The Media/Journalism Thread

[Vee]

They'll fold on SALT, IMO.

[DRW50]

 

[DRW50]

Pathetic. The media is working overtime to try to "well actually" how decimating these voter suppression laws are.

 

 

[Vee]

They're facing an existential crisis about how they really don't want to be forced to report on these voting laws despite Biden going at them full force with no equivocation, and they would really rather bothsides this issue because they have many Republican friends, sources, bosses, etc. The public isn't with them on the false equivalence, though.

[Vee]

I should add there are people like Daniel Dale who I feel are hardworking and operating in good faith who do critique the Biden team's POV on the bill. He says there are many things wrong with it or dangerous about it that it seems odd to focus on the optional time change. But I feel that is missing the forest for the trees - if it is 'optional' to close the polls at 5, GOP officials are going to do it every time.

 

[DRW50]

Circling the wagons for the right wing Rolling Stone owners (I notice Dave Weigel has been retweeting and amplifying so many right wing talking points lately - he must want to get back on Chapo).

 

 

[Vee]

 

[DRW50]

Just another reminder of the sickening propaganda of that paper. Voter suppression doesn't "just go away." Just in 2020 alone there was an article (I can't find it now) saying the states with the highest amounts of voter suppression laws had the lowest turnout. 

 

There is a deeply concerted effort in the mainstream press to praise and support voter suppression laws. I hope someone digs into exactly why that is (beyond the likelihood it will lead to a GOP landslide, which the media wants more than anything).

[Vee]

I think they're just deeply uncomfortable with the party that so many of their sources, friends, editors, etc. belong to being actively named as the party of voter suppression and Jim Crow. They want to believe in the classic myth of the old school 'fiscally responsible' Republican being the true standard bearer of the party when it's just not anymore. They don't want to face that or what this is, so they try to gnatfuck the details and pretend it's a both sides debate, like they tried to do with Trump for so long until it was far too late.

[Vee]

 

 

[DRW50]

After a great deal of pushback, Nate Cohn decided to respond with, basically, "What's the point of talking about these bills meaning that states can just decide elections however they want - HR1 doesn't address this anyway." He and the Republican-loving paper he works for are just desperate to find any angle to praise voter suppression and help the GOP.

 

More talking points from the Sunday shows, and another reminder of just how many repulsive little worms squirmed out of Clinton's White House.

 

 

 

[Vee]

I don't think Nate Cohn is inherently a bad actor, but his piece last week was unbelievably tone deaf and ignorant about the actual real repercussions of Georgia voter suppression. So of course, by trying to mitigate the massive blowback from that piece he is now digging deeper and trying to highlight 'election subversion' while framing it as an 'analytically distinct' problem from the effect of the new GA bill itself (it's not). In attempting to be sympathetic to his critics he once again descends into condescending pedantry which refuses to deal in the actual political realities involved. His long, rambling thread is below. This is what happens when numbers people get high on their own supply. Just say you were wrong, Nate.

 

 

[Vee]

 

[Vee]

 

[Vee]

Shocking and tragic.

 

 

I remember Charles being one of the first journalists to say in January that the Southern states are not red but voter suppressed. She was a great voice.