JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Media Bootlickers Hurl Themselves at Biden’s Feet.
How bad was it? So bad that even Mediaite and the Politico noticed:
Meanwhile, CNN switches into palace guard mode: Right-wing media holds Biden bash-fest, foreshadowing its next four years of coverage.
And not coincidentally: Trust In The Media Hits An All-Time Low In New Polling.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH FAREED ZAKARIA IS A VOICE OF SANITY: CNN’s Zakaria: ‘Dirty Little Secret’—Trump Was Tough on Russia!
“I think in general, there isn’t going to be as much difference as people imagine. The Biden folks are pretty tough on Russia, Iran, North Korea. You know, the dirty little secret about the Trump administration was that while Donald Trump had clearly had a kind of soft spot for Putin, the Trump Administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine, they armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama Administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions. So I don’t think it will be that different.”
Wait a second! It was a “dirty little secret” that Trump was tough on Russia? WHY?? Who kept it a secret and for what purpose??
And the obvious answer is that the liberal media/Democrats were intent on pushing Russia Russia Russia. Admitting that President Trump was in fact tough on Russia would undermine that line of attack. And so they buried it: kept it a “dirty little secret.”
What other things will the liberal media give President Trump credit for if and when he is off the scene? In addition to the stunning success of Operation Warp Speed, making multiple safe-and-effective coronavirus vaccines in record time, there is also Trump’s triumph in the Middle East. If a Democrat president had engineered agreements between Israel and a number of Arab countries in the area as did Trump, the MSM would have been breathlessly trumpeting it as the greatest foreign policy achievement since who knows when! And the drumbeat for a Nobel Peace Prize would have been deafening.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their silence makes perfect sense.
2020 WAS THE POINT OF NO RETURN FOR ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA:
After 2020, it will be hard to see corporate media as anything but a public relations arm of the Democratic Party following the former’s attempts to bury not one, not two, but three major allegations leveled against left-wing politicians.
Axios, one of the more aggressive and fairer online news outlets, revealed in December that failed presidential candidate and Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California developed a relationship with a suspected Chinese spy who worked on behalf of the Communist Chinese government as part of a far-reaching espionage operation.
Swalwell, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, has declined to address his past interactions with Christine Fang, including that she managed somehow to place an intern in his office. He has offered no good reason for why he should remain in his congressional assignment despite the sensitive nature of what is discussed in the committee. His ability to dodge the issue has been enabled in part by media, which have not bothered to press him on the matter. In fact, news of the congressman’s entanglement with a Chinese spy has been ignored entirely by the larger, older news outlets.
ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored the story entirely when it broke. The major broadcast networks continued to ignore it even after Republicans moved to have the congressman removed from the intelligence committee. NBC has nothing on its website about the Chinese spy scandal. Neither does CBS or ABC. The New York Times, the Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times, similarly have avoided reporting on the scandal. Swalwell, meanwhile, has been allowed to skate on the excuse that the Axios report was a hit job orchestrated by the Trump White House, which doesn’t make any sense.
What a change of pace for the newsrooms that have spent the past four years hunting relentlessly for some connection between the Trump administration and Russian intelligence operations!
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. Speaking of which, their Strange New Respect for President Trump is beginning surprisingly fast:
Every Republican president or presidential candidate is Hitler, until his reputation is rehabilitated by old media to bash the next (potential) Republican presidential candidate.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH RALPH NADER IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Ralph Nader Slams Obama For Being A Phony: ‘Mass media interviewing Obama about his book. Couldn’t be softer.’
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines terrified of upsetting their former boss, and it all makes sense.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Media Saves Joe Biden—Just as It Saved Barack Obama.
CHICAGO CITY ATTORNEYS ATTEMPT TO BLOCK LOCAL CBS AFFILIATE FROM AIRING BODYCAM FOOTAGE OF POLICE RAID ON WRONG HOME. ‘You Have the Wrong Place:’ Body Camera Video Shows Moments Police Handcuff Innocent, Naked Woman During Wrong Raid.
Last year, Anjanette Young filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the video to show the public what happened to her that day. CBS 2 also filed a request for the video. But the Chicago Police Department denied the requests.
Young recently obtained the footage after a court forced CPD to turn it over as part of her lawsuit against police.
“I feel like they didn’t want us to have this video because they knew how bad it was,” Young said. “They knew they had done something wrong. They knew that the way they treated me was not right.”
Hours before the TV version of this report broadcast, the city’s lawyers attempted to stop CBS 2 from airing the video by filing an emergency motion in federal court.
* * * * * * * *
CBS 2 quickly found, through police and court records, the informant gave police the wrong address. The 23-year-old suspect police were looking for actually lived in the unit next door to Young at the time of the raid and had no connection to her. CBS 2 also found police could have easily tracked the suspect’s location and where he really lived because at the time of the raid, he was wearing an electronic monitoring device.
Twitchy notes that “If Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot were a Republican, every Dem in America would be calling for her resignation right now.” Particularly given that as ZeroHedge spotted in June, “As BLM Protests Raged, Chicago Saw Highest Black-On-Black Murder Rate In 60 Years.” Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, to understand why Mayor Corona Destroyer will likely have no pushback from old media.
Chicago’s last Republican mayor left office in 1931.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: You Have to See This NBC Hunter Biden Sub-headline to Believe It. It’s Real and It’s Really That Awful.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! CNN: Those Aren’t Biden Gaffes! They Demonstrate His ‘Empathy.’
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their coming four year nap will make perfect sense.
JUST THE SAME AS THE OLD MARSHMALLOW MEDIA: Meet the new marshmallow media in the Biden era.
Reporter 3, Question 1: “Thank you very much, Mr. President-elect. I want to kind of piggyback off of that. I want to get your thoughts on the president’s tweet over the weekend, where he first seemed to acknowledge that you won, then he said he won’t concede, then he said, ‘I won.’ How did you interpret that? And at the end of the day, do you want him to concede?”
You get the idea: Trump will be the center of the media universe for the foreseeable future, even after the inauguration. For Biden, it’s the easiest question to receive: “Trump said this; Trump tweeted that. How do you respond?”
It should be noted that Kamala Harris, the most invisible vice-presidential candidate in modern history, has yet to hold a press conference or press gaggle in any capacity since being chosen as Biden’s running mate months ago. She did make a statement before Monday’s press conference and was on stage with her boss during the presser. But not one reporter bothered to ask her even one question.
Compare the media’s kid-gloves questioning of Biden to their interrogation of then-President-elect Donald Trump at his first press conference during his transition. (Note: Two days before the press conference, the heads of intelligence agencies at the time released a report stating that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election, leading many reporters in the room to make that the singular focus of the press conference.) From that first Trump presser:
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. The media don’t love Biden the same way they swooned over Obama, but they’re determined to prop up their boss as long as he’s still alive and making public appearances.
ROGER SIMON: Media ‘Calling’ Elections in a Democracy Is Postmodern Fascism.
More or less unnoticed for decades, the media habit of “calling” elections—presidential or otherwise—is not only a betrayal of the democratic process, it has become a leading factor in a new form of post-modern fascism in which we are apparently living.
Saturday morning at 11:45AM, while President Trump was off playing golf, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, the AP and USA Today, virtually in unison as if operating on some sort of pre-arranged cue, all made the call for Joe Biden with Fox News joining them all of ten minutes later.
It was like Pravda and Izvestia working together for what they assured the Soviet public was their own good.
Moments after that, horns were honking with joy and people dancing in the streets from Los Angeles to New York.
After all, the witch was dead. Which old witch? The orange witch! Ding-dong the wicked witch was dead!
Biden was our 46th president because the media declared it so.
Of course, this was nonsense. The election is still on-going, still undecided, and will be for several weeks of legal challenges, many of them justified.
What occurred at 11:45 was basically a media psy-op (psychological operation), designed to depress and silence the roughly seventy-one million who voted for Trump and rally the seventy-some million, if they indeed exist, who voted for Biden.
The truth is, in a democracy and/or a democratic republic …
No media organization has the right to “call” an election. Period.
It’s a Big Lie squared.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. And it’s a win-win for them either way. Demoralize Trump supporters now, and if Trump’s lawyers somehow salvage the election for him, send him into his second term with a Dubya-style asterisk, just as they did in 2016.
Related: SD Gov. Kristi Noem to former Clinton-Gore flack George Stephanopoulos: ‘We Gave Al Gore 37 Days to Run the Process’ — Trump Voter Deserve Same Consideration.
More: Media Cheered on Stacey Abrams for Challenging Election But Trashes Trump for Same Thing.
MICHAEL WALSH: Democrats and Media Collude to Steal Presidential Election.
The president’s legal team is already filing suits and exploring other legal avenues. If this actually turns out to be a way to finally convince the public of the fundamental dishonesty of Tammany-style elections, great. But the optics are terrible: “see!” the Democrats exclaim, “we told you he wouldn’t go quietly!”
Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t do his country any favors by blocking the Supreme Court from considering the legality of Pennsylvania’s arbitrary extension of the election period when his vote deadlocked the court in October. Maybe now, sometime after the next inauguration, they’ll rule on the illegality of it, with Amy Coney Barrett finally being allowed to have a say, but by then it will be too late.
Ah, but the “integrity” of the Court will have been upheld.
Also, where is Attorney General Bill Barr, the do-nothing AG who is starting to make the hapless Jeff Sessions look good? Granted, under our constitution, the states are tasked with running their own separate elections for national office.
But Barr’s flaccid leadership at Justice has been a disgrace, as has been U.S. attorney John Durham’s supposed investigation into the origins of the “Russian collusion” hoax. Where are the results? The American people had a right to know if any crimes were committed by the Deep State munchkins four years ago—but no. In the interests of “getting convictions,” Durham couldn’t bring himself either to bring indictments or dismiss speculation before the election, when it might have made a difference.
Trump should fire them both, today. If this is indeed the last three months of his administration, immediate wholesale dismissals of political appointees should be the order of the day: Christopher Wray at the FBI, who would rather investigate phantom nooses in NASCAR garages than clean his own house; Gina Haspel at the CIA, Deep State Central and an agency badly in need from top-down reformation if not actual elimination.
This, after all, was the issue upon which the president was elected. There’s still plenty of time for him to make good on that pledge. Up and down the federal government, meaningful changes can still be wrought, and a newly liberated Trump could and should finally act on his desires to drain as much of the Swamp as he can before ceding power.
Media Power
Whatever happens, one change must be wrought: the power of the media to declare outcomes must be broken. Who died and made the Associated Press and the cable networks the arbiters of the election? Who gave them the power to “call” the states for one candidate or another? There’s nothing either legal or constitutional about this.
With reporters having abandoned all pretense of fairness in covering this president, why should anyone believe a thing they say? For four years we’ve read in the New York Times—the Pravda of today—that the president “falsely,” “baselessly,” or “without evidence” made a statement with which they disagree. If the Times and other publications have unilaterally abandoned their promises of fairness and objectivity (and they have), why can’t we reciprocate?
With the first amendment already abrogated—something the journalists have cheered as long as it doesn’t apply to them—perhaps it’s time to rethink the whole “freedom of the press” thing along with freedom of speech, et al. Holding the media responsible for libel by reversing the Sullivan decision—something Justice Clarence Thomas has signaled he’d be open to—would be a good start.
In short, make the media suffer for what they’ve put the country through. Now that would be “change” the country could believe in.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines to understand that they’ll never learn a thing from their election coverage: Trump’s still president but The Atlantic’s already ‘laying the groundwork for ‘Worse Than Trump.’
BERNARD GOLDBERG: American Journalism 2020: R.I.P.
As a personal favor, I ask you to please not laugh out loud when I say: Let’s take journalists at their word when they tell us the only reason they’re not running the Hunter Biden story is that, because they’re unbiased, honest, trustworthy professionals, they don’t want to traffic in an unsubstantiated smear campaigns.”
Okay, you can laugh your heads off now.
Let’s be generous and say that at the outset they had reasonable concerns. How could they know if the emails were real? The story might be Russian disinformation. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer and pal, is involved — that’s a reason to be skeptical. The story broke in the New York Post, a tabloid owned by the conservative tycoon Rupert Murdoch. Fox News, another Murdoch property, ran with the story. How could they even know the computer in question belonged to Hunter Biden? Isn’t the computer repairman almost blind? And what a coincidence, they say, that all of this comes out just days before the presidential election!
It’s not their reasoning, dishonest as it is, that’s so annoying. It’s the sanctimony of these journalists that’s galling. They’re not running the story because they don’t want to be participants in a smear campaign that might affect a presidential election – and they want us to really believe that?
Let’s make sure we understand that these are the same people who ran story after story about a fake dossier that was packed with lies about Donald Trump.
They’re the same people who ran countless stories informing us that Donald Trump was a Russian asset.
These are the same noble journalists who gave Adam Schiff more airtime than their own anchors get – all because he said he had solid proof that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
Where was their concern for authenticity and their aversion to smear campaigns back then? Do they think reasonable people don’t notice how hypocritical – and corrupt – they are?
So if the story about Hunter Biden and his father Joe were about Donald Trump and his son or daughter, are we supposed to think that these journalists would show the same restraint they’re now showing?
Do they think anyone who’s been paying attention would actually believe that?
And speaking of American Journalism: RIP: Glenn Kessler, Brian Stelter laud NBC News for adding an editor’s note to its piece on ‘four more years of George.’
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines who have gone all-in to drag an aging Biden across the finish line.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Washington Post calls on media to report Hunter Biden leaks as foreign disinformation, even if it ‘probably’ isn’t.
Related: With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story.
QUESTION ASKED: Biden Yelling at Reporters Is Okay?
Over the weekend, CBS News producer Bo Erickson asked a very mild question on what is apparently supposed to be a forbidden topic, his family’s financial wheeling and dealing: “Mr. Biden, what is your response to the New York Post story about your son, sir?”
Biden lashed out like the CBS guy was somehow from Fox News: “I know you’d ask it. I have no response. It’s another smear campaign. It’s right up your alley. They’re the questions you always ask.”
This is remarkably similar to last fall, when Fox’s Peter Doocy dared to ask about Hunter Biden’s gigs: “Mr. Vice President, how many times have you ever spoken to your son about his overseas business dealings?” Biden claimed: “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” That was implausible then, and it’s ridiculous now. The New York Post report puts Joe Biden in a meet-and-greet with Hunter’s client at Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian oil company.
When Doocy continued, Biden yelled at him: “Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum. And he’s using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me.” Biden claimed “Everybody looked at this, and everybody’s looked at it and said there’s nothing there,” and then yelled at Doocy “Ask the right questions!”
Translation: “The right questions” means never unspool a question about anything having to do with the Biden clan’s lucrative and suspicious lobbying based on their government connections.
Long before Biden started “slowing down,” he’s had quite a history of lashing out at reporters, most of whom who take it, because they’re Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and don’t want to upset their boss. He’s also lashed at voters as well:
● Biden Snaps At Reporter For Asking About Bombshell New York Post Reports, Does Not Deny.
● Biden calls woman ‘lying dog-faced pony soldier’ at N.H. campaign event.
● How Joe Biden Gets Away With Calling A Voter A Fat, Dumb, Liar.
● Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deploy the Charlottesville hoax to stir up racial pain and anger.
● ‘Classy:’ Joe Biden Snaps At Reporter After Being Asked About Hunter’s Paternity Test.
● Bullying Biden Yells at Fox’s Doocy: ‘Ask the Right Questions!’
● Biden Accused of Sexism After Remarks to Female Moderator.
● Biden Explodes When Confronted On Lying About Charlottesville. Video Proves Biden Wrong.
● Joe Biden Says There Are Three Genders; Grabs Student’s Arm When She Asks ‘What Are They?’
And these classics from the Obama era:
● VP Biden’s Office Apologizes For Locking Reporter In Storage Closet During Fundraiser.
● Vengeance: Biden’s Office Seeks Investigation Into Unfriendly Journalist.
And of course, ground zero, from 1988: Why Joe Biden’s First Campaign for President Collapsed After Just 3 Months.
Last month, the New York Daily News quoted Biden as saying “‘Presidents of the United States should be presidential and lead by example as well as make clear exactly where they stand. Getting down in the gutter where the president does…that’s not the job of the president,’ Biden said. ‘If we were behind a barn somewhere it would be a different thing.’”
Between Biden’s evasiveness over the court packing question and anger at both journalists and reporters, he’s failed at both of his self-stated goals.
THIS IS CNN: CNN White House correspondent amplifies Democratic disinformation.
Just another day of establishment media types blindly amplifying a contrived left-wing talking point.
It is so weird that this keeps happening!
On Sunday, Democratic operatives pulled a Katie Couric, doctoring an interview of a Republican Senate candidate to make him appear unprepared, ignorant, and easily flummoxed.
Elena Kuhn of the Michigan Democratic Party was among the first to share the altered video, which purports to show Republican Michigan Senate candidate John James awkwardly dodging a question about how he plans to protect Michiganders with preexisting conditions. In real life, however, James gave a lengthy response to the question.
But for some in the press, seeking context is apparently not as important or valuable as the say-so of a Democratic operative.
“Revealing,” said CNN White House correspondent John Harwood as he promoted the 47-second clip shared by Kuhn with his more than 411,000 social media followers. Just a quick reminder: The Republican Party let Harwood moderate a GOP primary debate in 2016.*
* * * * * * * * *
None of these remarks, by the way, are included in the video circulated by Democratic staffers and certain members of the press.
One can dispute the merits of James’s overall response, but it is a straight falsehood to claim he was caught flat-footed by the question and had nothing to say except to assert that he is not a politician. As it turns out, James had quite a lot to say on the topic.
There is no excuse for why people like Harwood would share the doctored video. They can see it originates from Democratic staffers. They know the video gives an incomplete picture of James’s response. They know there is missing context.
They just don’t care.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
* Flashbacks:
● CNBC Hack John Harwood Is Really, Really Upset That Al-Baghdadi Was Killed.
● NYT/CNBC’S John Harwood Advises Hillary Campaign, Gloats About Provoking Trump At Debate.
● CNBC’s John Harwood Has No Business Moderating A GOP Presidential Debate.
● CNBC Alters Transcript of John Harwood Question About Hillary’s Email.
● “Everyone in the [CNBC] newsroom knows [John Harwood is] extremely far left.”
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY:
The DNC-MSM will of course let Biden get away with this. As Stephen Miller wrote last month in Spectator USA, “So why the tepid treatment of Biden by the media? It must go beyond simple bias or personal animosity for the current President. For almost four years now, journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over what I will call the ‘but her emails’ dilemma. Those who reported dutifully on the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server and spillage of classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids’ table…The journalist who asks the question that makes Uncle Joe stroke out at the podium would be treated as a professional leper. No book deals. No CNN or MSNBC contributor contracts. No cocktail parties.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES NOT HAPPY: Fed up Reporters Blow Lid off Kamala’s Limited Availability, One Says It ‘Has a Foul Stench of Insecurity.’
DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: ABC Town Hall Masquerades Anti-Trump Activists as ‘Uncommitted’ Voters.
Kutztown University professor Ellesia Blaque—whom ABC repeatedly identified as “uncommitted” in its coverage of the town hall—praised vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris during the Democratic primary, saying she would “be there, volunteering” for the California senator in Pennsylvania. The English professor was not shy about her partisanship, calling Trump a “f—ing moron,” “pathetic,” “pig,” “swine,” “punk ass,” and “LOOSER” (sic) in a slew of 2019 tweets. She is a self-described “liberal Democrat,” according to her Facebook profile, on the grounds that liberals “are not motivated by money or power, but by humanity and the needs of the people.”
Much more at the link, but what else would you expect from actual Democratic-operative-with-a-byline George Stephanopoulos?
DAVID HARSANYI: Why Trump’s Mideast Peace Deals Matter.
Earlier this month, the Palestinians, who had held veto power over Arab foreign policy for years, demand nothing less than a full condemnation of the Israel-UAE normalization. The Arab League gave them nothing.
Instead, a couple of weeks later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, and Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani of Bahrain all came to Washington to sign the Abraham Accords, in which all three promised to “to take the necessary steps to prevent any terrorist or hostile activities against each other on or from their respective territories, as well as deny any support for such activities abroad or allowing such support on or from their respective territories.”
It takes only a rudimentary knowledge of modern Middle East history to comprehend the immense changes going on in the region — and yet this seems lost on many contemporary journalists.
It isn’t lost on them. It’s that our infotainment industry is dominated almost entirely by Democratic operatives with bylines who choose to bury anything good Trump has accomplished.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: CNN Forum Throws Nothing But Softballs and Pathetic Biden Strikes Out Anyway.
Another on-brand topic here is the thorough awfulness of the American mainstream political media. Wanted in all fifty states for the murder of ethical journalism, the MSM is once again working overtime to help get a Democratic presidential candidate elected despite said candidate’s myriad flaws.
At the beginning of the month I wrote that I didn’t think that the media could prop up Joe Biden until the election.
I may have underestimated the hacks who pollute the MSM.
Democratic operatives with bylines.
HIDING BIDEN FROM TOUGH QUESTIONS HURTS HIM MORE THAN IT HELPS HIM:
So why the tepid treatment of Biden by the media? It must go beyond simple bias or personal animosity for the current President. For three-and-a-half years now journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over what I will call the ‘but her emails’ dilemma. Those who reported dutifully on the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server and spillage of classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids’ table. Focusing so much on what was, at the time, a considerable scandal, has been written off by many in the media as a blunder. They believe their friends and colleagues helped put Trump in the White House by focusing on a nothing-burger of a Clinton scandal when they should have been highlighting Trump’s foibles. It’s an error no journalist wants to repeat. Simply put: no journalist wants to be the one to quiz Biden on his record on criminal justice, his campaign staff bailing out rioters in Minneapolis, the handsiness allegations, his cozy family relationships with China, his involvement in the Flynn unmasking, or anything else that might trip up the one man standing between them and Trump’s second term.
The journalist who asks the question that makes Uncle Joe stroke out at the podium would be treated as a professional leper. No book deals. No CNN or MSNBC contributor contracts. No cocktail parties.
But here’s the deal, folks: none of this actually helps Joe Biden. It hurts him and his campaign. When the debates kick off at the end of the month, Biden will not have a teleprompter, or aides he can defer to or friendly journalists from the Atlantic or CNN he can point to for a fact check. The second he calls upon the moderator to become a referee in his favor, his campaign slips.
You don’t have to “think” of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, when they’re acting explicitly like that every day.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: What media/Dem coordination? Biden campaign has already held a press call about ‘appalling allegations’ in The Atlantic’s crumbling hit piece about Trump.
Related: “Morning Joe now airing a ‘VoteVets’ ad feat. parents of fallen servicemen saying ‘my son was not a loser.’ Amazing how quickly they were able to produce a commercial corresponding w/ an article that just came out yesterday.”
More: Atlantic boss explains why he used unnamed sources in report about Trump insulting dead soldiers:
During a Friday morning interview on CNN, Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the story, defended using four anonymous sources with “firsthand knowledge” who claimed that Trump called dead soldiers “losers” and dead Marines “suckers.” The report has been denied by several current and former members of the administration who were on the trip during which the president allegedly made the remarks.
“They don’t want to be inundated with angry tweets and all the rest. And we push hard, and that’s why you have to sort of do this reporting with even more belt-and-suspenders approach. You know, dotted i’s and crossed t’s and find multiple sources for it,” he explained on New Day.
Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Bad Twitter ratios. One of these things is not like the other, and as usual, an awfully chickenshit excuse from Goldberg.
BIDEN: I Am ‘Prepared’ To ‘Shut’ The United States ‘Down’ To Stop The Coronavirus.
As Stephen Miller tweets, “The first shutdown wasn’t on presidential orders or authority (because it doesn’t exist). It was on governors. So the follow up here naturally of course was on what authority will President Biden ‘Shut down’ the country. Right? That was the follow up? … Right?“
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the absence of that question makes perfect sense.
In April, the New York Times ran the headline, “Trump Insists He Has ‘Total’ Authority to Supersede Governors.” Googling a similar headline with Biden’s name this week doesn’t bring up an immediate response.
Related: “Biden has fought a pandemic before. It did not go smoothly.”
Don’t get cocky, to coin an Insta-phrase.
Oh, and speaking of Biden shutting down the United States: Biden: “We Are Going To Get Rid of Fossil Fuels.”
FORMER OBAMA SPEECHWRITER LAUGHS AT MEDIA CLAIMS KAMALA HARRIS IS A “MODERATE.”
Of course, Democratic party operatives with bylines are happy to play the game: NBC is a Joke: Harris ‘Under New Scrutiny’…For Being ‘Not Progressive Enough.’
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Health questions for Biden off-limits for media, unlike Reagan, McCain and Trump.
PRESS AWAKENS FROM 2009-2016 SLUMBER: Trump’s ‘Political Masterstroke’ Leaves Press Scrambling to Apply Double Standard.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party Operatives with bylines, and their eight year hibernation makes perfect sense.
THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND MARCHING ORDERS AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Media offer a glimpse of what journalism will look like under President Biden: Subservient.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS. As spotted by Jim Treacher:
Shot:
Chaser:
Curiously, none of the articles this weekend by the Chicago Sun Times, ABC’s Chicago affiliate, CBS’s Chicago affiliate, and NBC’s Chicago affiliate mention the July protests or Lightfoot’s blessings. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their amnesia makes perfect sense.
THINK OF THE PRESS AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Germany’s economy fared worse than the US economy, but Trump-hating journalists are mangling numbers to convince you otherwise.
ROGER KIMBALL: The lunacy of the ‘largely peaceful protest.’
By now, the mainstream media has perfected the mendacious gambit with a sort of stereoscopic vision, saying one thing while also saying the opposite. One of the best of the bunch came a few days ago when ABC, reporting on efforts of those ‘largely peaceful’ rioters to burn down a courthouse in Oakland, acknowledged that some of the ‘largely peaceful’ protesters ‘smashed windows, spray-painted graffiti and pointed lasers at officers’.
Lasers? Yes, they’re a new favorite. As White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany noted when describing other incidents, ‘A federal agent’s hand was impaled by planted nails, another federal agent was shot with a pellet gun, leaving a wound deep to the bone, and tragically, three federal officers were likely left permanently blinded by the rioters using lasers pointed directly into their eyes.’
But then ABC got out the sugar and tweeted this about the Oakland incident: ‘Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified.’
‘Intensified’? ‘A peaceful demonstration intensified’? The Twittersphere loved that one. It brought out everyone’s inner imp. The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto was quick off the mark with a delectable contribution to the general levity: ‘It became even more intensely peaceful,’ he wrote in response to ABC’s absurd tweet. And Steve Hayward deserves honorable mention for this gem: ‘If ABC News covered Pearl Harbor: “Honolulu, Dec. 8: A peaceful flyover by Japanese pilots intensified yesterday…’
Jerry Nadler goes one better than his Democratic Party operatives with bylines: Nadler Says Antifa Violence In Portland a ‘Myth’ (Video).
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND THE QUESTION ANSWERS ITSELF: Why Isn’t California Criticized Like Florida and Texas on Covid-19?
SIX WEEKS, SIX CITIES, 600 MURDERS: “The single most important domestic issue of our time is not the rising number of new people testing positive for COVID-19. Deaths have hit all-time lows…The single most important issue, affecting some of the largest swaths of populations in America, is the scandal the media ignores even as it explodes in our faces. In only six weeks, city after city operated by entrenched Democrats have seen a massive expansion in lawlessness, violence, and murder. Stunningly, many news outlets seem gobsmacked and mystified at how or why such an explosion of lawlessness has occurred.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the media’s apparent lack of interest makes perfect sense.
Related: Chicago Mayor Lightfoot: ‘We’re Making Progress’ After 13 Bodies Lie Dead in the Street.
More: At Least 20 Peopled Killed in the ‘Mostly Peaceful’ George Floyd Riots.
“WE ARE WITNESSING AN INDUSTRY-WIDE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN:” New York Times compares America’s enduring caste system to India, Nazi Germany.
They really did; I’m not sure why the Times’ Democratic Party operatives with bylines didn’t get the memo in time:
So will Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest get memory holed ala Song of the South, or simply have a warning before it airs again on TCM about all those racist sculptures in the film’s climax? Best to get a physical copy to be on the safe side. As Sonny Bunch warns: Want to fight corporate censorship? Buy physical media.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Seen on Facebook:
UPDATE (From Ed): Have the talking points gone out Journolist-style, or is this simply socialist groupthink? MSNBC Dubs Mount Rushmore as a ‘Racist’ ‘Symbol of White Supremacy.’
(Updated and bumped.)
JOHN HINDERAKER: SCIENCE AND “SCIENCE.”
When Walz issued his harsh shutdown order, he attributed it to “science” in the form of an allegedly super-duper Minnesota Model that forecast doom from COVID in terms of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. It later turned out that the model was created by a couple of graduate students over a weekend, but never mind. It was “science” and it was the basis for the governor’s assumption of dictatorial control over six million lives.
When Version 1 of the model turned out to be an embarrassment, woefully wrong by every metric, it was succeeded by a less pessimistic Version 2. Version 2 then fell to Version 3, which was issued on May 13, less than seven weeks ago. Version 3 was supposedly “science” informed by experience. How did it fare? My colleague John Phelan tells the sad story. . . .
So the model was off by a factor of 24. This might be funny, except for the vast damage that our governor has inflicted on Minnesotans in reliance on politicized “science.” A dart board would have produced a far more accurate result than the much-touted “Minnesota Model.”
A cynic might suspect that Governor Walz knows the model is ridiculous, but simply enjoys exercising dictatorial powers under his own emergency decree–a decree that apparently continues in force in perpetuity. He also knows that he has the press on his side. If a Republican governor bungled an issue as badly as Walz has bungled COVID, in reliance on a pathetic arithmetic construct that is wrong by a factor of 24 times, it would be the the scandal of the age. But every reporter in Minnesota, with one exception (not counting Scott) runs interference for Governor Walz and his brutally failed policies. Why? Because they are loyal Democrats, and they went into journalism to serve their party.
Plus: “This is a Minnesota story, but the same story has been replicated in many states around the country.”
Think of them as — at best — Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong. Though thinking of them as running a Psychological Warfare operation against the American people won’t take you far wrong either.
MEDIA ARE PLAYING GAMES YET AGAIN WITH ANONYMOUS RUSSIA LEAKS.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76! “Biden said Thursday. ‘Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.’ Wow! That is quite a pandemic, right? What he meant to say, I hope, is that the death toll as of Thursday was 122,000 according to Johns Hopkins…The way the press has kowtowed to Biden so far in the campaign, they may as well be paid staffers.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.™
TWITTER ADMITS ‘ERROR,’ REINSTATES ZEROHEDGE AFTER BANNING IT IN LATE JANUARY FOR CALLING OUT CHINA.
UPDATE: Democratic Party operatives with bylines at NBC attempting to starve the competition:
Google blocked The Federalist from its advertising platform after the NBC News Verification Unit brought the project to its attention. ZeroHedge had already been demonetized prior to NBC News’ enquiry, Google said. ZeroHedge and The Federalist did not respond to requests for comment.
Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said it found advertisements for many companies that had otherwise made public statements supporting Black Lives Matter and the recent protests running on the websites.
“We found that lots of those companies are inadvertently funding through their advertising content that is outright racist in defense of white supremacism and contains conspiracy theories about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement,” he said.
Google has banned various websites from its advertising platform in recent years, mostly targeting fake news operations.
ZeroHedge and The Federalist have become well known in recent years for publishing far-right articles on a variety of subjects. On the recent protests, ZeroHedge published an article claiming that protests were fake, while The Federalist published an article claiming the media had been lying about looting and violence during the protests, which were both included in the report sent to Google.
Notice the “far right articles” language above, as NBC’s “objective” news division tacitly declares which side of the aisle it’s on.
(Via Newsalert.)
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Network Evening News Shows Censor Nasdaq Topping 10,000 Milestone for ‘First Time.’
Obligatory:
WELL, THIS DOESN’T FIT TODAY’S NARRATIVE:
● Jail records show most arrested in Minneapolis riots have Minnesota addresses.
—KMSP, the Minneapolis Fox TV affiliate, today.
● “[Adam Leggat, a former British Army counterterrorism officer who now works as a security consultant specializing in crowd management for the Densus Group] said intelligence reports from his colleagues indicate most of the hard-core protesters in Minneapolis are far-left or anarchists, and that far-right groups have not yet made a significant appearance. He said looting is typically done by locals – usually people with no criminal record who just get caught up in the moment.”
—USA Today, err, today.
Found via Jon Gabriel, who tweets, “As some of us have been saying since this began. Most the violence is orchestrated by privileged white Antifa. Catch up, media.”
Catch up? The Democratic Party politicians and their operatives with bylines have a narrative they’re hastily trying to construct.
UPDATE: “One of the ironies of post-Great Awokening politics is that white, lefty politicians facing violence from leftists within their own jurisdictions now have to reinterpret the violence as right-wing in order to assert the legitimacy of public order,” NRO’s Peter Spiliakos tweets.
“It seems like the looting of the CNN headquarters was the turning point that led pundits, political advisers, and govt officials to say ‘actually this is a white nationalist psyop’ which is hilarious,” Joe Gabriel Simonson of the Washington Examiner adds.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Media Mostly Silent After Biden’s Rapid Response Director Calls CBS Reporter Catherine Herridge a ‘Rightwing Hack.’
WHERE IS CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD AND WHY HASN’T SHE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT TARA READE?
Blasey Ford doesn’t support Tara Reade.
Okay, I don’t actually know that’s true. But Christine Blasey Ford wasn’t whisked away from earth in 2018. She’s still out there somewhere reading the news. She knows about Tara Reade and, so far, she hasn’t offered a word of public support about her allegation. That’s true even though Tara Reade made a point of saying she believed Christine Blasey Ford in her interview with Megyn Kelly.
Isn’t it pretty remarkable that Ford has remained silent? Has anyone in the media even tried to ask Blasey Ford if she believes Reade? Did reporters at every news outlet suddenly lose her number after the confirmation? Given the media comparisons between the two women over the past several weeks, it really does seem like an obvious avenue to pursue. So why hasn’t the media pursued it?
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the radio silence all makes perfect sense.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES DROP THE MASK: Four More “Exhausting” Years? Trump Reporters Mull Covering a Second Term.
WELL, WHY TRUST DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES? Mark Tapscott: ‘Journalism’ professors demand media censor Trump; show why public doesn’t trust journalists.
JOE BIDEN MIGHT NOT BE GUILTY, BUT CORPORATE MEDIA IS: Five weeks and 19 interviews later, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden has not been asked directly about the substantiated sexual assault accusations from Tara Reade.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all make sense:
#JOURNALISM: RealClearInvestigations: The NY Times Used to Correct Its Whoppers. But Not These Two. Here’s Why.
A fuller accounting by the Times is especially necessary because the media’s pushing of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories was central to an unprecedented and possibly criminal effort to subvert or remove a president under false pretenses. Unless the Times and other sources come clean about who was feeding them misleading and partisan information, we may never understand this momentous chapter of history.
Protecting confidential sources is, of course, one of the bedrocks of journalism. The free flow of information depends on people being able to share hard truths without jeopardizing their careers or lives.
But not when sources lie or mislead. When that happens, the confidentiality deal is off and “your responsibility would be to set the record straight,” Lynn Walsh, ethics chair of the Society of Professional Journalists, confirmed to me recently in a general conversation about SPJ’s standards for anonymous sourcing.
When sources engage in gross deception on a matter of such import, even committing national security crimes in the process, the news media involved should honor their higher duty – to their readers or viewers – to expose the malfeasance and correct the record.
There’s a less exalted incentive for the Times to revisit its reporting: damage control before the Justice Department releases the findings of prosecutor John H. Durham’s criminal probe of Trump-Russia’s origins.
The auguries, however, are not good.
Think of them as Democratic Party — or perhaps Chinese — operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.
DEMOCRACY DIES IN ORWELLIAN OBFUSCATION: “Developments in allegations against Biden amplify efforts to question his behavior,” the Washington Post claims, as they go out of the way to be obvious Democratic Party operatives with bylines. “‘As an editor, I regard this headline as a hate crime and I will be pressing charges first thing in the morning,’ Washington Examiner executive editor Seth Mandel reacted on Twitter.”
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES COVERING FOR THEIR BOSSES: Three Potential Biden Running Mates Appeared On Sunday Shows. None Were Asked About Sex Assault Allegations.
JONATHAN TURLEY: Joe Biden fuels election conspiracy theory while the media keeps quiet.
Biden left little doubt of Trump’s anti-democratic plan: “Mark my words: I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.” It is just the type of thing that a crazed guy in a tightly buttoned raincoat whispers to you on the subway. But Biden was not done. If you were on a recent online fundraiser, it probably felt like you could not change your seat as Biden grew uncomfortably close and went on to explain one of the key signs that revealed the conspiracy to him: the United States Postal Service.
Biden alleged that the Trump administration is pressuring the Postal Service to make changes in its operations as a condition for federal pandemic relief. Get it? As Biden explained, “Imagine threatening not to fund the post office. Now what in God’s name is that about? Other than trying to let the word out that he’s going to do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote. That is the only way he thinks he can possibly win.” Well, the other way would be that his opponent flees to the desert to live in a bunker and protect his mail and “precious bodily fluids.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their silence makes perfect sense. Evergreen:
MAN WHO DIED INGESTING FISH TANK CLEANER REMEMBERED AS INTELLIGENT, LEVELHEADED ENGINEER. Yes, the headline is in the typical trolling Washington Free Beacon style. But once you get past it:
“What bothers me about this is that Gary was a very intelligent man, a retired [mechanical] engineer who designed systems for John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa, and I really can’t see the scenario where Gary would say, ‘Yes, please, I would love to drink some of that Koi fish tank cleaner,'” one of his close friends told the Washington Free Beacon. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Lenius passed away on March 22 after he and his wife, Wanda Lenius, drank sodas that she had mixed with a fish tank cleaner not intended for human consumption, Wanda Lenius told the Free Beacon.
Trump critics and the news media have held up his death as a warning against following the president’s amateur medical advice, with some claiming that Trump is “lethal,” has “blood on his hands,” and should be tried at the Hague for “crimes against humanity.”
Those who know Gary Lenius, however, say they are troubled by how he has been portrayed in the media and can’t imagine him agreeing to drink an aquarium treatment. “I would like people to know that Gary was not the fool that some of the media stories and comments are depicting him to be,” said the same friend. “I really don’t think Gary knew what he was taking.”
Lenius spent over three decades as a senior engineer at John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa. He met Wanda in 2000. In 2012, he purchased a home in a gated mountain community in Mesa, Ariz. After he retired, the couple moved southwest full time.
Read the whole thing; Democratic Party operatives with bylines aren’t happy that the WFB did actual journalism: Brave Reuters journo is super-pissed that the Washington Free Beacon did the MSM’s job for them — and did it better.
THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE:
More from Byron York here: How does Nancy Pelosi get away with blocking desperately needed aid?
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: New York Times Allowed Biden Team to Edit Story on Sexual Assault Allegation.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Why the mainstream media won’t take Tara Reade seriously.
IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Times editor Dean Baquet admits that his paper is staffed by Democratic Party operatives with bylines — and airbrushes: In a column headlined, “The Times Took 19 Days to Report an Accusation Against Biden. Here’s Why,” former BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith asks Baquet:
I want to ask about some edits that were made after publication, the deletion of the second half of the sentence: “The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.” Why did you do that?
Baquet replied:
Even though a lot of us, including me, had looked at it before the story went into the paper, I think that the campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct. And that’s not what the sentence was intended to say.
I’m pretty sure the 2020 Trump campaign won’t have the same veto power on Times articles.
It’s always nice to see major legacy media figures drop the mask of objectivity, usually inadvertently. Baquet’s admission today is reminiscent of CBS’s Scott Pelley’s 2017 interview with blogger and prolific tweeter Mike Cernovich, where to paraphrase Breitbart.com’s Ezra Dulis, Pelley lost a fight rigged in his favor:
Scott Pelley: How would you describe what you do?
Mike Cernovich: I’m a lawyer, author, documenter, filmmaker, and journalist.
Scott Pelley: And how would you describe your website?
Mike Cernovich: Edgy, controversial content that goes against the dominant narrative.
Scott Pelley: What’s the dominant narrative?
Mike Cernovich: The dominant narrative is that there are good guys and there are bad guys. The good guys are liberals. Everybody on the right is a bad guy. Let’s find a way to make everybody look bad. Let’s tie marginal figures who have no actual influence to anybody we cannot overwrite. That’s the narrative.
Scott Pelley: That’s not a narrative I’m familiar with. Who’s narrative is that?
In 2008, Pelley compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers. Ben Rhodes, who until January was Obama’s deputy national security advisor, is the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes. John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.” Katie Couric, whom Pelley succeeded as Evening News host, read a poem on her broadcast to shill for the passing of Obamacare, and after leaving CBS had a Rathergate-like moment of her own, attempting to marginalize gun owners.
But back to the transcript of Pelley and Cernovich, where eventually, the hunter is captured by his prey:
Scott Pelley: You wrote in August a story about Hillary Clinton’s medical condition the headlines said, “Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s disease. Position confirms.” That’s quite a headline.
Mike Cernovich: Yeah, Dr. Ted Noel had se-sent a story to me anonymously, that I checked out, analyzing her medical condition. And –
Scott Pelley: It isn’t true.
Mike Cernovich: How do you know?
Scott Pelley: Well, she doesn’t seem to have any signs of Parkinson’s disease.
Mike Cernovich: She had a seizure and froze up walking into her motorcade that day caught by a citizen journalist.
Scott Pelley: Did you, well, she had pneumonia. I mean –
Mike Cernovich: How do you know?
Scott Pelley: Well, because that’s what was reported.
Mike Cernovich: By whom? Who told you that?
Scott Pelley: Well, the campaign told us that.
Mike Cernovich: Why would you trust a campaign?
To ask the question is to answer it. In a post headlined “‘Shamefully Stupid’: CBS’s Scott Pelley Loses a Fight Rigged in His Favor,” Breitbart.com’s Ezra Dulis adds in response, “Pelley has no answer for those six words — ‘Why would you trust the campaign’ — as his entire profession goes berserk with literal-minded fact checks for every tweet from President Trump. Pelley also seems to forget the fakery that Clinton World attempted hours before its pneumonia statement — with the candidate smiling and waving outside her daughter’s apartment, greeting a little girl, and assuring reporters everything was a-okay.”
UPDATE: NY Times Editor Admits Editing Article on Biden Sexual Assault Allegation After Campaign Complained:
Baquet failed to muster a coherent response beyond noting that the standard for reporting on such allegations is “very subjective.” He explained that the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in 2018, which included testimony from a woman, Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in high school, constituted a “hot story” that required a “different news judgement.”
Kavanaugh vehemently denied Ford’s allegation, and the Times did not interview anyone who recalled Ford telling them about the alleged incident at the time. Baquet, in the interview with Smith, cited the importance of “contemporaneous” conversations in determining the credibility and newsworthiness of sexual assault allegations. Like he said, the standard is “very subjective.”
Baquet also defended the Times‘s decision to immediately publish Julie Swetnick’s allegations against Kavanaugh. Swetnick, a client of former attorney and convicted felon Michael Avenatti, accused Kavanaugh of gang rape at frat parties. She turned out to be about as credible as her attorney. But the Times chose not to spend two weeks investigating her claims, Baquet said, because Kavanaugh “was already in a public forum in a large way” and had become “the biggest political story in the country.” Apparently the same can not be said of Joe Biden or the 2020 presidential election.
As Matt Whitlock of the National Republican Senatorial Committee tweets, Baquet’s admission today “should be a major media scandal, but many of the major media watch dogs have ignored it entirely because it didn’t happen on Fox News.”
(Classical reference in headline.)
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Harsh, but fair.
Will you still have a song to sing, when the Razor Boy comes and takes your fancy narrative away?
FALSE MEDIA NARRATIVE OF RED STATE NEGLIGENCE IN WUHAN VIRUS RESPONSE: The hardest hit states so far are blue states. So why is the media spending disproportionate amounts of time attacking red states?
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Earlier: Experts Give Wyoming an ‘F’ for Social Distancing, Which Is All You Need to Know About Experts.
CONGRESS IS MOVING AT THE SPEED OF PELOSI: Pelosi: We’ll take up the bill on Friday after recalling the House.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines to understand how they would be covering Congress’s Pangaea-esque pace if it were led by a Republican:
UPDATE (Charlie): You all do realize they could pass it by unanimous consent without recalling the house?
WHY, IT’S LIKE THEY’RE ACTUALLY DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, OR SOMETHING: CNN Commentator Admits On CNN, Press ‘Wants Trump to Be Defeated.’
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Playboy Journalist Who Defended Katie Hill Failed to Disclose He Dated Her.
Earlier: “So yes, I recognize that I had power, but also it just wasn’t like that at the time … I was a f**king person that was a few years older than her, and we got wrapped up in this movement of trying to do something, and I happened to be the face of it. But to me, she was just as responsible for it, you know?”
WITNESS NO MORE — HUNTER BIDEN EMBRACES LIFE AS AN ARTIST, AND THE NYT IS HERE FOR IT.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the whitewashing all makes sense.
HE’S NOT WRONG: Attorney General William Barr Skewers ‘Remarkably Monolithic’ Liberal Press. Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.
WILL REPUBLICANS BE POUNCING* OR SEIZING? Will Bernie Sanders’ long-ago praise of Socialist regimes hurt Democrats in November? If Sanders is the nominee, some Democrats worry Trump will hammer him on his long-buried words in defense of governments in Nicaragua, Cuba and the USSR.
Well, we know why those words were “long buried:”
Similarly, note that for NBC, “The issue is not Bernie’s support for dictatorships. The issue is Republicans pointing out Bernie’s support for dictatorships,” Natalie Johnson, Senate press secretary tweets.
Think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense:
* For what it’s worth, the Grauniad believes it will be pouncing: Donald Trump pounces on reports Russia is seeking to help Bernie Sanders.
THINK OF THE PRESS NOT AS BRAVE FIREFIGHTERS, WHICH THEY’RE NOT, BUT AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, WHICH THEY ARE, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Media silence on voter registration attack deepens our divide.
In the hours and days after Gregory Timm plowed his vehicle into a tent of Republican Party volunteers registering voters in the parking lot of Kernan Village Shopping Center in Jacksonville, Florida, national coverage of the event has been alarmingly lacking.
Local news channel WJXT reported days later on the arrest report, which showed Timm telling the sheriff’s office his “disapproval of Trump” was the motivating factor for the attack. He showed the sheriff’s office a self-recorded video of him driving straight at the volunteers, expressing frustration that the video cut out before “the good part.” Even then, as I write this, the best the New York Times could muster was wire coverage.
No teams of reporters were sent to uncover his dark motivations, upbringing, or political leanings. No psychological profiles have been written up, nor have any experts weighed in on how this is a growing threat. These are all tools that would have been used by an army of reporters if Timm had been a Trump supporter plowing into Democratic Party volunteers registering voters.
The problem isn’t that Timm’s attack on the GOP wasn’t covered by most of the media. It’s that it wasn’t covered with the same voracious appetite news organizations have whenever someone who is even peripherally associated with the Right does something to a Democrat.
This isn’t whataboutism; this is realism. . . . There would have been a week’s worth of cable news coverage, several nationwide protests, and someone calling for a national conversation by now had the victims of Timm’s attack been supporting anyone but Trump.
It’s simply a fact that the journalistic class for the most part sees Republicans as deplorables whose death, silencing, or oppression is largely to be approved of, or at least not made a big deal of. This is why the deplorable class, in turn, regards the press as enemies of the people. Because they’re the people the press is inimical to.
NO ENEMIES ON THE LEFT: Where was the media on this act of political violence? It doesn’t count when it’s committed by leftists.
The suspect allegedly said that he was motivated to ram the tent because of his distaste for Trump and because ’it’s like someone shitting on your grave’, whatever that means. He also took several videos of the incident, but told police that he did not capture the ‘good part’ where he drove at the volunteers.
Thankfully no one was hurt or killed, but this is just the latest example of a deranged Trump-loather targeting political opponents with violence. The most infamous example, of course, was the GOP baseball shooting carried out by a former Sen. Bernie Sanders volunteer in Alexandria, Va., which nearly killed then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed. Virginia GOP Rep. Tom Garrett required a police presence at a town hall event because of credible threats to his family and dog. Independent journalist Andy Ngo was beaten over the head while covering an Antifa rally in Portland. A Trump supporter got attacked with a crowbar in New Jersey because he wore a shirt featuring the president. The list goes on.
Yet none of these events leads to suggestions by establishment media outlets that the Democratic party or cable news anchors and pundits might . [sic — Ed] Instead, much ado has been made about Trump referring to the media as ‘fake news’ or the ‘enemy of the people,’ statements the media claims make them less safe.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and this bias by omission makes perfect sense.
Related: At the Bulwark, they’re conserving conservatism by strangely conserving their emotional response to this story: The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes scolds conservatives over the anti-Trump Florida van driver story.
(Classical reference in headline.)
THEY DON’T CALL THEM DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES FOR NOTHING: Dan Mitchell: The Media’s Pervasively Dishonest Coverage of Trump’s New Budget.
RASHIDA TLAIB RETWEETS MODERN-DAY ‘BLOOD LIBEL’ AND MEDIA REMAINS SILENT.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the omertá makes perfect sense.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES SEETH WHEN REPUBLICAN CALLS REPORTER DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVE WITH BYLINE: Journalists Rage After Arizona Republican Martha McSally Calls CNN Reporter a ‘Liberal Hack.’
But he’s one of the very few John McCain-approved CNN reporters!
Curiously, as Jim Treacher notes, CNN’s Jake Tapper “sat there like a big dope while Scott Israel blamed Dana Loesch for the failures of his own department. That was less shocking to you than a senator calling one of your pals a hack.”
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Iran’s Messaging About The Downed Airliner Echoes Democrats and Liberal Media.
THE TOP MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE STORY OF 2019:
The Star Tribune is [Ilhan] Omar’s hometown newspaper. It has failed to follow up on its most-read story of 2019. It has failed to note that Omar’s 2009 “marriage” was performed by a Christian minister — yet one more sign of its fraudulence. Doing the work that the Star Tribune should have done, the Daily Mail contacted the minister this year. The minister isn’t talking either.
The Star Tribune has failed to report on the fallout from the news of Omar’s affair within the Somali community. It has failed to advance the “brother angle” of the story in any respect since June 23.
The story is still out there for the asking in Minneapolis’s Somali community. The fear of Omar is great, yet I was able to interview several knowledgeable sources in the Somali community over the past six months. These sources all confirmed that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is Omar’s brother. Wouldn’t a real newspaper want to stay on this story long enough to bring it to a conclusion one way or the other?
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the Strib’s silence makes perfect sense.
GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE NEWSEUM: “The Newseum is officially closing its doors today after 11 years of operation in the nation’s capital and you won’t find me shedding a tear.”
I doubt most people outside of the Democratic Party operatives with bylines class will be. But it’s quite a metaphor for the industry it celebrates when “The News Mausoleum” itself is dead.
SQUAD GOALS: ‘The Squad’ Is Silent About Anti-Semitic Stabbings in New York.
And there are plenty of Democratic Party operatives with bylines who are quite happy to help them maintain that silence.
BRIT HUME: One of the wonders of modern media is its failure to see through Adam Schiff.
Modern media? You spelled Democratic Party operatives with bylines wrong.
BLOOMBERG CONTINUES TO POACH HIS NEWSROOM TO STAFF UP 2020 CAMPAIGN.
Why, it’s as if the media are Democratic Party operatives with bylines, to coin an Insta-phrase.
AMID MEDIA’S RECESSION PANIC, US ENDS DECADE WITH ROBUST, BOOMING JOBS NUMBERS:
The final jobs report released in the 2010s shows the economy is both vibrant and growing.
This may or may not come as an unwelcome surprise to those who have spent the last several months warning that a recession is right around the corner.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that employers added an astounding 266,000 jobs in November, pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.5%, its lowest point since the year astronauts first walked on the moon.
The U6 unemployment rate, which is a broader measure of real unemployment, registered at 7.2% in November, which is on par with numbers reported over the summer. The labor force participation rate meanwhile held steady at about 63.2%, while wage growth actually increased by 3.1% over the last year.
In other words, it is an excellent report that “crushes” all earlier expectations, especially in the “jobs added” category. In fact, to put Friday’s numbers in perspective, Bloomberg News’s rosiest estimates predicted 180,000 new jobs. The actual number surpasses even those expectations.
This is good news for everyone — everyone, that is, except for the people who have cheered both explicitly and implicitly for a recession as a means to oust President Trump from office.
Democratic Party operatives with bylines typically get a case of what Virginia Postrel dubbed “Depression lust” in 2008 when there’s a Republican in the White House, and an election is coming up. Sure, it’s battlefield preparation for their presidential candidate, but their economic gloom is also driven by the contractions of their own industry: Media layoffs: 7,700 jobs cut this year at CNN, BuzzFeed, newspapers, and more.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO FALL IN LOVE, YOU JUST HAVE TO FALL IN LINE: Mike Bloomberg Tells Bloomberg News Reporters Complaining About Controversial 2020 Policy: ‘Learn to Live With’ It.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? BLOOMBERG NEWS IS COVERING MIKE BLOOMBERG THE SAME WAY CBSABCNBCPBSCNNWPNYT COVERED HILLARY AND OBAMA: CNN, FNC Rip Bloomberg News Covering for Boss in 2020.
UPDATE: Trump campaign says it will no longer credential Bloomberg News reporters over outlet’s 2020 policy.
Finally, a Republican president is thinking of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines.
(Updated and bumped.)
WHY, IT’S AS IF THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, OR SOMETHING: Bloomberg News will not investigate Michael Bloomberg or Democratic rivals.
(Updated and Bumped.)
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot: We Are All Socialists Now.
Cover story of Newsweek’s February 16 2009 issue, back when the opinion magazine was still owned by the Washington Post.
● Chaser: Washington Post Prints Blatantly False Article: ‘Barack Obama, Conservative.’
—NewsBusters, today.
Democracy dies in gaslighting. Exit quote from Tim Graham of NewsBusters: “Doesn’t someone in [the Post’s Outlook section] have more intellectual integrity than to publish this pratfall of an article? But this is apparently [David] Swerdlick’s modus operandi. He can defend Obama from the right, and defend Obama from the left. He really should be working for Obama.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it’s obvious that he is.
‘CLASSY:’ JOE BIDEN SNAPS AT REPORTER AFTER BEING ASKED ABOUT HUNTER’S PATERNITY TEST.
During a press gaggle on Thursday, Biden, 77, was asked to comment on the court filing. Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked, “I’m wondering if you have a comment on this report and court filing from Arkansas that your son Hunter made you a grandfather again.”
Biden was outraged. He dismissed the question, responding, “No. That’s a private matter. You’re a good man. You’re a good man. Classy.”
Hunter Biden, 49, agreed to take a DNA test to reaffirm his denials that he fathered a child with 28-year-old Lunden Roberts. Robert’s child made Biden a father of four. His other children, Naomi, 24, Finnegan, 19, and Maisy, 18, were from his first marriage with Kathleen Buhle.
Joe has done this throughout his career as a public servant, whenever he’s asked a question that is not DNC-approved. As I asked earlier: Do We Need To Start Discussing Joe Biden’s Anger Issues?
UPDATE: “You know what the saddest part of this video is?”, asks Benny Johnson of Turning Point USA. “The reaction of the other reporters. Not a single journo has the slightest curiosity about Hunter Biden — one of the most consequential people in politics today. The same cowards who covered up Epstein.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and both their reaction and Biden’s makes perfect sense.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: NPR Strikes Different Tone When Writing About Matt Bevin’s Election Fraud Claims Than Stacey Abrams.’
As Tim Graham of NewsBusters adds, “NPR’s online story was headlined ‘Skeptics Urge Bevin To Show Proof Of Fraud Claims, Warning Of Corrosive Effects’…NPR’s online headline last year on this story was ‘Georgia’s Stacey Abrams Admits Defeat, Says Kemp Used ‘Deliberate’ Suppression To Win.’”
I know I’m getting way over my skis for saying this, but just think of NPR as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Northwestern’s bungling student journalists were just copying the professionals.
On and on it goes: NPR fired a movie critic, David Edelstein, for making a joke about an infamous movie scene (that butter in “Last Tango in Paris”). ESPN hired the controversial commentator Rush Limbaugh and then fired the controversial commentator for producing controversial commentary, i.e. that a black quarterback had been overestimated for reasons of racial politics.
The strange thing is that while doing real journalism will get you fired or produce a groveling apology, inept journalism generally will not: Nobody actually got fired when Rolling Stone published a hard-hitting story in 2014 about a horrifying rape at the University of Virginia that turned out to be an utter fiction; managing editor Will Dana was permitted to make a graceful exit some months later without the stigma of being given the boot. The New York Times published a hit piece during the 2008 presidential campaign suggesting John McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist based on precisely squat (the paper’s own ombudsman confessed as much) and later published an absurd non-retraction retraction — after the election, in the face of litigation. Jim Rutenberg, the lead author on that article, still writes for the Times.
Read the whole thing, as needless to say, Kevin knows a thing or two firsthand about “professional” journalism’s cowardice in the face of the mob. Thinking of the MSM as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, does help to make a bit more sense of it all, however.
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: The Associated Press asks, “The Democratic presidential race started with a record six female candidates, but only one is polling in the top tier. Is it sexism or just politics?”
Why are Democratic Party operatives with social media accounts asking why the Democratic Party is a cesspit of sexism? (Perhaps it’s progress of a sort, since in 2008, Democratic Party operatives with bylines believed that the Democratic Party was a cesspit of racism.)
Classical reference in headline.)
#JOURNALISM: The media protected Jeffrey Epstein and crucified Brett Kavanaugh. Well, that’s just because they’re horrible people. And Democratic Party operatives with bylines.
THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITY FAIR: Emo, Childish Beto Supporters Think He Got ‘Punitive’ Media Coverage.
As I wrote a few hours before Beto kick-turned his skateboard out of the race, this is why a media that largely consists of Democratic Party operatives with bylines hurts their candidates. In the mid-1920s, H.L. Mencken wrote, “It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.” And a decent politician knew how to rise above that coverage. Today, anything less than glowing 5,000 word profiles to accompany Reagan-esque Vanity Fair covers by Annie Leibovitz (as Jon Gabriel noted last week at Ricochet, the source of our headline) is considered “punitive” media coverage.
Related: ABC’s Joy Behar Says Beto Shouldn’t Have Warned Americans He Was Going To Take Their Guns. “‘They should not tell everything they’re going to do,’ Behar jumped in then, suggesting that candidates shouldn’t warn Americans the gun confiscation was coming. ‘If you are going to take people’s guns away, wait until you get elected and then take them away. Don’t tell them ahead of time.’ [Meghan] McCain pushed back, adding, ‘By the way, that’s what people like me think you’re going to do, so I appreciate his honesty.’”
WHY, IT’S LIKE THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES OR SOMETHING: New York Times Reporter Sat On Public Records Challenging Warren’s Pregnancy-Discrimination Claim.
Evergreen:
SEE, THIS IS WHERE THE MEDIA BEING DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES HURTS THEIR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES: The “Bonfire of the Democratic Party’s Once-Rising Stars,” with forensic analysis by Jim Geraghty:
But the other lesson is that running for president is really hard, and a lot of these candidates have spent most of their careers in heavily Democratic areas and states where the political wind was always at their back. Gillibrand certainly wasn’t going to sweat Senate races in New York. Booker’s Newark and statewide races never had that much tension. Despite the redness of Texas overall, San Antonio and El Paso were dots of blue, meaning O’Rourke and Castro never faced tough general elections. (Credit O’Rourke for coming close against Cruz, but in the end all of that glowing coverage wasn’t because the media expected him to just “come close.”)
In a way, getting good press is just not that difficult for a young-ish Democratic lawmaker with decent public speaking skills. Just invite a big newspaper or magazine reporter to hang around for a few days, let them marvel as you charm little old ladies and speak some eighth-grade Spanish to a local Latino organization, offer some trite observations that “technology changes everything” and “government can do so much more if we only have the will,” and then roll up your sleeves and pose for your looking-off-in-the-distance photo shoot. Presto! Instant presidential “buzz.”
In contrast, when it comes to conservatives and Republicans, as Moe Lane wrote in 2011 before abandoning political blogging, “The Media hates you, and wants you to die in a fire.” That’s the first of his “Ten Media Truths for Conservative/Republican Legislators,” which remain valid to this day. As does this 2014 CNN article headlined: “Inside the GOP’s secret school,” on the Obama-era GOP’s disciplined approach to dealing with the media. Although at least one quote sounds remarkably dated post-2016:
Spicer and Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, embarked on an overhaul of the organization’s media operations, hiring web-fluent staffers, streamlining their surrogate database and stepping up their media-training operations to instill discipline over candidates. The latter move, Priebus said, became essential after witnessing Republican candidates up and down the ballot in 2012 ruin news cycles with offensive or tone-deaf comments on issues like abortion or rape.
“I’d rather have candidates being careful to a fault than, you know, having a fountain of blabber coming out of their mouth that’s not disciplined,” Priebus says. “We are training candidates, training state parties, training operatives to appreciate that communicating isn’t just a free-for-all, natural-born type of activity. People need to be trained and disciplined.”
If you’re not Donald Trump, that’s still excellent advice for a Republican politician dealing with a media that, unlike when reporting on youngish Democratic lawmakers with decent public speaking skills, hates you, and wants you to die in a fire.
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Anti-Trump Media Is Waging Psychological Warfare Against the American People.
After the 2016 election, the left quickly launched a new talking point, proclaiming “this is not normal” and in a way, they were right. It’s not normal for the losing party, in partnership with the media, to attempt to negate the results of a free and fair election because they didn’t like the outcome.
When the Washington Post and The New York Times treat the death of an ISIS leader with more sensitivity than they would for a group of innocent Catholic school students in MAGA hats or the president of the United States, we have crossed a line as a culture and a country.
The Democrats are still trying to undo the results of the 2016 election three years later, and the media is openly trying to assist them by going negative on Trump every single day.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their daily freakouts all make sense.
(Classical reference in headline.)
Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA), who resigned Sunday following allegations that she had an affair with a congressional staffer, was reportedly told to resign by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Radio host Joe Messina reported on his Monday program “The Real Side,” that Hill’s resignation was demanded by Pelosi after the speaker learned that staffers in Hill’s office confirmed her affair with Legislative Director Graham Kelly. The staffers reportedly acknowledged the affair to the House Ethics Committee, which opened an investigation into the allegations.
When Pelosi learned of this, Messina reported, she told Hill to resign.
In other news regarding Hill, as Stephen Miller tweets, “Man, [her] current twitter feed is a better lesson in media bias then I could ever hope to accomplish in 11 years of being on Twitter. Go check it out.” The gang’s all here:
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense, to coin an Insta-phrase. And as Jim Treacher adds regarding the above lineup, “It really is amazing. And it hasn’t occurred to any of them that if Nancy Pelosi wanted Hill around, she wouldn’t have resigned.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “She had sex with a staffer. Nancy gave her the boot. Media narrative: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!”
KAMALA THE COP STRIKES AGAIN: Harris Claims Giuliani Has ‘Broken Many Laws’, Can’t Name Any.
When your campaign can’t handle Democratic Party operatives with bylines such as CNN’s Anderson Cooper (in the above link), BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, and sucks at Photoshop memes, it’s officially not ready for primetime. Time for an upgrade?
‘SUCH HYPOCRITES!’: FORMER GOV. JAN BREWER (R-AZ) SLAMS MEDIA RESPONSE TO PELOSI FINGER-WAGGING.
Brewer was photographed poking her finger in President Barack Obama’s face when he visited Arizona in January 2012. She claimed that after giving him a written invitation to inspect the crisis on the Arizona border, the two engaged in a heated discussion about a passage in her book, Scorpions for Breakfast, which depicted Obama as condescending and dismissive.
Brewer took flak for her finger-pointing from both the media and the public, who accused her of disrespecting the presidency. More than 12,000 letters flooded her office in the ensuing days, most of which condemned her, calling her “trashy” and “tasteless.” Likening the act to belching at the president, a writer for the Washington Post scolded her, “If a thing is frowned upon in general, it’s even worse to do it to the president in particular.”
By contrast, Pelosi has met with adulation and gratitude from liberals after President Trump tweeted an image of her standing up during a meeting and wagging her finger at him.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines (and DNC talking points) and it all makes sense.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Whatever You Do, Don’t Send Your Kids To J-School.
Jay Rosen has had it up to here with CNN moderators asking front-running Democratic Party primary candidates to explain their signature policy positions. “The ‘make Elizabeth Warren say she would raise taxes on the middle class’ question should be a credibility killer. For the journalists who keep asking it,” Rosen tweeted.
Not long ago, any person arguing that reporters should shun politically inconvenient questions of their favored candidates would be struggling to maintain credibility. Rosen, though, is a professor of journalism—it says “I teach journalism” right there on his Twitter bio.
The gist of Rosen’s case—always wrapped in a patina of academic earnestness —is that mainstream political media skews coverage towards the framing Republican desire. And so the professor busies himself browbeating outlets into adopting more ideological constructive coverage and rhetoric—use “climate emergency” or “climate crisis” to be used instead of “climate change;” that sort of Orwellian thing.
For example, on the Warren question, Rosen embraces Margaret Sullivan’s formulation: “Of course, it’s legitimate to dig into the costs [of ‘Medicare for All’], but not in a way that creates a nice GOP campaign ad, and misses the larger lens of overall costs. (Warren, notably, refused to take the bait.)”
Of course, long ago, Rosen had it up here with any ideology other than the left reporting and opining on the news:
While it would be great to still have Andrew here to call them out, old media — and those who teach future Democratic Party Operatives with bylines — have continued to do an excellent job imploding in the years since his passing.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: The Media Bend Over Backward to Protect Elizabeth Warren from the Washington Free Beacon’s Damaging Scoop.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Biden campaign blasts New York Times in letter to Dean Baquet.
Earlier:
● Joe Biden rages at reporter who asks him about his son and Ukraine.
● According To Hunter Biden, Joe Biden Lied About Ukraine.
● NBC’s Today Show: My, but Hunter Biden’s business in China is interesting…
● Joe Biden campaign asks networks to stop booking Rudy Giuliani.
● Does This Photo Prove Biden Lied About His Knowledge of Son’s Ukraine Business Dealings?
● Hunter Biden: The Most Comprehensive Timeline.
● Ukraine must investigate Joe Biden’s son, says ex-Ukrainian PM.
● Wherever Joe Biden went, son Hunter cashed in.
● Warren Flustered by Hypothetical Ethics Question on Hunter Biden.
● ‘Well, Son of a Bitch’ : Ukraine Scandal Is About Biden.
● Peter Schweizer On Biden’s Ukraine Dealings — Seven Essential Facts.
A whole lot of Democratic Party operatives with bylines are going to be locked up in Joe’s closet…
THEY FIGHT: A new GOP comes out swinging.
One example can be found in the confrontation between Indiana congressman Jim Banks and NPR’s Michel Martin this past Wednesday. Martin was fulfilling NPR’s unwritten charter of putting the wildest fringe leftist thinking into comfortable terms to make them acceptable to the denizens of the suburbs. Banks, a freshman representative who saw service in Afghanistan, wasn’t having any.
Martin was attempting to put across the accepted narrative about the Trump/Zelensky call – that Trump asked the Ukrainian president for dirt on Biden as a “favor,” that he immediately turned the conversation to Hunter Biden, that there was a “quid pro quo,” and so on, all backed up by her claim that she had the transcript “in front of her.”
Banks immediately cut to the chase on that, shutting down Martin with a single line: “…read the part of the transcript that would indict the president on high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Of course, Martin could do no such thing, and despite some further word games, that was the end of it, leaving myriads of NPR listeners clutching their worry beads in shock and alarm.
Along with Elise Stefanik’s bold defiance of the House Democratic elite, this is a serious indication that a new GOP is pecking its way out of the shell.
Nice, isn’t it?
UPDATE (From Ed):
Just think of NPR as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and soothing monotone radio voices, and it all makes sense.
(Updated and bumped).
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Judicial Watch Posts Rod Rosenstein’s Secret Emails with Flattering Reporters.
YES, THIS IS ALL A SPOILING ATTACK INTENDED TO BLUNT THE IMPACT WHEN THE TRUTH COMES OUT: Dems, media aim to squash Barr’s probe of Russia collusion hoax.
UPDATE: But there’s a problem.
Story: Voters Don’t Trust Political News, Say Most Reporters Want to Stop Trump. If you think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines you won’t go far wrong — and nowadays, that’s how most people think of them.
IMPEACHMENT MAY LEAD TO ANOTHER OCTOBER STOCK MARKET CRASH.
If the fall of 2008 was any indication, an “unexpectedly” high number of Democratic Party operatives with bylines view that prospect as a feature.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Gallup Poll: 69 Percent of Democrats Trust the Mass Media.
POLITICO PUBLISHES ARTICLE TITLED, ‘JUST ANOTHER DAY IN F***NUTSVILLE’ BEFORE QUICKLY CHANGING.
On Friday morning, Politico Magazine published an opinion piece from author and founding editor of Politico John Harris titled, “Just Another Day In F***nutsville.”
The outlet quickly updated the headline to read: “Trump Killed the Seriousness of Impeachment.” For a brief time, the URL of the article still included the original title.
Steve Guest, the rapid response director for the Republican National Committee, flagged the error and included a screenshot of the original headline.
They should have stuck to their guns – it’s a perfect description of Washington, and the Democratic Party operatives with bylines such as the Politico, that keep F***nutsville churning along.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman notes Trump has switched from ‘fake news’ to ‘corrupt news.’
As Mollie Hemmingway tweeted in response to Haberman, “I use this word myself because it’s hard to find a better one to describe our corporate media’s unabashed move from ‘communications arm of the left’ to ‘strategic leadership of the opposition to the country’s duly elected president.’ And no clean-up of this corruption in sight…”
And it’s far from the first time — as Andrew Klavan noted at the end of August: ‘Watergate’ Doesn’t Mean What the Press Thinks It Means.
THINK OF THEM AS SLEAZY DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE: Whoa: Text Messages Reveal NYT Reporter Told Kavanaugh Source What To Say.
DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: In Which The New York Times Straight Up Lies About Ed Buck. “According to Excel, minus the returns, that’s a total of $114,900 accused serial murderer Ed Buck doled out to Democrats. I don’t think that fits most ordinary Americans’ idea of a ‘small time donor’.”
Getting gay men to overdose and sometimes die in pursuit of one’s own sexual gratification probably doesn’t fit most ordinary Americans’ idea of a victimless crime, either. Yet that’s exactly what the MSM-DNC spent so long trying to hush up.
