AG Report 7/5/2024
UN Agrees to Taliban Demands
The Guardian reported that The Taliban videotaped themselves gang-raping a human rights activist in Afghanistan, then sent the video to her with a warning that it would be released if she spoke negatively about them after leaving the country. Despite the oppressive behavior of The Taliban, the irredeemably corrupt United Nations hosted a meeting with them in Qatar last weekend while assenting to an offensive precondition that women be excluded from the discussions.
Liberal Media Bias Backfires on Democrats
In this newsletter, I have often argued that liberal media bias ultimately harms Democrats by denying them any substantive feedback loop to recognize and adjust for errors, poor messaging, and failing policies. The criticism that Democrats encounter in their preferred outlets is almost always exclusively from the left, making it harder for them to acknowledge the concerns of most Americans. On rare occasions when the national media does highlight Democrat failures, the expectation that the media will parrot their preferred narratives often leads Democrats to dismiss such criticism as unfair attacks. This dynamic was evident following the Presidential debate last Thursday.
For years, voters have explicitly expressed concerns about Biden’s age and cognitive decline. Just a few weeks ago, several consecutive videos surfaced showing Biden seemingly struggling with his speech and acting like a lost elderly man. Yet, Democrats and their media allies dismissed these concerns, claiming they were based on misleading or edited evidence.
The prevailing narrative was that people should ignore what they saw, attributing it to a manufactured partisan attack. Many Democrats accepted this explanation because their trusted media sources assured them of it. However, the recent debate changed their perception. There was no way to spin it — Biden repeatedly lost track of his thoughts and appeared generally unwell. Most Americans have seen elderly relatives experience cognitive decline, making it impossible not to recognize what was happening.
Democrats reacted in shock and were at a loss for what to do, primarily because they believed the previous concerns were baseless. News organizations ran extensive coverage about the Democrat freakout, despite having dismissed these concerns just weeks earlier. Suddenly the commentary shifted from dismissing worries about Biden’s decline as lies to making excuses about his ability to operate at full strength only during specific hours and under limited circumstances. Many outlets now report that people have noticed this decline for months despite the complete lack of previous coverage.
Now, it might be too late for Democrats to address the issue. They can only hope that voters hate Donald Trump enough to prefer someone showing clear signs of cognitive impairment as President. The bigger outrage, however, should be that the media actively covered this decline for years.
Identifying Extremes
On the topic of media bias, news organizations are often choosing their language based on the message they want to send to readers. I did a quick experiment searching through the X accounts of various major media organizations going back to January 2023 to see how often they used the terms “far-right” and “far-left.” The results are rather revealing and consistent with my perception of these outlets: