The Media/Journalism Thread

[Vee]

There were some journalists who worked truly hard in the Trump era, and put themselves at risk and kept putting out great work. There were even a number of craven, tacky access-driven types who were put in danger at times in those crowds of lunatics, not just on 1/6 in the Capitol but on other days. The problem is a lot of those who were still don't see the urgency of not trying to 'normalize' the GOP or repair Trump's image unless they are the ones directly in danger at that given moment. They played at being bold, unbowed truthtellers against Trump while constantly laundering access gossip from inside the Trump WH's endlessly feuding staff, or laundering quotes from Trump himself. They miss that circus they could count on and are taking it out on Biden, while also trying to retroactively pretend the last administration was a normal one so they can keep making spurious bothsides comparisons between the right and left here and now. So far it isn't really working out, and they're annoyed.

 

 

Thread:

 

 

Meanwhile:

 

 

And in the UK:

 

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Vee

[Vee]

 

[Khan]

 

Good, lol.  If it isn't working out, then it's only because the public (including yours truly) is *slowly* catching on.

[JaneAusten]

It's not working because Trump made himself the center of the news daily and the beltway press loved it for various reasons.  Mostly cheap stories and ego.  They have no interest in doing any real journalism. What they are finding out is that Joe Biden doesn't do this and has shown he doesn't care about what they think or feel. 

 

Main example of this is trying to make the fact he has not had an "official" press conference a story. The actual American people don't care. There are daily briefings, and Biden has talked directly to the American people on several occasions. They are just exposing who they are and they are not journalists they are tabloid reporters.

 

Another example is the Ron Johnson garbage. I don't want to say who cares but if the press is not going to come out and call him what he is and what he always has been (uhm the GOP) I have no interest in hearing about it. And I think a lot of non people of color like me feel the same way.

Edited March 14, 2021 by JaneAusten

[Khan]

 

Agree, with all of this.

[DRW50]

They are so desperate.

 

 

[Vee]

Haberman has been going around and around on this for days and is notably annoyed in that way about her where you can tell - she even started replying to Matt Negrin.

 

 

Meanwhile:

 

 

Edited March 15, 2021 by Vee

[DRW50]

I didn't watch any of it but I saw that Chuck Todd tried to make Stacey Abrams look bad and that people are judging her for saying the new laws are an attempt to return to Jim Crow. She's right - I am tired of faux-niceties.

[Vee]

Chuck is gonna finally talk himself out of that job one of these many trending weekends.

[JaneAusten]

Judging her? She's abso-*ucking-lutely right.  I saw her on CNN this morning with Jake Tapper. Not that I care for him but a good interview.

[DramatistDreamer]

Maybe it is just my TL, but I didn't see anyone judging Abrams for what she said during her interviews. It was mostly people amplifying her remarks and agreeing with her.

[DRW50]

 

[DRW50]

The usual suspects are pushing the border story nonstop and making sure it drowns out any positive accomplishments, with support from the likes of Joe Manchin.

 

 

[Vee]

Several other posters have talked about this kind of phrasing recently. The border is an ongoing issue and certainly one the media is desperate to push to try to create a more conventional false equivalency again, but no, it's not actually at present drowning those accomplishments or stories out. Something we see on Twitter is not always a dominant narrative. And having valid concern about something being drowned out - which I can understand - is not the same as it actually happening. 

 

Meanwhile:

 

 

[Vee]

 

This is going to be the new caravan thing the media tries hard to make an issue on behalf of the GOP, and IMHO just like the caravan it will fail to play in the public and vanish soon. This is why we have to be conscientious - the media and political Twitter love to run hot with a story for a few days or hours at a time, try to float it as 'something big', then when some of those stories fail to catch on they forget they existed or their role in attempting to mainstream it.

 

The media currently has no handholds to grasp at a proper crisis for the Biden administration, so this is the best they have - it also allows them to try to launder the bigoted GOP talking points as being 'concerned for immigrants', all in the hopes of returning to their preferred normal 'both sides' status quo pre-Trump where the Republicans are supposedly good faith actors. If they make it a 'sober' topic like 'the border crisis' they feel they can give Republicans room to come on TV and make false equivalencies and talk tough on their standard old hat issues. But it's just not going to play, IMO. No one is going to forget what Trump did to those people any time soon.