AG Report 7.25.2024
Media Flips From Adversaries to Gas Lighters Immediately After Biden Withdrawal
A large part of my complaint about the mainstream press is the refusal to do any self-reflection or address their shortfalls. Instead of looking at how they covered the Biden decline story for years, many in the press spent the last month pretending like the stories were unreachable until the June debate. Media reporters Oliver Darcy and Paul Farhi also attempted to suggest that the recent critical coverage was evidence that the press isn’t actually biased toward Democrats. The truth is that the recent coverage had far more to do with a fear that Biden would lose to Trump and a desire to replace him on the ticket. That is apparent not only by their ignoring those same stories for years but also by their response as soon as Biden decided to step aside.
Suddenly much of the press lost all interest in concerns about his cognitive decline and ability to do the job. More than that, the press immediately turned to covering for and uncritically promoting the new presumptive Dem nominee. An adversarial or critical press would be examining her role in covering for Biden’s decline or how well she did in managing her main tasks as Vice President, but most outlets instead jumped back into full-time defenders for Democrats.
A prime example of this was the argument over Kamala Harris’ record on the migration crisis. The Trump campaign attacked her almost immediately for failing to effectively address the crisis as the “border czar.” Several outlets immediately jumped to Harris defense writing extensive pieces disputing that she was ever the “border czar.” Except there was extensive reporting back in March 2021 specifically stating that Biden had tasked Harris to lead on the migration issue. So the only real argument was over whether you apply that specific title, which ignores the substance of her failure. To demonstrate the absurd level of media gaslighting on this:
7/24/2024: Axios posts an article from reporter Stef W. Kight stating Republicans had wrong “tagged” Harris with the title of border Czar
The same reporter from Axios wrote an article back on 3/21/2021 that was headlined “Biden Puts Harris in Charge of Border Crisis”
Far more embarrassing, Axios themselves had several reporting pieces around the same time that specifically referred to Harris as the “border czar.” Other outlets also used the term.
They had to ignore their own reporting to now try to cover for Harris.
It’s clear that many outlets have decided to end their adversarial approach to reporting on Democrats now that they get Biden out of the race and are back to business as usual.
George Will Called it in 2022
In November 2022, George Will wrote a piece arguing that Biden and Kamala Harris should step aside and not participate in the 2024 race for the good of the country. The substance of that piece holds up rather well given recent events.