Washington Post op-ed writer Dana Milbank had the strong impression that the media was giving President Biden an unusually hard time in this first year of his Presidency. All of the "things may look good, BUT..." stories, their failure to put the Afghanistan withdrawal in context, and so on added up to some bad weeks for Biden.
To check his impression, Milbank asked the data analytics arm of FiscalNote to do a "sentiment analysis" of 200,000 articles from 65 news websites of Biden's coverage since his inauguration, versus the malignant seditionist's coverage in the first 11 months of 2020. His findings confirmed his impression:
"The findings, painstakingly assembled by FiscalNote vice president Bill Frischling, confirmed my fear: My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.
After a honeymoon of slightly positive coverage in the first three months of the year, Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as — and for a time worse than — the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.
Think about that. In 2020, Trump presided over a worst-in-world pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths; held a superspreader event at the White House and got covid-19 himself; praised QAnon adherents; embraced violent white supremacists; waged a racist campaign against Black Lives Matter demonstrators; attempted to discredit mail-in voting; and refused to accept his defeat in a free and fair election, leading eventually to the violence of Jan. 6 and causing tens of millions to accept the 'big lie,' the worst of more than 30,000 he told in office." (our emphasis)
Milbank's article breaks down the coverage by month, with Biden having a particularly bad summer -- worse that the Malignant Loser's summer of 2020 that included unnecessary pandemic surges due to his indifference, his racist reaction to Black Lives Matter demonstrations, his hourly lying, and much more. As Milbank says:
"We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians." (our emphasis)
How about it, media?
BONUS: Here are the stats (click to enlarge) --
2 comments:
Ending the forever war, economic stimulus resulting in a tremendous Keynesian rebound, passed an infrastructure bill, unemployment as low as it gets. But gas got almost as expensive as ten years ago. Way to go Brandon.
Mart -- The media that Milbank describes will sink our democracy yet.
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