It's nothing short of astounding that the party that has done its best to prolong a pandemic can reap a political benefit from such a nihilistic position. Of course that party couldn't reap anything but scorn without unprofessional and unethical media coverage. The lack of context on Covid coverage is shameful. Covid is never mentioned in the endless stories on inflation, nor is the GOP's concerted effort to fight every form of virus mitigation. Apparently there is more fun and profit in the horse race and "Dems in disarray."
Another soft term I’ve noticed lately is calling R’s ‘useless’ (for not showing up for Senate votes, etc.). That’s their own, flat out laser-focused strategy to undermine… ‘Useless’ lets them off the hook (file it away with ‘meddling’, I guess) :/
There's something really wrong with your country's brand of "journalism" when they don't want to reward the current president for actually doing his job despite the bumps & cracks on the road when it comes to fixing America's many problems.
However, they're okay with rewarding an unhinged fascist idiot with non-stop coverage of his racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, paranoid rants & violent threats just because Jackass O' Lantern brings all the clicks, views & profits despite their ignorance of the uncomfortable truth that they're implicitly hastening the destruction of American democracy for the Orange Ballsack & his GOP minions' benefit.
Like COVID, the same holds for the Ukraine crisis. IF Putin backs down, Biden, similarly, will probably get zero credit for defusing the crisis and averting a war.
When does Biden get credit? Never, that's when. After all, 2024 might be less of a horse race if Biden's accomplishments are lauded and played on the front page every day. Did we ever see such coverage of Trump's multiple failures? Hell, the corporate media is still holding back on the multiple crimes of the Tangerine Tyrant, especially now when after being emboldened by Trump, Putin's push into Ukraine seems in deep trouble because Biden has been able to stare him down while simultaneously uniting the NATO allies.
Right, you would think the media would be hailing a president with balls. Wasn't that their issue with Carter, that there was too much malaise? Now we've got Biden, doing exactly what Republicans would want their dream Republican president to do and the press makes him out to be inept. So disgraceful is the MSM, especially The NY Times. (BTW, I liked Carter.)
The media not only exaggerated the malaise story they have lied about its effect for decades. Carter never even used that word but he accurately described the national mood at that time. The gasoline shortage caused by OPEC was much worse that today’s increase in prices. In fact that speech took balls — Carter spoke the truth. But even more important is the fact that:
“A majority of Americans were riveted by the speech and, surprisingly (given its poor historical reputation), reacted in positive agreement with their president. The speech was “successful,” in that it boosted Carter’s poll numbers by 11 points (a rarity for the generally unpopular president) and elicited letters and phone calls to the White House from regular citizens who pledged to cut down on their consumption of gas. “
How twisted is our mainstream media that they have deliberately buried the fact that that speech bumped Carter’s poll numbers by a whopping 11 points? It shows not only how dishonest they are willing to be in service of their preferred narrative, but also their deep disdain for the true opinions of Americans.
Carter putting his reputation on the line to get the Camp David peace accord agreement was also very courageous as were his tough energy policies. He knew he was going against the most powerful industry in the world with those.
I feel bad for Carter, he's ranked below average by historians even though basically every crisis in his presidency was something he had little to no control over
Two new biographies that came out last year — “His Very Best” by Jonathan Alter and “The Outlier” by Kai Bird are correcting the record. I am reading Alter’s book and the list of Carter’s accomplishments is very impressive! I knew about a lot of them — his very impactful energy policies for example — but did not realize how much he had done to improve transparency and accountability in the administrative structures of our government. Hopefully these books will help give Carter the credit he richly deserves but I have my doubts. Neither book got the kind of attention that has been given to other recent presidential bios.
I hope Carter gets a Chernow biography because Chernow's Grant biography boosted how historians ranked Grant and Hamilton was so popular it's impossible for a Chernow biography to go as unnoticed as last year's Carter biographies.
After the huge news that Trump’s long time accounting firm has declared that years of financial statements they prepared for him are not reliable the WaPo did not put it at the top of its page but gave it a tiny headline further down. By the afternoon they had a much bigger headline but had moved it to the bottom of the page under “More Top Stories”. The cable shows treated it as the blockbuster story it is (not sure about network news) with the exception of Fox of course.
Which makes me wonder why the WaPo didn’t feature it more prominently. The article did cover the story but it was easy to miss. And it looks like it is going to be a one day hot topic. Imagine the constant coverage if Hillary’s accounting firm had made a declaration like that! It would go one endlessly.
They have been really good on things like the insurrection and Trump’s corruption. Joe recently had an epic rant about the evils of voter suppression. Unfortunately they have hyped inflation but they have acknowledged the other good economic news.
The thing I like abt them is suddenly they will come off as (genuinely) VERY CONCERNED parents who want something better for their kids' futures... kinda normal!
Also one of Joe’s sons is a Type I diabetic so he has taken the threat of covid very, very seriously and has also highlighted the indefensive rise in the cost of insulin.
I remember quite well when Trump said he saw nothing wrong with Russia's annexation of Crimea and that he had no problem with them taking Ukraine. I noticed that the conservative Philip Bump of the Post recently called the very idea of peace talks "appeasement." There are journalists out there pushing for war because war stories are the meat and potatoes they crave.
Media coverage of Covid has been appalling since the beginning. They do not talk about GOP intransigence except as a Biden failure, call Dems’ precautions as willfully “embracing fear”—as more than a thousand Americans continue to die each day—and demand a return to normalcy while chiding Dem leaders for doing so. School closings happened because of Covid outbreaks. Hard to keep classrooms open when large numbers of staff and students are out sick. Journalists have also failed at explaining why the CDC and other officials “change the rules”—because science isn’t static and we are constantly learning more about the virus and it’s impact. Because they are bored and tired, many in the media have pronounced the pandemic “over” with Omicron or have admonished us to accept thousands of deaths with a shrug because they want their full social lives back and charge dems with psychologically harming their children; after all kids don’t get sick or die from Covid (which of course is not true).
And if/when another variant comes around you can be sure it will all be Biden’s and the Dems’ fault for not doing something—last time it was testing; who knows what they will blame them for, we just know they will.
I truly despise them. They just do not care about the harm they do.
Here is an example of the horrible media coverage of how schools have handled the pandemic. Just this morning Mike Barnicle went on a rampage about all those millions of kids who have been out of school and just doing remote learning for two whole years. I am not aware of any school district that has been full remote this entire time but I seriously doubt millions of kids have been. My school district here in the southeast has been very strict and cautious (they haven’t lifted the mask mandate yet) but we were fully remote for just one semester. Then they offered the choice of staying remote or in person. The majority of parents who chose to keep their kids home were low income Hispanic and African American. At that time the media was obsessing about how those parents were strongly opposed to remote schooling and how much the schools were hurting their kids.
Listening to many in the media, we're still in a state of lockdown like spring 2020. Which of course isn't true at all! Schools in my neck of the woods have been open and stayed open with a few temporary exceptions and in PA, mask mandates are left to individual districts to decide. I stopped watching/listen to Morning Joe because of their Covid whinging last spring.
I just read that San Francisco has stayed mostly remote which is causing a lot of pushback from citizens but that is not what most of the country has done.
"Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is Empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world." - Bill Bullard
I have no problem with well-informed, fact-based, thoughtful opinions like the ones posted here but you are right about so many of them just being irrational rants based on personal bias.
Perhaps the administration is smart not to declare a return to some form of normalcy as the virus and its penchant for mutation hangs like a cloud. But come on media. What's wrong with reporting good news? Has that gene been selected out? Great points Eric.
“The Ukraine crisis has featured an unlikely test of personalities: Putin, the ex-spy, has brazenly used the threat of military power, advertising his desire to control Ukraine and rewrite Europe’s security rules, even as he denied any intention to invade. But he has been met by a stalwart Biden, the genial career politician who stumbles over his sentences — but not, in this case, with his actions…
I was always struck by how much Obama hesitated when speaking — lots of “ups” and “has” although not when given prepared speeches. I think it was because he was so cautious about not saying anything the media or Republicans could twist but it was very pronounced yet the media mostly ignored it. Their frame for him is an eloquent speaker (which he is) so they ignored the fact that he wasn’t when speaking off the cuff.
Maga folks appear to be steadfast on three things, I’ve noticed: Joe is 100% senile, NPelosi is a nefarious evildoer(?)- and Fauci is the 😈 incarnate. Baked in.
They just hate communists, not anti-democracy authoritarians. Remember how the Nixon helped the coup against Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile because he was a socialist. We then strongly supported the brutal right wing military dictator August Pinochet. Republicans oppose communism because their ideology is all about capitalism not democracy.
I believe in capitalism, but there must be guardrails in place. From Reagan on, the GOP systematically removed protections (deregulation!) in the name of "consumer freedom and choice," resulting in corporate consolidation and massive wealth inequality that have damaged American lives and society. For the GOP and their paymasters, it's all about unfettered capitalism and power. They are driven by greed—they want all the marbles, leaving the rest of us with little to nothing.
Not sure most ever really liked democracy. As I posted below their priority is capitalism and that comes above democracy. Just look at the Republican response to the 1929 banking crash and Great Depression.
When will Biden ever get credit for something? Never! The MSM is not interested in covering a Democratic president in a positive light. They've been bought off by dark money likely or they simply don't want to be labeled "liberal" by the Right. Regardless of the reason, if Biden today found the cure for cancer himself, the press would be haranguing him for destroying a billion dollar cancer industry.
Because of the tone and tenor of the beltway press the far right is gloating. Show me a week without an orange blob on the front page. If he's allowed anywhere near any US election ever again history will lay it at the feet of the greed motivated press.
There's a piece on Alternet today about how Americans cannot trust the press to protect democracy. The fascinating thing to me is that we can't even trust the press to protect itself. They do not grasp that the First Amendment cannot survive republican rule. That doesn't mean they need to be advocates. It does mean they should actually practice journalism. And, sadly, The New York Times is run by people who believe they should be, as they are, the standard-setter in American journalism, but have no more conscience or self-awareness than their favorite Hitler wannabe in Mar-A-Lago.
Dr. Fauci predicted that the Omicron surge would end by the middle of February. I don't know how Biden deserves "credit" for how the virus behaves, but it's very annoying when the press gaslights the public by blaming the surge on Biden. The number of vaccinations, with the exception of boosters, has stagnated. There is not much more Biden can do about that. NYC employees who refused to be vaccinated are being fired this week.
The pandemic will not end this year because the world does not have enough vaccinated people in it. And this virus has been so unpredictable that it doesn't seem prudent to believe it is evolving into a less harmful form. The problem with the press is that it has been actively participating in the Republican effort to politicize covid and thereby creating a whole new genre of "journalism" - The Pandemic and the Midterms, Pt. 1.
It's nothing short of astounding that the party that has done its best to prolong a pandemic can reap a political benefit from such a nihilistic position. Of course that party couldn't reap anything but scorn without unprofessional and unethical media coverage. The lack of context on Covid coverage is shameful. Covid is never mentioned in the endless stories on inflation, nor is the GOP's concerted effort to fight every form of virus mitigation. Apparently there is more fun and profit in the horse race and "Dems in disarray."
No good deed goes unpunished for Dems
The willingness to look the other way while teachers, hc workers and school kids have basically been in harm’s way - is the piece I don’t get… truly.
Another soft term I’ve noticed lately is calling R’s ‘useless’ (for not showing up for Senate votes, etc.). That’s their own, flat out laser-focused strategy to undermine… ‘Useless’ lets them off the hook (file it away with ‘meddling’, I guess) :/
There's something really wrong with your country's brand of "journalism" when they don't want to reward the current president for actually doing his job despite the bumps & cracks on the road when it comes to fixing America's many problems.
However, they're okay with rewarding an unhinged fascist idiot with non-stop coverage of his racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, paranoid rants & violent threats just because Jackass O' Lantern brings all the clicks, views & profits despite their ignorance of the uncomfortable truth that they're implicitly hastening the destruction of American democracy for the Orange Ballsack & his GOP minions' benefit.
exactly
Wow, well said!
I agree with you 💯
Like COVID, the same holds for the Ukraine crisis. IF Putin backs down, Biden, similarly, will probably get zero credit for defusing the crisis and averting a war.
100%.
The media gives him credit for nothing then acts like the public sharing their opinion is just a coincidence.
You know they only talk to repugs for their opinion. In the last 5 years have we heard from a dem citizen having an opinion.
When does Biden get credit? Never, that's when. After all, 2024 might be less of a horse race if Biden's accomplishments are lauded and played on the front page every day. Did we ever see such coverage of Trump's multiple failures? Hell, the corporate media is still holding back on the multiple crimes of the Tangerine Tyrant, especially now when after being emboldened by Trump, Putin's push into Ukraine seems in deep trouble because Biden has been able to stare him down while simultaneously uniting the NATO allies.
Right, you would think the media would be hailing a president with balls. Wasn't that their issue with Carter, that there was too much malaise? Now we've got Biden, doing exactly what Republicans would want their dream Republican president to do and the press makes him out to be inept. So disgraceful is the MSM, especially The NY Times. (BTW, I liked Carter.)
The media not only exaggerated the malaise story they have lied about its effect for decades. Carter never even used that word but he accurately described the national mood at that time. The gasoline shortage caused by OPEC was much worse that today’s increase in prices. In fact that speech took balls — Carter spoke the truth. But even more important is the fact that:
“A majority of Americans were riveted by the speech and, surprisingly (given its poor historical reputation), reacted in positive agreement with their president. The speech was “successful,” in that it boosted Carter’s poll numbers by 11 points (a rarity for the generally unpopular president) and elicited letters and phone calls to the White House from regular citizens who pledged to cut down on their consumption of gas. “
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/jimmy-carter-energy-crisis-malaise-speech-biden-supply-chain.html
How twisted is our mainstream media that they have deliberately buried the fact that that speech bumped Carter’s poll numbers by a whopping 11 points? It shows not only how dishonest they are willing to be in service of their preferred narrative, but also their deep disdain for the true opinions of Americans.
Carter putting his reputation on the line to get the Camp David peace accord agreement was also very courageous as were his tough energy policies. He knew he was going against the most powerful industry in the world with those.
Appreciate the links you always provide- thanks!
Honestly I usually double check because down deep I feel I must be imagining just how terrible the media is. I keep thinking I must be delusional.
Sadly, you're not. The press has become that terrible and it doesn't look to change, at least for the near future.
I feel bad for Carter, he's ranked below average by historians even though basically every crisis in his presidency was something he had little to no control over
Two new biographies that came out last year — “His Very Best” by Jonathan Alter and “The Outlier” by Kai Bird are correcting the record. I am reading Alter’s book and the list of Carter’s accomplishments is very impressive! I knew about a lot of them — his very impactful energy policies for example — but did not realize how much he had done to improve transparency and accountability in the administrative structures of our government. Hopefully these books will help give Carter the credit he richly deserves but I have my doubts. Neither book got the kind of attention that has been given to other recent presidential bios.
I hope Carter gets a Chernow biography because Chernow's Grant biography boosted how historians ranked Grant and Hamilton was so popular it's impossible for a Chernow biography to go as unnoticed as last year's Carter biographies.
My guess is that the right fears that once Biden is finished crushing Vlad's privates, he will turn his attention to crushing theirs.
That's 'supposedly' what they want... yeah right.
After the huge news that Trump’s long time accounting firm has declared that years of financial statements they prepared for him are not reliable the WaPo did not put it at the top of its page but gave it a tiny headline further down. By the afternoon they had a much bigger headline but had moved it to the bottom of the page under “More Top Stories”. The cable shows treated it as the blockbuster story it is (not sure about network news) with the exception of Fox of course.
NPR & my local PBS station reported & analyzed it more than once yesterday.
Which makes me wonder why the WaPo didn’t feature it more prominently. The article did cover the story but it was easy to miss. And it looks like it is going to be a one day hot topic. Imagine the constant coverage if Hillary’s accounting firm had made a declaration like that! It would go one endlessly.
Morning Joe was filled w/kudos for Biden and his successes thus far in Ukraine. Hallelujah! Exception proving the rule ….
We’ll take it!
They have been really good on things like the insurrection and Trump’s corruption. Joe recently had an epic rant about the evils of voter suppression. Unfortunately they have hyped inflation but they have acknowledged the other good economic news.
Good for them!
The thing I like abt them is suddenly they will come off as (genuinely) VERY CONCERNED parents who want something better for their kids' futures... kinda normal!
Also one of Joe’s sons is a Type I diabetic so he has taken the threat of covid very, very seriously and has also highlighted the indefensive rise in the cost of insulin.
The NATO allies that Trump went out of his way to denigrate and render impotent.
Were TFG still in office Ukraine would be a Russian vassal state by now. Even if Zelinski had paid the extortion fee to Trump.
I remember quite well when Trump said he saw nothing wrong with Russia's annexation of Crimea and that he had no problem with them taking Ukraine. I noticed that the conservative Philip Bump of the Post recently called the very idea of peace talks "appeasement." There are journalists out there pushing for war because war stories are the meat and potatoes they crave.
And give them an opportunity to talk about how great Trump did with Russia.
I think most are smarter than that. They simply avoid talking about Trump and Putin at the same time.
Media coverage of Covid has been appalling since the beginning. They do not talk about GOP intransigence except as a Biden failure, call Dems’ precautions as willfully “embracing fear”—as more than a thousand Americans continue to die each day—and demand a return to normalcy while chiding Dem leaders for doing so. School closings happened because of Covid outbreaks. Hard to keep classrooms open when large numbers of staff and students are out sick. Journalists have also failed at explaining why the CDC and other officials “change the rules”—because science isn’t static and we are constantly learning more about the virus and it’s impact. Because they are bored and tired, many in the media have pronounced the pandemic “over” with Omicron or have admonished us to accept thousands of deaths with a shrug because they want their full social lives back and charge dems with psychologically harming their children; after all kids don’t get sick or die from Covid (which of course is not true).
And if/when another variant comes around you can be sure it will all be Biden’s and the Dems’ fault for not doing something—last time it was testing; who knows what they will blame them for, we just know they will.
I truly despise them. They just do not care about the harm they do.
someone should write entire book abt US Covid coverage
Here is an example of the horrible media coverage of how schools have handled the pandemic. Just this morning Mike Barnicle went on a rampage about all those millions of kids who have been out of school and just doing remote learning for two whole years. I am not aware of any school district that has been full remote this entire time but I seriously doubt millions of kids have been. My school district here in the southeast has been very strict and cautious (they haven’t lifted the mask mandate yet) but we were fully remote for just one semester. Then they offered the choice of staying remote or in person. The majority of parents who chose to keep their kids home were low income Hispanic and African American. At that time the media was obsessing about how those parents were strongly opposed to remote schooling and how much the schools were hurting their kids.
Listening to many in the media, we're still in a state of lockdown like spring 2020. Which of course isn't true at all! Schools in my neck of the woods have been open and stayed open with a few temporary exceptions and in PA, mask mandates are left to individual districts to decide. I stopped watching/listen to Morning Joe because of their Covid whinging last spring.
I just read that San Francisco has stayed mostly remote which is causing a lot of pushback from citizens but that is not what most of the country has done.
"Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is Empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world." - Bill Bullard
Posting that bc 'rants' usually get real sloppy on actual facts and devolve into opinion (based on faulty perceptions) - fast.
I have no problem with well-informed, fact-based, thoughtful opinions like the ones posted here but you are right about so many of them just being irrational rants based on personal bias.
He should have to bring receipts for those claims…
Perhaps the administration is smart not to declare a return to some form of normalcy as the virus and its penchant for mutation hangs like a cloud. But come on media. What's wrong with reporting good news? Has that gene been selected out? Great points Eric.
Nice little shiv there, Washington Post!
“The Ukraine crisis has featured an unlikely test of personalities: Putin, the ex-spy, has brazenly used the threat of military power, advertising his desire to control Ukraine and rewrite Europe’s security rules, even as he denied any intention to invade. But he has been met by a stalwart Biden, the genial career politician who stumbles over his sentences — but not, in this case, with his actions…
The Presstitution never stops.
I was always struck by how much Obama hesitated when speaking — lots of “ups” and “has” although not when given prepared speeches. I think it was because he was so cautious about not saying anything the media or Republicans could twist but it was very pronounced yet the media mostly ignored it. Their frame for him is an eloquent speaker (which he is) so they ignored the fact that he wasn’t when speaking off the cuff.
Maga folks appear to be steadfast on three things, I’ve noticed: Joe is 100% senile, NPelosi is a nefarious evildoer(?)- and Fauci is the 😈 incarnate. Baked in.
Nice catch:/
Relentless.
Journalism 101: If you report good news involving Democrats, it’s proof of liberal bias.
Not reporting Republicans behaving badly is not a problem, because Republicans behaving badly is not news.
What amazes me is how the same hard core Republicans who hated the USSR now embrace Putin as a Christ-Centered Leader.
They just hate communists, not anti-democracy authoritarians. Remember how the Nixon helped the coup against Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile because he was a socialist. We then strongly supported the brutal right wing military dictator August Pinochet. Republicans oppose communism because their ideology is all about capitalism not democracy.
I believe in capitalism, but there must be guardrails in place. From Reagan on, the GOP systematically removed protections (deregulation!) in the name of "consumer freedom and choice," resulting in corporate consolidation and massive wealth inequality that have damaged American lives and society. For the GOP and their paymasters, it's all about unfettered capitalism and power. They are driven by greed—they want all the marbles, leaving the rest of us with little to nothing.
Oof
Complete disconnect… AGREE.
Well, the GOP doesn't like democracy anymore since it doesn't serve their endgame of white minority rule.
They're afraid to share their power with people who don't look like them, love like them & think like them.
They're afraid of losing the power they've been holding onto for almost 250 years.
Not sure most ever really liked democracy. As I posted below their priority is capitalism and that comes above democracy. Just look at the Republican response to the 1929 banking crash and Great Depression.
And interesting that the two people getting closest to holding TFG accountable - are two women of color… (more outside the system than not).
‘Going for it’ appears to be their best/last option… too much at stake not too, sadly☹️
When will Biden ever get credit for something? Never! The MSM is not interested in covering a Democratic president in a positive light. They've been bought off by dark money likely or they simply don't want to be labeled "liberal" by the Right. Regardless of the reason, if Biden today found the cure for cancer himself, the press would be haranguing him for destroying a billion dollar cancer industry.
Ron Klain is starting to retweet snarky (what’s up with this non-media coverage) comments in his twitter feed.
Cue the finger wagging from the journalists!
👍
Because of the tone and tenor of the beltway press the far right is gloating. Show me a week without an orange blob on the front page. If he's allowed anywhere near any US election ever again history will lay it at the feet of the greed motivated press.
Of course the press will blame Biden and the Dems if God forbid that happens.
Reminds me of a very funny Bob Mankoff cartoon in the New Yorker: “No, Thursday’s out. How’s never – is never good for you?“
Different day same old same old… I’m still thankful for people like you who keep pointing this out.
There's a piece on Alternet today about how Americans cannot trust the press to protect democracy. The fascinating thing to me is that we can't even trust the press to protect itself. They do not grasp that the First Amendment cannot survive republican rule. That doesn't mean they need to be advocates. It does mean they should actually practice journalism. And, sadly, The New York Times is run by people who believe they should be, as they are, the standard-setter in American journalism, but have no more conscience or self-awareness than their favorite Hitler wannabe in Mar-A-Lago.
Dr. Fauci predicted that the Omicron surge would end by the middle of February. I don't know how Biden deserves "credit" for how the virus behaves, but it's very annoying when the press gaslights the public by blaming the surge on Biden. The number of vaccinations, with the exception of boosters, has stagnated. There is not much more Biden can do about that. NYC employees who refused to be vaccinated are being fired this week.
The pandemic will not end this year because the world does not have enough vaccinated people in it. And this virus has been so unpredictable that it doesn't seem prudent to believe it is evolving into a less harmful form. The problem with the press is that it has been actively participating in the Republican effort to politicize covid and thereby creating a whole new genre of "journalism" - The Pandemic and the Midterms, Pt. 1.
I’m waiting for the NYTimes to quote TFG’s statement that Covid will go away like magic and say that he was right.