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.

 

QOTD -- Wrong? The Media Doesn't Do That!

 

"... The story is no longer whether Joe Biden committed high crimes and misdemeanors by maintaining relations with his ne’er-do-well son. In fact, there has never been any credible evidence to support that conclusion.

"The real story is that the ludicrous Republican impeachment investigation has now been exposed as a Russian intelligence op. This, even as Republicans do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding by blocking support for Ukraine and only a few short years after Trump aides welcomed Russian moves to help the Trump campaign in 2016.

"But the political reporters at our most esteemed newsrooms who went to great lengths to portray the Biden impeachment investigation as a serious inquiry seem unable to change gears.

"I’m not surprised. It  would require them to admit they were wrong. They don’t do that..." -- media critic Dan Froomkin, Press Watch, on the latest media fail "The Hunter Biden story has done a total 180 but the MSM is in denial."  Froomkin brings the receipts, as usual.  Legacy media outlets (the New York Effing Times, WaPo, etc.) continue to succumb to horse race journalism, both sidesism, copying Republican talking points, and lede- burying, the ultimate effect being democracy dying in darkness. To be fair, one non- cable source we monitor that we think does a decent job of exposing the constant Republican lies and gaslighting in a short- attention- span format is David Muir's "ABC World News Tonight."  You be the judge.

BONUS:  More discussion here.

BONUS II:  Another dishonest broker.

QOTD -- Distracting, Dangerous Noise

 

Dan Froomkin writes in Press Watch about the media coverage of the Biden classified documents report in which Trumpist Special Counsel Robert Hur chose to critique Biden's age and memory.  He wonders "When is a huge news story not a huge news story?"  Here's an extended excerpt:

"...Has there ever been a screaming front-page headline about Trump’s abundant mental deficiencies? His repeated displays of memory loss and confusion are actually among the least concerning of his mental problems, which include paranoia, incoherence, narcissism, and sociopathy.

There are way more important questions the political press corps should be obsessing over than how Biden presents himself, namely: How is Biden governing? How would Trump govern? And which man is more dangerous?

On Biden’s first full day in office in 2021, I published a post headlined “After obsessive focus on Trump, White House reporters need to zoom way out.” My argument was that covering the Trump White House was easy, because all that mattered was Trump. I suggested that Washington journalists needed to shift gears and actually write about governance.

Instead, the press corps essentially continued to hold Biden to a Trumpian standards, and has found him lacking because he isn’t as entertaining and commanding as Trump was.

At the same time, they largely give Trump a pass for saying outrageous things, some of which he means, some of which are simply misfires of his brain.

As it happens, there was big news Thursday night: Biden finally stating publicly that “the conduct of the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip has been over the top.” But you wouldn’t know it from Friday’s coverage...  (our emphasis)

Frromkin notes some of the pushback this narrative is getting from media critics and some political writers (not to mention the White House).  To be fair, we've noticed some news organizations linking coverage of the purported Biden age and memory issues directly with the Malignant Loser's far more egregious and frequent examples of soggy brain.  But that's not the essential point, as Froomkin notes. Yes Biden's old, everybody gets that.  But people who've dealt closely with him, including political adversaries, say he's sharp and up to the job.  It's also true that gaffes and misremembering have been part of his political persona for the past 40 years.  And it's also true that, barring unforeseen events, the choice in November will be between a remarkably effective and successful President and an authoritarian sociopathic moron who would forever change the nature of our country for the worse.  If that's going to be the choice, everything else is distracting, dangerous noise.

BONUS:  As usual, it will fall to the Biden campaign to do all the heavy lifting that many in the media won't do.

The Washington Post's Toxic Wasteland Opinion Section

 

It should come as no surprise to you that Fox "News" has some bedfellows (but, no, it's not Newsmax or OAN).

The invaluable Dan Froomkin of Press Watch takes a look at the Washington Post's editorial board and its "disinformation- spewing" right-wing op/ ed columnists.  Here's a snippet:

You might think it would be impossible to move further and even more disastrously right when your stable includes the likes of Thiessen, Olsen, Abernathy, Parker, Hugh Hewitt, Megan McArdle, and George F. Will.

But [Post editorial page editor David] Shipley’s marquee move thus far has been to hire two more derivative right-wingers as weekly columnists: Jim Geraghty and Ramesh Ponnuru, both of whom will also continue to serve as editors of the National Review.

Geraghty is a Ron DeSantis stan. In a column for the Post before getting his permanent gig, he wrote about DeSantis that “plenty of Americans across the partisan divide would have good reason to root for him.” Why? Because “he fights for policies, not to prosecute vendettas.” Like so much of the Post opinion offerings, that is laugh-out-loud funny.

Ponnuru was an early, fact-unencumbered culture warrior, who has written that Democrats support “killing unborn children at any stage of pregnancy.”

They join a cast of disinformation-spewers who add nothing to the national discourse.

This, remember, is the newspaper with the "Democracy Dies in Darkness" line under its front page header.  The darkness descending here is palpable.

In normal times, unlike the one we're living in, having an opinion page serve as a forum for ideas from across the political spectrum would be par for the course.  We're old enough to remember Walter Lippmann and Joseph Alsop sharing space on the Post's op/ed page.  But, with a 24- hour right- wing media ecosystem dedicated to pushing lies, conspiracies, and democracy- undermining narratives, what we don't need is more of the same on the pages of one of our national newspapers.  But, for corporate media like Fox "News" and Jeff Bezos' Post, it's always going to be about the "green," not "red and blue."

Here's what Froomkin believes should be the case:

Post Opinion should be the go-to for people who believe government can make things better.

That would entail publishing essays that explore solutions, and that expose the bad faith of  people and institutions that stand in the way of progress.

Yes, that would include conservative voices – but smart ones, original ones, with integrity, committed to verifiable facts.

In times like these, when there’s an obligation to expose readers to the lies and fantasies that are a major part of the national discourse, Post Opinions could do that too, but with full transparency, so readers don’t grant lies the credibility of the Post brand.

Froomkin goes on to give thumbnail sketches of the right- wing disinformation-spewers, and why their presence on the pages of the Post is harmful to our democracy.  

One more example of the Post's promoting damaging, false narratives:  here's their sole editorial cartoon today from right- winger Mike Beckom, a deceitful pots- calling- the- kettle- black "both sides" defense of the rat hole that is Fox "News":

There is an organization fast becoming a disgrace, and Froomkin gives you a good picture of which one it is.

(Image:  proposed new tag line for the Post)

Media Framing Of The Insurrection Hearings

 

Press Watch's invaluable Dan Froomkin on what he expects from the corporate media's coverage of the January 6 insurrection hearings ...

They have failed miserably to communicate what’s at stake in the midterm elections, and how the choice voters face in November is not simply between two parties, or a referendum on President Biden, or the economy, but is about either succumbing to or resisting a slide into autocracy and patriarchal theocracy.

And now, with the January 6 select congressional committee embarking on an effort to do job the media so miserably failed to do, I fear that our top  newsroom leaders and political reporters will respond defensively and contemptuously, using partisan framing, both-sidesism, bad sports analogies, and theater-criticism analysis to marginalize and mock a sincere and desperately needed exercise in truth-telling.

I fear that the arbiters of our elite, corporate media will embrace Republican talking points about the committee’s motives and conduct. I fear they will engage in so-whatism about new revelations, casting them as old news that changes nothing. I fear they will downplay this, the single most important American story in decades, and the biggest political crime in the country’s history, in favor of other ongoing crises that, while hugely significant, in the greater scheme of things matter so much less. I fear they will get distracted by bad-faith actors flooding the zone with disinformation and diversions.

... and what they should be doing:

What journalists should do is embrace and amplify the committee’s attempt at truth-telling, contextualize them, and help make sure members of the public understand what happened and what they need to do about it.

Republicans have tried to turn Jan. 6 into a political issue – and, of course, the debate is undeniably along partisan lines. But the goal here — the goal journalists should share — is not partisan: It’s the truth.

To support Froomkin's thesis, here's how the eunuchs at PBS -- PBS, for shit's sake -- are framing the hearings as a truth- relative, he-said/ she-said set of dueling soundbites in a promo:

 

Must be scrupulously fair to the fascists!

If this is how "the arbiters of our elite corporate media" are going to frame the most significant, and ongoing assault on our nation, well then democracy has already died in darkness.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

As the death toll mounts from the historic tornadoes that ravaged several states late Friday, we're being warned that this is going to be "our new normal," due to global climate change:

The rising sun illuminated entire cities in ruin as morning broke Saturday in western Kentucky. Piles of bricks appeared where buildings had stood. Roofs torn open revealed mangled furnishings inside. Bicycles and refrigerators dangled from trees like ornaments.

The deadly tornadoes that caused devastation in Kentucky and five other states came just a few months after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti and Category 4 Hurricane Ida tore through the Eastern United States and Atlantic Canada. In an interview Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said the agency is preparing for severe weather events of similar magnitude.

“This is going to be our new normal, and the effects that we’re seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation,” she said. “We’ll continue to work on helping to reduce the impacts, but we’re also prepared to respond to any community that gets impacted by one of these severe events.”

Severe tornadoes are uncommon this late in the year, with December usually considered a quiet month.

The people in the states affected are overwhelmingly represented by Republican denialists and fossil fuel shills in Congress.  Tragically, the vast majority likely won't connect the dots.

Press Watch's Dan Froomkin asks "What Does the Republican Party Stand For:"

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has decided that the best way for Republicans to win back Congress in the 2022 midterms is to not tell voters what they stand for.

He has made no secret of his plan to make the elections a referendum on President Biden and the Democrats — and not to complicate things with anything remotely like a Republican legislative agenda.

It’s a brilliant strategy, if he can get away with it. And so far, all the signs are good. Pretty much every prognosticator inside the Beltway is predicting significant GOP advances, certainly enough to take back the House, if not the Senate.

But I’m old-fashioned. I think voters should know what they’re voting for, not just what they’re voting against. And if Republicans themselves won’t tell the voters about their agenda, then it’s incumbent on political journalists to do it for them.  [snip]

The debate that’s currently raging about whether corporate media coverage of Biden is overly negative takes on even greater significance when you consider how the entire Republican strategy in the coming years will be to throw brickbats at him from behind a tree.

Biden’s shortcomings are certainly newsworthy. But paying a little more attention to who’s behind the tree, and what their intentions really are, is essential journalism.

Voting Republican, in this day and age, is not a simple protest vote. It’s a vote that carries unprecedented consequences. Political reporters should be telling voters about those consequences, and then asking if that’s what they really want.

Froomkin lays out several scenarios/ agendas that you'll have to go to the link for.  It's worth it.

Fox "News'" Chris Wallace is leaving "Bullshit Mountain" for the new streaming service CNN+.  Eric Wemple comments on Wallace's farewell to the network:

Omitted from the sayonara was any celebration of the broader Fox News product. Perhaps that’s because there’s not much to celebrate: In the last year of Chris Wallace’s tenure at Fox News, he’s had to watch as his colleagues on the opinion side of the network buttressed and amplified the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump. That strain of programming culminated in the recent three-part Fox Nation series from host Tucker Carlson titled “Patriot Purge,” which pushed the idea that the Jan. 6 rioters are victims, not perpetrators. “The domestic war on terror is here. It’s coming after half the country,” argues the documentary.

NPR reported last month that Wallace, along with news anchor Bret Baier, had expressed concerns to top Fox officials about “Patriot Purge.” It’s unclear what impact, if any, the feedback effected. What is clear is that the network has found its voice in Carlson, a longtime pundit who for years bounced around the margins of cable news. He was serving as a weekend host at Fox News in late 2016 when a prime-time slot opened up. Ever since then, his extremism — telling viewers that Democrats “hate” America; espousing the racist “replacement theory”; subverting science on the coronavirus — has emerged as the network’s defining ideology, a point of reckoning for colleagues wishing to practice anything approximating journalism.

The reward for Carlson was an elevated presence on Fox’s streaming service, Fox Nation.

He was at Fox for 18 years, watching the mountain of lies, divisiveness and hate grow.  Let's not give him too much credit for bailing once the ascension of Carlson reached its apogee.  Over those many years, he can't claim he "did Nazi that coming."

We're approaching a grim milestone, fueled by the unvaccinated.  We have the tools to end the COVID pandemic, even as the new Omicron variant spreads:

The US government’s leading infectious diseases official, Anthony Fauci, on Sunday stepped up calls for Americans to get a Covid-19 booster shot, as the US is approaching 800,000 lives lost to coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

Fauci warned that the Omicron variant appeared to be able to “evade” the protection of two initial doses of the mRNA-type Covid vaccines – Pfizer/BioNTech’s and Moderna’s – as well as post-infection therapies such as monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma.

Omicron is spurring new fears as US infections begin to surge again, with infections currently still led by the highly-transmissable Delta variant that has dominated since the summer.

Fauci said an extra vaccine shot provides “optimal” protection against Omicron, even though the government’s official designation of “fully vaccinated” remained at two doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or one of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which was developed by another method.

Finally, check out Infidel 753's link round-up, which has to be the most comprehensive, wide- ranging collection of links to posts from around the Internet.  It's a remarkable curation every week.  

Media Whines About Biden's Press Availability

 

The whining has reached the editorial page of the Washington Post : 

WHITE HOUSE press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that President Biden would hold a news conference “before the end of the month.” Last month would have been better, and this week would be better than next. Avoiding news conferences must not become a regular habit for Mr. Biden. He is the president, and Americans have every right to expect that he will regularly submit himself to substantial questioning.  [snip]

But each of his 15 most recent predecessors, including Mr. Trump, held a full news conference within their first 33 days in office. Mr. Biden has been in office for 46 days. It was only after journalists’ complaints became increasingly loud — and following a wave of bad press — that Ms. Psaki announced Friday that the president would appear for an extended, unaccompanied question-and-answer session with reporters.

Could it be -- just maybe -- that he's been too busy getting things done and undoing the damage left by the former guy?  Like getting the vaccination distribution program jump- started?  Like getting his administration staffed after a non-transition?  Like getting his legislative agenda lined up and passing the American Rescue Plan Act?  Bueller?  Bueller?

We're reminded of the limited positive value of these press conferences which, under the former guy, tended to allow lies and misinformation to be spread largely unchallenged by the assembled press who rarely followed up on lie- studded answers.  That's not going to be a problem with President Biden, but we see how the media is likely to act anyway based on past performance.  This is from a 2015 Columbia Journalism Review article about President Obama' press conferences (our emphasis):

The press, meanwhile, shows itself to be a willing hostage to the modern demands for a click-worthy story and a tweetable quote. At press conferences, the overwhelming tendency is to ask about the day’s headline or to look for the “gotcha” question, instead of addressing long-term accountability issues. Frequently, one journalist after the next will ask the same question, as they did during the post-election news conference. Reporters ask questions not to get information, but to get a reaction. And even with that strategy, they rarely succeed. 

Of course, no one is asking or expecting the media to throw softball questions at President Biden, but let's get real about the more prosaic motivations here, which haven't changed since that description was written. And of course, the media has a vested interest in showing that it doesn't have a political bias and will go after a Democratic president even as he's fighting anti- democratic forces in the country that would ultimately end a free press. 

But the media should also have a bias in favor of democracy, which is the existential struggle of the moment in this country that only one party is fighting. As Dan Froomkin of PressWatchers puts it:

... [O]ne party, you have certainly noticed, has over the last decade or two descended into a froth of racism, grievance and reality-denial. Asking you to triangulate between today’s Democrats and today’s Republicans is effectively asking you to lobotomize yourself. I’m against that.

Defining our job as “not taking sides between the two parties” has also empowered bad-faith critics to accuse us of bias when we are simply calling out the truth. We will not take sides with one political party or the other, ever. But we will proudly, enthusiastically, take the side of wide-ranging, fact-based debate.

So, yes, President Biden will hold a news conference soon.  Let's see if anything has changed in the way of media responsibility and perspective.

BONUS:  At least one observer aside from us is skeptical --

After Biden holds a formal news conference, which is soon I assume, given he was no doubt waiting for a wave of good news to ride, what will they complain about then?

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 7, 2021

 

What if he just answered every question, “You’ll have to wait and see” and “I’ll be announcing something in about two weeks.” Would that clear the hurdle?

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 7, 2021

WaPo's Loss is HuffPo's Gain

Good news that the Huffington Post has hired former Washington Post blogger Dan Froomkin as its Washington Bureau chief and columnist, overseeing 5 reporters and an Assistant Editor. Froomkin was a relentless and honest critic of the mainstream media's coverage of the Iraq war and of politics in general. His dismissal from the WaPo may have resulted from too much criticism of the WaPo's neocon editorial position and specifically of regular columnist Chuckie "Dr. Strangelove" Kraphammer, who is reportedly close to the WaPo's neocon editorial page editor Fred "Dead Head" Hiatt.

Good move by the Huffington Post, and an example of why some in the "dead tree" media are struggling to stay alive, especially now that Washington's not wired Rethuglican.

The WaPo's Sh*tty Judgement

The Washington Post has become a shadow of its former journalistic self, featuring a parade of neocons on its "op ed" page, and remaining mostly uncritical during the Bushit years regarding foreign policy (e.g., Iraq). Cowed by the drumbeat of "liberal media" accusations by the far right over the years, the WaPo caved in to them. How many more columns from Fred "I Luv Neocons" Hiatt, Chuckie Kraphammer, Michael "Gag" Gerson, Wee Willie Kristol, Fred "War Is Good" Kagan, and other wingers will it take to convince people that the WaPo isn't "liberal" at all, but more neocon than ever? And that's not to mention their stable of writers who still think D.C. is "wired Rethuglican."

Now, with the dismissal of the estimable journalist Dan Froomkin from the WaPo website, they have bet on a Rethuglican revival. Like it's gonna happen. The WaPo's not your father's WaPo anymore.

RELATED: Over at Fairness and Accuracy in Media, Jim Naureckas has a pithy blog on l'affaire Froomkin and the culture pervading the WaPo that led to his dismissal. P.S.-- the John Harris who's quoted in the blog is now with the Rethug-wired Politico.

Neoconning At The WaPo

The news that the Washington Post has fired its best blogger, Dan Froomkin, is sad, but not totally unexpected. Froomkin was unabashedly liberal, and was often a lone voice in the past few years blasting the Bushit Assministration for its domestic and foreign policies. But he was also known for taking the Obama Administration to task when he felt they were falling down on their commitments. Salon's Glenn Greenwald has a good take on the firing, and notes that the WaPo editorial pages have become a haven for right-wing neocons.

It's ironic that on today's WaPo op-ed page we find Chuck Kraphammer and Wolfie Wolfowitz spouting the neocon line that Obama should interfere in the Iranian political struggle, a move that would be disastrous for the Mousavi supporters, who can't afford to be portrayed as agents of the U.S. But the neocons --and their Likudnik brothers in Israel -- would rather have the reactionary Ahmadiddledoo as the adversary, rather than a more moderate leader in Iran, so that military action against Iran becomes more likely.