Perry Bacon, Washington Post columnist, says that Joe Biden’s low approval ratings don’t reflect his absurd policies, his failing leadership or his cockamamie worldview.
Because of how the mainstream media covers Joe Biden, Joe Biden isn’t very popular.
Bacon blames the media for their “flawed coverage of politics and government that is bad not only for Biden, but also results in a distorted national discourse which weakens our democracy.” The media must find a new way to cover Washington.
Did you see that? Biden’s disliking is a structural problem in the media, which has nothing to do politics or policy.
It all began with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Biden’s poll numbers fell, closely following the media panic. The Post’s Dana Milbank reported in December that data analysis revealed a significant increase in negative media coverage about Biden since August. The media merged other events into the “Biden is in trouble” narrative, including infighting within Democrats over the party’s agenda and weak performances in New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial elections, rising inflation and the rise of the delta- and omicron variants. Biden’s role was often exaggerated in these matters — there are many factors that contribute to inflation, and presidents cannot stop the emergence coronavirus variants. This anti-Biden coverage is still in place.
Bacon mentions Dana Milbank, the previous winner for the “Blame anybody or anything but Biden” award. Milbank’s entry was entitled “The media treats Biden just as badly as — if not worse than — Trump.” Here’s the proof. Milbank apparently believed that most of Trump’s criticism was valid and deserved.
Both of these gentlemen did not blame the media for Trump’s exaggerated actions while he was president. Bacon claims that the media is committed “equal coverage for both parties.”
Media coverage plays a major role in these distorted polling results, in my opinion. Biden’s commitment to equal coverage by media has led to a year and half of coverage that suggests both parties are equally bad. This is because the Republican Party, which continues to make baseless claims about voter fraud in 2020, passes measures that make it harder to vote and gerrymanders so aggressively in states like Wisconsin, effectively makes elections meaningless.
The problem is that media is too fair.
The increasingly radical and antidemocratic Republican Party has challenged the media’s “equally negative to both sides” approach. Politifacts often appear anti-GOP, even though they are honest. The mainstream media covered Trump harshly in his final months as he attempted to reverse the election results. Some journalists were consciously or subconsciously able to “balance” negative Trump coverage with criticisms of Biden, even though his actions weren’t as serious. Leaders at CNN, New York Times, and other major outlets stressed that they do not want to be seen as being more aligned than the Democrats in the post-Trump era.
The media was not only “harsh” towards Trump in his “final months” as president. Since Trump’s announcement of his candidacy in 2015 the media has been critical about his every move. To make a story that is so out of touch with reality requires a special type of ignorance.
Since the 1970s, the media has been anti-GOP in a hysterical fashion. They were saying the exact same thing back then. It’s not that they’re unfair. It’s just that the GOP is so evil and awful that we must report on it. So it comes out as ‘anti’-GOP. ‘”
Is this why the Republicans are still elected as “evil”?