It's The Media's Default

 

Well, once again, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans act like they always do, and the media is happy to enable them.

The issue today, as Press Watch's Dan Froomkin writes, is Republican stonewalling on increasing the debt limit and the media both- siding the crisis:

Republican congressional leaders are flagrantly ginning up a major political and financial crisis — safe in the knowledge that the Washington press corps will blame both sides.

At issue is a formality: raising the debt ceiling so that the U.S. government can continue paying the bills as previously appropriated by Congress.

But Republicans are refusing to go along, threatening a catastrophic government default and shutdown that could send the U.S. economy into an immediate recession and destabilize global markets.

They’re saying that keeping the government solvent is a Democratic problem now.

It’s an abandonment of the responsibility of governing. It is aberrational behavior by a political party that is willing to take extreme and potentially damaging action to score political points. It’s a hostage crisis.

And by not calling it out for what it is, the political press is enabling it.

Froomkin goes on to name names and provide examples of the media's lazy enabling of Republican maliciousness. But, of course, this is a continuing practice for the media, so much so that you could say it's their default position:

In 2013, when Senator Ted Cruz and his fellow Republicans shut down the government for 16 days in an attempt to defund Obamacare, the Washington Post blamed it on a “bitterly divided” Congress that “failed to reach agreement,” while the New York Times called it “a bitter budget standoff” left unresolved by “rapid-fire back and forth legislative maneuvers.”

As I wrote at the time, how can democracy self-correct if the public does not understand where the problem lies? And where will the pressure for change come from if journalists do not hold the responsible parties accountable?

It's easy to say we get the media we deserve, but after the last 4 years in particular, why are so many of them still so eager to enable the party that's out to destroy our democracy?  Why is there no reporting on the nihilism and hypocrisy that's in plain view that's killing us, slowly but surely.  If these ugly times don't call for accountability and the plain truth, when will they?  "Democracy dies in darkness," my ass.