witnessing a huge backlash from whites who fear they are losing their entitlement to power to the demographic changes due to the increased demographic of the ‘other’ in the country. Appalling, not surprising. May the pendulum swing back to sanity, democracy, voters rights, OUR CONSTITUTIONAL foundations.
This. I follow Marcus Johnson, a political scientist, on Twitter. He tweeted today that (and I paraphrase badly) the old hierarchy is losing its grip and it's fighting desperately to maintain control. Their time is up and they know it and we will continue to move through the change to a more inclusive society. He said we will definitely have rough times but in the end he believes we'll be OK.
That's why I maintain Obama, Clinton, Biden and Harris are being savaged. They represent the ascent of people who aren't white and it's driving the media crazy too. They are really unhinged. Nate Cohn's Twitter feed about Biden's/Democrats' failures was deranged.
There have been a lot of good articles lately on all the millionaires and billionaires, the uber wealthy families, funding all these far right groups. When you look at the amounts that are paying out, which are probably close to or more than what they would pay in additional taxes under Democrats or in a true democracy, you realize it's not just about taxes. They are truly scared of the diversity, of losing their place at the top. Of having to be held accountable.
Reassuring. I read an article y’day? stating that all future dems running for office are/must be pro filibuster change, and or want it gone, so once Sinema and Manchin are out that stance is a litmus test on our side. I hope I’ve got that right
This is absolutely reflected in McConnell's statement that 'blacks vote as much as Americans'. Let's see if the press hounds him on this one, of course they won't.
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.
Margaret Sullivan tweeted the other day that now "everyone is a critic of the press" (paraphrase). The ratio was lit. And she is one of the few who has correctly diagnosed the media's ailments and called them out, so I'm not sure of what her point was.
Did that tweet surprise you? It did me. I don't know what the point was. When Republican supporters physically threaten reporters it doesn't seem to be a big deal and they continue to shower Ohio Diners In The Heartland with empathy and concern. When Democrats criticize them on Twitter it's "liberals don't understand journalism", or "they just expect me to be nice to Biden", or "liberals MEAAAAAAAN!". They don't care what we think at all.
For sure, it was very surprising, especially since Sullivan has criticized her colleagues for the same things. A few journalists got snitty about criticism "from people who've never stepped foot/spent a second in a newsroom," and one that there were organizations like Columbia Journalism Review to critique them. Frankly, CJR isn't the same now that Steve Coll is gone (which was my response).
It's shocking how tone deaf and willfully defiant so many of these journalists are. Arrogant and think skinned.
If you haven't seen Waco in the past few hours, there is a recent headline on the front page:
Biden plan to ship 500 million coronavirus test kits transforms Postal Service into relief agency
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.
Yes. They've been beating on about this for months now. I've actually seen takes that we should stop the sanctions and just give money to the Taliban—as if it would be used to alleviate the suffering of people. It's terrible what is happening there, for sure, but the idea that we should have spent trillions to stay there indefinitely to protect their friends is ludicrous. It's because so many of them were imbedded there over the 20 years. It's personal, which is another reason why they hate Joe.
The free pass to the GOP is one of the most infuriating imbalances in the coverage. Imagine if it turned out the Clintons overestimated the worth of their house by 200 million in years of financial filings. Would the press then say "hyperbole or fraud" giving them an out like the NYT did yesterday for Trump? I think not. Still reeling from that awful headline and story. "Oh, no harm, he was just exaggerating like Uncle Buck does when he goes fishing."
The sanctions aren't hurting the Taliban, they are creating the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. Sanctions don't work. It's my one big problem with Biden - his foreign policy is crap.
And we drop sanctions, humanitarian organizations go in, and then suddenly we have hostage situations. This is such a no-win situation. Better to stay out and keep people out.
Who would be held hostage? Sanctions certainly don't prevent hostage situations. The UN has been trying to help but Afghanistan's terrain precludes delivering food and other relief to remote areas. And when an entire population is starving, how do we justify doing nothing because there might be hostages taken? And what would be the point of taking hostages anyway?
Western aid workers who would rush in. it is absolutely heartbreaking, but who's to say the Taliban wouldn't take the food and medicines that the West delivered? It's an impossible situation.
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.
Competition is tight as well. People aren't reading print news, and newspapers are failing and shutting down. Online news coverage, and TV/cable, compete for audiences, and good reporting is often the price they pay for views and clicks. Interestingly, it was mentioned in CJR this morning "CARE International, a humanitarian agency, is out with a new report listing the ten “most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2021”; they included climate-driven food insecurity in Zambia, civil war and food scarcity in the Central African Republic, and poverty and violence in Guatemala. The crisis in Syria was relatively well-reported, but “still received less global online media coverage (230,000 articles) than the space flights of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (239,422 articles),” Laurie Lee, CEO of Care International UK, writes. The crisis in Zambia “was only covered in 512 reports,” compared with 91,979 for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez getting back together." This shows that depending on mainstream media to make us well informed is not a good idea.
The only positive is the rise of independent journalism and clever digital local news models. That said, the media serves what the public consumes. There is no widespread US demand for information about global humanitarian crises. It's damning for its commentary on who Americans are vs who we'd prefer to believe that we are.
My mind immediately went to the super market check out aisle years back when the racy ‘Enquirer’ was displayed at eye level..and enjoyed by many. Some consumers bought it, others didn’t. So, the chicken or the egg?
No, the public consumes what the media serves. And the media stuck it to Biden by wringing its hands over the fate of women in Afghanistan, but it apparently doesn't give a dead rat's ass about a major famine unfolding because neither does the government. It has nothing to do with "who Americans are" if the media ignores the story and the public doesn't know about it.
Oh please. Did we force their farmers to grow poppy instead of other crops? Do you really think if we hadn't invaded or had left 15 years ago the situation would be much different?
Don't cut yourself off from coverage you disagree with. It's important not to. Just try like hell not to give them your money, although more and more, it's becoming impossible to find good journalism that isn't behind a paywall.
I still subscribe because there is plenty of good journalism that is being done and needs to be supported—just not by the chattering class and the political journalists, who sadly dominate the headlines and airwaves.
I'm hoping that Bob Costa going to CBS will have an impact there. He mentioned one of the major things he's covering is the threat to Democracy, so here's hoping. The reporters who really took an in-depth look at the Trump admin and its last year, especially around the election stuff and Covid (for books), have become true believers vis a vis the absolute danger and threat of the GOP and TFG and have been very vocal. But the rest of them, meh. Handmaidens to the GOP destruction.
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!
WaPo did a big "poll" including opinions by pundits, and although the poll gave Biden a B-, not a word was mentioned about the two buried articles they published at the end of Trump's first year giving him a grade of "F." Sally Buzbee probably wouldn't allow it.
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
great perspective! and yes it’s telling Carter team and Clinton had exact same assessment—why no honeymoon?
From CJR (originally published in Sept but relinked in a piece about the press conference yesterday), a story from last Sept: "The Trouble with Frictionless Briefings" by Hunter Walker:
"For me and more conventional outlets alike, it’s crucial to recognize that we can only deliver on behalf of the public if we’re forcefully challenging the White House. The press corps learned to be more combative in the Trump era. We can’t lose that friction now."
Delivering for the American public? Certainly not the WHCA. This final graph is just ludicrous in so many ways. We went from the most corrupt, lying, nefarious administration to one that isn't perfect but is trying to clean up the mess and put our democracy back to together, yet the attitude is that journalists must treat them the same. American Journalism is, with few exceptions, broken.
I seem to remember the press being so forceful in challenging Clinton that they willing spread right wing slanders like Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate. All were made up by right wing operatives but sold to the public by the NY Times. Because the Times gave credibility to those lies the rest of the media followed its lead. As Gene Lyon’s book made clear the media really were “Fools for Scandal”.
HRC's comments about the vast right wing conspiracy were true then (to anyone who was actually paying attention) and even more so now. And yet the press still smugly mock her for it.
Great point!
And Benghazi. And look how the press weaponized James Comey's reopening of the investigation of her goddamn emails 6 days before the election.
Saint Comey broke FBI and DOJ rules when he made that extremely damaging public announcement about reopening that investigation. He did that because he knew the pro-Trump agents in the NY FBI would leak it if he didn’t and he was trying to appease them.
The IG report about the FBI handling of the email “scandal” describes the pressure Comey and McCabe felt from those agents who were openly defying DOJ and FBI rules by leaking to people like Rudy G, James Kallstrom and others in the media. Funny how the media has refused to cover that story or the fact that the IG later opened a separate investigation of those leaks. Who knows if that investigation ever concluded.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/rudy-giuliani-fbi/
Interestingly, Comey didn't really talk about why the investigation was reopened - that it had to do with whether Huma Amedin had used Hillary's laptop to communicate with her pedophile ex-husband. That was not something anyone cared about clarifying at the time, not even Comey.
The reason those investigations pooped out may have been due to the fact that Comey chose not to pursue them after he finally closed Hillary's case for good.
Jeff Gerth covered the McDougal (Whitewater) trial for the NYT. He seems to have been the only guy in the room who didn't hear the prosecutor tell the jury that "the Clintons were victims of Jim McDougal." The narrative was already set, and the Times continued to flog Whitewater as a Clinton scandal.
Practically no one in the media reported on all the investigations of Whitewater that cleared the Clintons of any wrongdoing. All were lead by Republicans — Jay Stephens for the Resolution Trust Corporation’s investigation of the collapse of Madison Guaranty S&L, Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske’s investigation, Independent Counsels Ken Starr and Robert Ray, the House Banking Committee investigation headed by Jim Leach and the Senate Whitewater panel chaired by Al d’Amato. Not one of those investigations found any support for the accusations that had constantly been made about the Clintons in the media. As a result most of the public never knew about most of them either.
https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-post/washington-post-continued-suggest-whitewater-wrongdoing-ignored-numerous-official
Peter Baker cut his teeth at the Times covering Whitewater, and before that covering the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment for Wapo.
You are overlooking one glaring fact — the media gave Bush far more positive coverage than they did Clinton, Obama or Biden. Even when his polls were tanking because of his disastrous decisions they did what they could to frame him in a positive light. I spent the recent ice storm revisiting the press coverage from the Clinton and Bush years by listening to one of Eric’s talks about his book “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled over for Bush” and another book talk by Gene Lyons about his book “Fools for Scandal.’ I then reread parts of Eric’s book.
As Eric documented during Clinton’s first months in office after his approval ratings has dropped the Washington Post published an article “The Failed Clinton Presidency: It has a certain ring to it”. The media coverage he received after that, throughout his presidency (even well before Monica) was not only brutal most of it was deeply dishonest.
In contrast in December 2005 Ted Koppel and Tom Brokaw were giving Bush cover by declaring on Meet the Press that Clinton would have also invaded Iraq after 9/11. By January 2006 when Bush’s ratings were at 41%, in part because of the illegal wiretapping scandal, Time declared that Bush had “found his voice”. At the same time the NY Times was painting a pessimistic picture of Democrats’ chances in the upcoming election despite polls showing they had a 15% lead over Republicans.
By March of that year Bush’s approval ratings had plunged further, into the 30s because of bungling the handling of Cheney’s shooting a man in the face, of homeland security port protections as well as more evidence of failures in reacting to Katrina and violence in Iraq. Bush’s ratings had even dropped a whopping 18 points in deep red Indiana! Despite all that the media did not declare Bush a failure as they had done Clinton, then Obama and now Biden. Instead they were spinning in Bush’s favor. ABC’s The Note was asserting that Bush’s new messaging would soon get his approval ratings over 50%.
That being said I was thrilled by your new bio of Jimmy Carter documenting the many things he accomplished as president. It contradicts the preferred media narrative that Carter was a failed president. Too bad it isn’t getting more attention from the media.
I will never forget that up until the Abu Ghraib horror, the press was behind Bush 110%. It made me so furious that I stopped following the news. And when the Abu Ghraib story broke, they covered his ass.
Oh yes the Presstitutes all beat the war drums and nobody beat them more than Fred Hiatt at The Washington Post & Judith Miller at the Times. The rest of the Press Corpse all fell into line except for Phil Donahue who got fired by MSNBC.
Those lies brainwashed my son into gladly going to Iraq to kill them Muslims for Jesus...and he was killed in battle thanks to those goddamed liars.
Now you've gone and done it! I gotta subscribe!
Me too! Just signed on. Thx for being among us Jonathan.
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.
Obama’d AND Hillaried… :/
I don't know who asked him the question about his mental fitness, but I loved how Biden ignored it. It was beautiful.
Yesterday, someone on MSNBC actually raised the issue of ageism and that there is bias among the press corps. Funny, they didn't have that problem when it came to TFG. Before the election, a CBS reporter actually asked Biden if he'd had a cognitive test.
It was Chai Komanduri on The Beat With Ari Melber on Tuesday. He was on with Eugene Robinson. I, & others, thanked him on Twitter.
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.
correct—press hyped GOP fear mongering re: Ebola, and then never credited WH for brilliant way crisis was contained
True. It was both.
Though, sadly, I don't think enough people value public health measures now (too many see them as an intrusion)—including members of the press who are just "tired" and "bored" of the pandemic and have declared it all but over: "we just need to get used to it cause we're all gonna get it."
I agree. I worked in vaccine advocacy well before Covid and people do not value public health. I admit I get very frustrated at people who refuse to be even slightly inconvenienced for the sake of the community. Who raised them?
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.
NPR--Nothing but Propaganda for Republicans.
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.
they do miss him!
Eric - Is there a way I can send you an idea (jpegs)… thanks. ppaolella123@gmail.com
TV celebrities indeed. Journalists, meh.
All because Trump is insecure & attention-hungry which makes him an easy source of content for media outlets that fulfills the financial bottom line of their corporate owners.
They spent four years getting endless content from Girth, Wind & Liar's Twitter account, and the more inflammatory tweets led to their followers, subcribers, viewers & audiences into doomscrolling & doomwatching over what Butternut Berlusconi would say or do.
However, the more normal & competent Joe Biden isn't as insecure & attention-hungry compared to Dingus Con so that requires much more work & energy to get stories.
So, they've decided to focus on sensationalizing the Biden administration's faults and downplaying its successes. Once again creating the cycle of doomscrolling & doomwatching this time among Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters that a Republican House & Senate takeover is at hand in the upcoming midterms.
Anyone who comes up with Girth, Wind & Liar gets a click on the heart from me!
That’s from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Colbert doesn’t like to mention the former guy’s name so he gets nickname suggestions from his viewers on Twitter.
My Donald Trump doll is still on my desk, albeit in a coffin. I'm waiting to bury him in my daughter's backyard should nature cooperate.
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."
But the lazy fascist fluffing hacks don't even fit the description of "savvy".
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.
I stopped watching the Sunday Shows and really started paying attention to the bias after reading Eric Alterman's Sound & Fury, which was originally published back in the early 90s (when many of today's reporters were still in footie pajamas). He's still around and just as whipsmart.
For me it was Gene Lyon’s “Fools for Scandal”. Up until I happened on that book in my local bookstore I had assumed there must have been something to the accusations since the NY Times told me there was. It did seem off though. I found it hard to believe that if two brilliant people like Bill and Hillary were that corrupt and greedy that they wouldn’t be rich — something everyone agreed they weren’t.
The book he later did with Joe Conason “The Hunting of the President” really should be read by anyone who wants to know when the Republicans turned against democracy and went completely off the rails. The facts documented in that book are deeply disturbing.
Agreed. And at times I think Dan Froomkin should change his name to Eric just so all of the best press critics can have that in common, too!
Yeah, because all you youngsters don't know who Dan Froomkin is LOL I subscribed to his blog just because of his name and excellent reputation.
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.
oh yes, narrative was already baked in no matter what happened at presser
Pretty much the same on MSNBC.
I did see Rachel Maddow on Nicolle Wallaces show make a very reasoned defense of Biden’s accomplishments.
I was stuck with CNN for the day. Man was that eye opening.
She did, after she agreed with Yamiche Alcindor that it was too long.
I thought that was an odd comment…
**tell**
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.
Imo, we’re witnessing a huge backlash from whites who fear they are losing their entitlement to power to the demographic changes due to the increased demographic of the ‘other’ in the country. Appalling, not surprising. May the pendulum swing back to sanity, democracy, voters rights, OUR CONSTITUTIONAL foundations.
This. I follow Marcus Johnson, a political scientist, on Twitter. He tweeted today that (and I paraphrase badly) the old hierarchy is losing its grip and it's fighting desperately to maintain control. Their time is up and they know it and we will continue to move through the change to a more inclusive society. He said we will definitely have rough times but in the end he believes we'll be OK.
That's why I maintain Obama, Clinton, Biden and Harris are being savaged. They represent the ascent of people who aren't white and it's driving the media crazy too. They are really unhinged. Nate Cohn's Twitter feed about Biden's/Democrats' failures was deranged.
It's not just about the taxes.
There have been a lot of good articles lately on all the millionaires and billionaires, the uber wealthy families, funding all these far right groups. When you look at the amounts that are paying out, which are probably close to or more than what they would pay in additional taxes under Democrats or in a true democracy, you realize it's not just about taxes. They are truly scared of the diversity, of losing their place at the top. Of having to be held accountable.
I agree.
Reassuring. I read an article y’day? stating that all future dems running for office are/must be pro filibuster change, and or want it gone, so once Sinema and Manchin are out that stance is a litmus test on our side. I hope I’ve got that right
I think I read that also or saw a similar sentiment on Twitter. I don't have a problem with that.
This is absolutely reflected in McConnell's statement that 'blacks vote as much as Americans'. Let's see if the press hounds him on this one, of course they won't.
Whoa. You're forgetting Biden's famous gaffe from 2019 debate where he referred to "poor kids and white kids."
YES! Saying the quiet part out loud! Bigoted jerk.
I have felt this way for a while.
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.
press is very thin-skinned when it comes to Dems
They’ve earned it.
Margaret Sullivan tweeted the other day that now "everyone is a critic of the press" (paraphrase). The ratio was lit. And she is one of the few who has correctly diagnosed the media's ailments and called them out, so I'm not sure of what her point was.
I just spent more than a half hour reading through responses (more than 700). She got pummeled for that terrible tweet, and rightly so.
Did that tweet surprise you? It did me. I don't know what the point was. When Republican supporters physically threaten reporters it doesn't seem to be a big deal and they continue to shower Ohio Diners In The Heartland with empathy and concern. When Democrats criticize them on Twitter it's "liberals don't understand journalism", or "they just expect me to be nice to Biden", or "liberals MEAAAAAAAN!". They don't care what we think at all.
For sure, it was very surprising, especially since Sullivan has criticized her colleagues for the same things. A few journalists got snitty about criticism "from people who've never stepped foot/spent a second in a newsroom," and one that there were organizations like Columbia Journalism Review to critique them. Frankly, CJR isn't the same now that Steve Coll is gone (which was my response).
It's shocking how tone deaf and willfully defiant so many of these journalists are. Arrogant and think skinned.
If you haven't seen Waco in the past few hours, there is a recent headline on the front page:
Biden plan to ship 500 million coronavirus test kits transforms Postal Service into relief agency
The response has been apoplectic.
But, hey, media is doing a bang up job!
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.
See also: 1994.
And 2000, 2004, 2016…….
🏆
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.
Yes. They've been beating on about this for months now. I've actually seen takes that we should stop the sanctions and just give money to the Taliban—as if it would be used to alleviate the suffering of people. It's terrible what is happening there, for sure, but the idea that we should have spent trillions to stay there indefinitely to protect their friends is ludicrous. It's because so many of them were imbedded there over the 20 years. It's personal, which is another reason why they hate Joe.
The free pass to the GOP is one of the most infuriating imbalances in the coverage. Imagine if it turned out the Clintons overestimated the worth of their house by 200 million in years of financial filings. Would the press then say "hyperbole or fraud" giving them an out like the NYT did yesterday for Trump? I think not. Still reeling from that awful headline and story. "Oh, no harm, he was just exaggerating like Uncle Buck does when he goes fishing."
The sanctions aren't hurting the Taliban, they are creating the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. Sanctions don't work. It's my one big problem with Biden - his foreign policy is crap.
And we drop sanctions, humanitarian organizations go in, and then suddenly we have hostage situations. This is such a no-win situation. Better to stay out and keep people out.
Who would be held hostage? Sanctions certainly don't prevent hostage situations. The UN has been trying to help but Afghanistan's terrain precludes delivering food and other relief to remote areas. And when an entire population is starving, how do we justify doing nothing because there might be hostages taken? And what would be the point of taking hostages anyway?
Western aid workers who would rush in. it is absolutely heartbreaking, but who's to say the Taliban wouldn't take the food and medicines that the West delivered? It's an impossible situation.
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.
Wow, you hit the nail on the head 1 - 4 but my fave is #2 BIG TIME. Thank you for putting into words what I’ve been thinking since I joined PressRun.
And so succinctly.
Competition is tight as well. People aren't reading print news, and newspapers are failing and shutting down. Online news coverage, and TV/cable, compete for audiences, and good reporting is often the price they pay for views and clicks. Interestingly, it was mentioned in CJR this morning "CARE International, a humanitarian agency, is out with a new report listing the ten “most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2021”; they included climate-driven food insecurity in Zambia, civil war and food scarcity in the Central African Republic, and poverty and violence in Guatemala. The crisis in Syria was relatively well-reported, but “still received less global online media coverage (230,000 articles) than the space flights of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (239,422 articles),” Laurie Lee, CEO of Care International UK, writes. The crisis in Zambia “was only covered in 512 reports,” compared with 91,979 for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez getting back together." This shows that depending on mainstream media to make us well informed is not a good idea.
The only positive is the rise of independent journalism and clever digital local news models. That said, the media serves what the public consumes. There is no widespread US demand for information about global humanitarian crises. It's damning for its commentary on who Americans are vs who we'd prefer to believe that we are.
My mind immediately went to the super market check out aisle years back when the racy ‘Enquirer’ was displayed at eye level..and enjoyed by many. Some consumers bought it, others didn’t. So, the chicken or the egg?
No, the public consumes what the media serves. And the media stuck it to Biden by wringing its hands over the fate of women in Afghanistan, but it apparently doesn't give a dead rat's ass about a major famine unfolding because neither does the government. It has nothing to do with "who Americans are" if the media ignores the story and the public doesn't know about it.
We cannot solve every problem in the world.
Oh, but we can certainly solve the ones we have caused.
Oh please. Did we force their farmers to grow poppy instead of other crops? Do you really think if we hadn't invaded or had left 15 years ago the situation would be much different?
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!
Don't cut yourself off from coverage you disagree with. It's important not to. Just try like hell not to give them your money, although more and more, it's becoming impossible to find good journalism that isn't behind a paywall.
I still subscribe because there is plenty of good journalism that is being done and needs to be supported—just not by the chattering class and the political journalists, who sadly dominate the headlines and airwaves.
I'm hoping that Bob Costa going to CBS will have an impact there. He mentioned one of the major things he's covering is the threat to Democracy, so here's hoping. The reporters who really took an in-depth look at the Trump admin and its last year, especially around the election stuff and Covid (for books), have become true believers vis a vis the absolute danger and threat of the GOP and TFG and have been very vocal. But the rest of them, meh. Handmaidens to the GOP destruction.
Hugo (forget his last name!) at the Guardian has been great breaking stories about 1/6. But that outlet is just as bad about the Biden bashing.
They're British, they bash whoever our president is. That comes from them blaming us for persuading them to participate in the Iraq war.
No. Too biased. I hate being told what to think, and they're heavy-handed with the opinion-as-reporting. I'm a very grouchy old woman.