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Mark****
Writing about how the Dominant Media regularly, brazenly, and unfairly favors Democrats over Republicans is tricky business for a lot of reasons.
First of all, it suggests (wrongly) to some readers that I think this phenomenon is the biggest problem in America and our politics (it isn’t), or that I think the Trump Republican Party isn’t the cause of massive dysfunction and danger (it is), or that the media never frames stories in a way that is unfair to the left (it does).
Second, the bias is in fact so egregious – and so thoroughly ignored by those who continue their decades-long pattern – that it is paradoxically very challenging to illustrate it effectively (except for those, mostly on the right, who see it so clearly).
Calling the bias out typically falls on the deaf ears and denying mouths of the very decision makers and actors who should stop the offending behavior.
Honest Democrats privately admit it happens and/but keep quiet, happy for the edge it gives them. Honest journalists privately admit it happens, but act like they are powerless to change anything.
As I’ve written before, I say to those in the press who deny the plain reality: Even if you don’t think the Dominant Media is biased, recognize that about half the country thinks the bias exists – and believes strongly that the bias tilts the playing field in ways that are often decisive in our elections and governance.
This isn’t some fringe Red view – Mitt Romney sees the reality (and is pissed about it) every bit as much as Marjorie Taylor Greene does.
For those, such as President Biden, who aspire to unite the country and break the hold that extremists have on the Republican Party, ignoring the need to fix this problem is a big error. The anger and sense of grievance that comes from both the Dominant Media’s bias and the denial that the bias exists is a major driver of the division.
Again, is it the major driver? No.
Again, does Red America continue to cause much of the division? Yes.
But pay attention to what is happening in this very news cycle, by commission, omission, and framing.
****
1. What Speaker McCarthy and the allies he has empowered just accomplished with the House passage of a bill that raises the debt ceiling is extraordinary – a huge political and personal win for the Californian, demonstrating the kind of carrot-and-stick, Perils-of-Pauline, just-win-baby approach for which the Dominant Media deified Speaker Pelosi.
McCarthy overcame the odds and expectations and passed a bill that united his fractious conference, simultaneously raising the debt ceiling and passing spending restraint measures that (despite what the White House and the press suggest) are in at least some of the cases largely popular with swing voters and the public.
The Dominant Media knows the debt ceiling is a really important story (if, admittedly, a bit process-y). This is a major substantive development, in addition to being a huge political story about a new speaker miraculously rising to the occasion.
So what kind of placement do the New York Times and Washington Post give it?
So, basically, not as important as Jill Biden’s understatement at a dinner.
When the Post does get around to covering the story, here is the framing:
House Republicans on Wednesday approved a bill that would raise the debt ceiling, slash federal spending and repeal President Biden’s programs to combat climate change and reduce student debt, defying Democratic objections in a move that inched the United States closer to a fiscal crisis.
So, rather than casting the House passage as something that will finally pressure President Biden to negotiate to find the kind of bipartisan resolution that divided government demands (and that Mr. Biden has supported in the past), the Post says McCarthy & Co’s triumph… makes the crisis worse!
I could provide more examples on this one, and describe what the coverage would have been like in quality and quantity had McCarthy failed, but I hope/think you get the point.
****
2. Did you know that one of the few questions the president took at his brief joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Wednesday came from a Los Angeles Times reporter who seems to have provided her question to the White House in advance, allowing Mr. Biden’s staff to give him an index card with the question on it (and prepare him with an answer)?
Unless you read the New York Post or follow Red Twitter, you probably don’t.
This is a massive story about the White House and about journalism, and yet it is being ignored by all the Dominant Media organs, who don’t seem to have pressed either the administration or the L.A. Times about what happened, the way they would have if this had happened with a Republican president (in which case it would be everywhere, including on the broadcast networks and in CNN’s nightly newsletter devoted entirely to, ostensibly, holding all of the media accountable). Instead: crickets.
****
3. Did you know that a new Fox News poll shows Bobby Kennedy closing in on a fifth of the vote against President Biden?
Of course you don’t. Because it isn’t being covered, even though Fox’s polling is very well respected and is often cited by the Dominant Media. This result would seem quite interesting, coming right after Mr. Biden announced for reelection, and yet….more crickets….
****
4. The same poll shows another result, consistent with nearly all the polling out there, with Donald Trump going up and Ron DeSantis down:
The general story of Trump’s post-indictment rise and DeSantis’ stumbles is being covered by the Dominant Media, to be sure, but, as has been the case since 2015, it is being shaped as farce and spectacle, rather than as part of an answer to the more profound and important question about why tens of millions of Americans turn to the leadership of Mr. Trump to express their aspirations and address their fears.
****
5. Are you aware of and outraged by what teachers union topper Randi Weingarten told Congress Wednesday about her organization’s role during COVID? Only (for the most part) if you read the Red press.
****
6. If Ivanka Trump was under criminal investigation by the Trump Justice Department and her lawyers got a meeting with senior DOJ officials to make her case at HQ, how much coverage would that event get, and how would it be framed in the Dominant Media? CNN matter-of-factly chronicles the Wednesday meeting between Hunter Biden’s lawyers and Justice bigs, but, again, imagine the questions that would be being asked by White House reporters and other journalists if the shoe were on the Red foot.
****
I could go on, but I won’t. For those of you who get (and are outraged by) what I’m talking about here, the point is made (and, really, you already knew without my telling you).
For those of you in denial, even two hundred more examples would likely not change a thing.
But for those of you in the Dominant Media reading this: Please stop.
****
Two more items for today’s “Wide World of News: Media Edition”:
A. One of the four journalism classes I want to teach is “How to prepare for interviews and press conference questions.”
Rule #1 is: Workshop out the wording of your questions really carefully, keeping the language as simple and short as possible, while anticipating how the newsmaker might/could respond to different phrasing, keeping in mind the public interest and the slippery capacity of newsmakers to evade and avoid.
Rule #2: No multipart questions!
Here is the semi-lauded question that was asked at the Wednesday Biden mini-presser:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. You recently launched your reelection campaign. You've said questions about your age are “legitimate.” And your response is always “Just watch me.” But the country is watching, and recent polling shows that 70 percent of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, believe you shouldn't run again. What do you say to them? What do you say to those Americans who are watching and aren't convinced?
You've said you can beat Trump again. Do you think you're the only one?
Along the same lines, same intention, but I think would have produced a better result:
Mr. President, please describe what you have experienced in terms of cognitive decline over the last two years. What changes have you noticed in yourself or have those around you pointed out?
B. While the Republican hopefuls positioning to try to beat Donald Trump for the nomination all continue to struggle for the right message, there is a clear consensus among Never-Again-Trump Red writers about how to try to convince the nomination electorate to move on:
Biden is extremely vulnerable but/and the only Republican he can beat is Trump – so please don’t vote for Trump in your caucus or primary!
One can find this argument these days particularly in Murdoch publications, but really everywhere Red writers write:
* Miranda Devine goes all in against Trump and for DeSantis, proceeding as far as to laud the Sunshine State topper’s personality as Lincolnesque.
* Shorter Piers Morgan: Trump is a loser, Ron a winner.
* Shorter Dan Henninger: A vote for Trump is a vote to extend Biden’s socialism for four more years.
* Shorter Rich Lowry and Karl Rove: Biden deserves to lose but Trump could bail him out.
All these efforts are well-meaning and well-reasoned; Trump’s numbers with independents are gruesome. But until DeSantis is in the race and performs better – and until Trump’s head-to-head numbers against Biden are actually meaningfully worse than DeSantis’ – this is going to be a hard argument to carry the day with Trump loyalists.
Especially if Democrats keep indicting him.