It’s going to be a long year, people. It’s clear that it’s going to require a lot of fortitude to avoid falling into despair over the next few months if they continue to cover this election as they have been. What I see happening is that while they are appropriately covering Trump’s ascent into full Hitlerian fascism (for now, anyway) they are also succumbing to their usual need to “balance” the coverage by hyping Biden’s unpopularity.
I’m not suggesting that he’s popular. He isn’t. But just look at the NY Times coverage of their polling. I’m sure you remember this one from last month:
Ok. Here’s their latest poll which shows that Biden is leading Trump nationally among likely voters:
Here’s the website:
I’m not kidding when I say he’s leading nationally which ought to account for a mention in at least one headline fergawdsakes!
Here’s how they address it way down in the main article:
Overall, registered voters say they favor Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden in next year’s presidential election by two percentage points, 46 percent to 44 percent. The president’s job approval rating has slid to 37 percent, down two points from July.
But there is considerable uncertainty over whether disaffected voters will even vote. While it is still early, the race is flipped among the likely electorate, with Mr. Biden leading by two percentage points.
That’s it. No biggie.
The emphasis in every piece in the NY Times about its own article is negativity about Biden. How about this?
Economic concerns remain paramount, with 34 percent of registered voters listing economic- or inflation-related concerns as the top issue facing the country. That’s down from 45 percent in October 2022, but still high.
Whatever. Biden’s old.
Now maybe there will be some other articles forthcoming about this poll that highlight these facts but everyone, including the Times, knows that the way they frame their findings will drive the news cycle for days, just as a lot of people are going home for the holidays and sitting around watching the news a lot more than they usually do.
I don’t know about you, but this stuff makes me see red. The mainstream media has been hounding Biden ever since the Afghanistan withdrawal (which they also used as some kind of “reset” in their coverage so as not to seem biased) and it’s been relentlessly dismissive of his accomplishments ever since then. It’s maddening.
Tom and I have been writing about this throughout the last three years, trying to keep our own sanity but mainly hoping that we could provide some perspective for our readers. Monitoring these media trends has been part of what I’ve done here at Hullabaloo since 2003 when its coverage of the war in Iraq was abominable. But even before that my writing in various other online outposts about the Clinton years and particularly about the 2000 election coverage (which is showing some alarming similarities) focused intently on the way the media shapes our politics and, mostly, not for the better.
Calling them out for this was the single most important motivation for the creation of the left blogosphere, of which I’m still proud to have been a founder, back in the day. And it remains one of the greatest motivators for what we do here yet today. Clearly, it’s still necessary. This impulse to “balance” the coverage is in the media DNA and it has to be countered.
If you can help us to keep doing what we do for another year, I would be most grateful. If you’d like to contribute, you can use the snail mail address on the left or click one of the buttons below.
Thank you so much for reading Hullaballoo and I hope you’ll keep coming back. We will do our best to deliver something interesting for you each and every day.
cheers,
digby
Happy Hollandaise!