QOTD -- Bothsidesing Racism

 

"... Our elite political media is now bothsidesing racism.

"Most of the coverage of Thursday’s Supreme Court decision -– to the extent that it raised the issue of racial animus at all -- consisted of, literally, both sides. Reporters briefly quoted Alito’s opinion, briefly quoted Justice Elana Kagan’s blistering dissent, and left it at that. Jump ball.

"See the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and NBC Nightly News coverage, for instance. The CBS Evening News and ABC World News Tonight whiffed entirely on the racial element.

"That was bad enough.

"What was even worse was the New York Times 'news analysis' headlined 'Justices Clash on Whether Race Played a Role in Trump’s Bid to Deport Haitians.' In it, chief legal affairs correspondent Adam Liptak explicitly treated Trump’s obvious racism as an open question, with two sides.  [snip]

"If you’re going to write about politics and racism, one of the most important stories to tell is that not just Trump, but the entire Republican Party – inspired and liberated by Trump -- is becoming more and more overtly racist. And that includes the Republicans on the high court.

"As I wrote in October, “It’s becoming increasingly clear that white supremacy is one of the core animating principles of the Republicans who control all three branches of government.” -- Dan Froomkin, at his "Critical Read" Substack, on the recent racist Republican SCOTUS's deportation decision in Mullin v. Doe.  

We've been doing this blogging stuff for over two decades, and one thread stands out as much as anything else in our political culture:  the news media will never speak honestly and with clarity about anything that puts the Republican Party in a bad light without trying to create a false comparison with Democrats.  Never.  "Working the refs" only works for Republicans, largely because Democrats aren't effective doing it, or don't do it at all.  But, to look for a moral spine in the broad news media is to go on a fool's errand.  They're corporate, bean-counting, access-driven cowards.