The Mainstream Media: Joe Biden's Other Election Opponent

The Media Misses Trump And They Want Him To Win

David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros./Discovery, the company that owns CNN, tipped his hand about who he wants in the White House in an interview given at the Sun Valley Conference of media and tech bigwigs in Idaho recently:

Asked about the upcoming presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which which party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business.

“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better,” he said.

Zaslav’s comments effectively work as an endorsement of Donald Trump’s campaign, because the Biden administration is not handing out rubber stamps to big business seeking to consolidate (and harm consumers). Trump’s four years in office saw his administration hand over power to mega-business, from cutting safety regulations, rolling back environmental standards, and of course rewarding them with a massive tax cut that didn’t stimulate the overall economy at all.

The media industry, in particular, thrived during Trump’s time. Instead of sleep-inducing policy wonkery as they had to contend with during President Barack Obama’s two-terms, Trump lurched from drama to drama and crisis to crisis. When he wasn’t feuding with celebrities or Saturday Night Live, he was pissing off NATO allies, mismanaging a pandemic, or bowing to North Korea’s dictatorial regime. And of course there was the steady stream of racism and misogyny.

Four years into President Joe Biden’s time in office, it is clear to anyone with open eyes that the mainstream press desperately wants to go back to the good old days. They want easy stories and a torrent of clicks to their websites and eyeballs on their broadcasts. They want to be able to churn out a series of bestsellers, compiling information they should have been reporting in newspapers and broadcasts, packaged as buzzworthy scoops to juice book sales.

Like Zaslav, the mainstream media - the New York Times, CNN, Associated Press, the networks and the rest — tipped their hands as they took part in the post-debate media orgy. Biden’s performance was putrid, as he has admitted, but the coverage went above and beyond with the press beating the drumbeat for Biden to drop out of the race louder than a Taylor Swift concert extravaganza.

The press misses Donald, their meal ticket, their path to riches and an easy day at the office. He makes a big show of speaking negatively about his coverage, but like a wrestler working a gimmick to get the audience out of their seats, everyone in this pantomime is playing a role.

There is a symbiotic relationship between Trump and the press that has more in common with the grotesque setup in the horror film Human Centipede than either side of the equation would ever admit in public. Trump feeds them outrage and they process that outrage and generate coverage, which Trump then consumes and produces more outrage out of his other end. And again and again.

Historically speaking, the Democratic Party and liberalism has been annoyingly naive about this dynamic. There is a shared belief that the press, despite everything we’ve witnessed — the 2000 election, birtherism, the Iraq War, Trump’s first campaign and so much more — that the press gives a damn. The notion that they collectively care about the truth and share the concerns of average citizens about what life under an authoritarian Republican presidency would look like is betrayed by the consistent message of their Trump coverage: “We want to go back.”

There may finally be signs of the dam breaking, however. In his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, President Biden politely pressed back on the tenor of the coverage of the debate.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Lester, look, why don’t you guys ever talk about the 18 — the 28 lies he told? Where — where are you on this? Why doesn’t the press ever talk about that? Twenty-eight times, it’s confirmed, he lied in that debate. I had a bad, bad night. I wasn’t feeling well at all. And — and I had been — without making — I screwed up. But —

LESTER HOLT: The re — I just ask the question because — the — the idea that you may or may not have seen what some of these other folks have seen. You’re not on the same —

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I didn’t have to see it — I was there. (LAUGH) I didn’t have to see it. I was there. And by the way, seriously, you won’t answer the question, but why doesn’t the press talk about all the lies he told? I haven’t heard —

LESTER HOLT: Well, we —

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: — anything about that.

LESTER HOLT: We — we have reported many of the issues that came of that —

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No you haven’t —

LESTER HOLT: — that debate.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No you haven’t.

LESTER HOLT: Well, we’ll provide you with them.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: God love you.

Media “reporter” Brian Stelter, who has made clear that his role in the ecosystem is not as a reporter but as an advocate for the mainstream press, raised a fuss about the exchange on social media.

“Biden falsely claims that ‘the press’ hasn't covered Trump's lies,” he wrote.

But do you see the trick there? He converts Biden’s critique of the media’s post-debate coverage, which was all about Biden’s poor performance and not at all about the torrent of lies Trump told during the event, into another attack on Biden.

The press does not like criticism from the left. The left is supposed to just suck it up and take it and bow before them. Simply because the left side of the aisle does not share Trump’s position that the free press is the “enemy of the people,” that is supposed to be carte blanche for lies, unfair coverage, and agenda-based reporting against Democrats. Nonsense.

Biden was well within bounds to push back on the media’s reprehensible behavior and in fact he should have been more forceful. Because in this election — as in past elections — the Republican Party isn’t his only opposition.

The people who continually carry water for specious and debunked right-wing attacks, like the Swift Boat lies of 2004 or the Willie Horton smears of 1988 or the email faux scandal of 2016 are all the same people: The media.

The Republican Party and conservatives have a steadfast ally in the mainstream press that amplifies their bad faith attacks without context, who abdicate their roles as journalists or fact checkers to operate as stenographers for whatever dumb thing Republicans come up with. When George W. Bush and his team wanted to sell lies about weapons of mass destruction, they didn’t go to Fox News. The went to the New York Times.

Of course the press should investigate and press back on claims from Democrats, and when Democrats lie or massage the facts, the news media should take them to the rhetorical woodshed. That is their job. But for too long they have operated with two sets of standards for the two parties.

What is merely a faux pas by Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump is seized upon as a major crisis and scandal if the perpetrator is Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden (along with Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton). This cannot continue to stand, not without some blowback.

We shouldn’t be here, but this is the world we are in. Democrats and liberals must integrate critiques of the press in their dialogue. It isn’t only Republicans and the right that they must contend with, but also the press that serves as the observers for the public at large. They have shown themselves to be supremely unreliable narrators and the consequences are too severe to just allow them to run rampant over our democracy.

Biden’s exchange is hopefully not just a temporary flash in the pan, but instead should be a pivot point. The media isn’t the enemy of the people, but they have not worked as the public’s ally or advocates either. They aren’t going to get any better so they will require fair, but firm and forceful, correction. So long as they choose to align themselves with the interests of one side over the needs of the shared public good, they have made this bed for themselves and let the chips fall where they may.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977

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