Democracy Blog—"We Are On Our Own"

On the night of the Supreme Six’s Trump immunity ruling, Heather Cox Richardson posted a video focused on the decision, “It is bad.” But she also had this to say about the media’s coverage of the “debate” on June 27^th. “That was the night I realized the media wasn’t going to help us,” and “We no longer have a backstop in the United States…we are on our own.”

Let’s review some of our media’s latest abuses.

ABC aired 30 minutes of George Stephanopoulos with Biden—22 without commercials—and did not ask a single policy question. Not even why Biden should be re-elected—nope, all about the “debate” and Biden’s age. I used to have a modicum of respect for Stephanopoulos. No longer.

From Heather Cox Richardson:

"Journalist Jennifer Schulze of Heartland Signal noted today that as of 8:00 this morning (July 5^th), the New York Times had published 192 pieces on Biden’s debate performance: 142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces. Trump was covered in 92 stories, about half of which were about the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling."

On July 6^th, from the left-leaning HuffPost:

·      “Prez in Denial, Bizarrely Dismisses Disastrous Polls.”

·      “Refuses to Commit to Cognitive Test.”

·      “Says He’ll Drop Out if God Says So.”

·      “Biden Losses Train of Thought When Explaining Debate Disaster.”

·      “Allies Abroad Turning.”

·      “2 More Reps Tell Joe to Go.”

·      “Dem Gov. All But Tells Him to Drop Out.”

·      “Sen. Working to Rally Colleagues Against Biden.”

From these websites on July 6^th:

·      ABC: “Major Democratic donors call for Biden to step aside after ABC News Interview.”

·      CBS: Rep. “Angie Craig Calls on Biden to drop out of 2024 Presidential race.”

·      CNN: “Fact-checking Biden’s high-stakes ABC interview.”

·      NBC: “We’re doomed: Democratic lawmakers worry Biden’s interview won’t save his campaign.”

On July 7^th:

·      ABC: “Senior House Dems tell Jeffries they’re privately calling on Biden to step aside.”

·      CBS: “Senior House Democrats say Biden should leave the race, sources say.”

·      CNN: “Several top House Democrats say Biden should step aside.”

·      NBC: “Four more Democrats in Congress call for Biden to step aside in the 2024 race.”

·      HuffPost; “New: Top House Dems Bail on Biden. Schiff Biden warning on ‘Meet.’ Senior White House staffer: Biden shouldn’t run.”

·      The Atlantic: “Biden isn’t listening. Just over a week after president’s disastrous debate performance, Democratic voters seem down on his chances and ready for an alternative candidate.”

This has been every day since the “debate,” including today, the 10^th, two weeks since the “debate.”

These were the top stories, not down the website’s page.

Our media is trying to engineer a coup of our election process. The results of the primaries don’t matter. The delegates committed to Biden don’t matter—and the fact that only he can release them, is not relevant to our media.

My wife and I debate this, as to whether the journalists think about the politics of the owners when they draft an article. She thinks, absolutely. I am more reticent.

But we agree that the editors call the shots. The editors write the headlines. Editors know who owns them. They are owned by mega-corporations, or mega-billionaires.

·      Disney owns ABC

·      Paramount Global owns CBS

·      Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN

·      NBC Universal owns NBC and MSNBC

·      Amazon’s Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post

On the social media front:

·      Jeff Zuckerberg owns Meta (Facebook)

·      Elon Musk owns X

The CEOs of these entities have donated to Trump, a fact I have not yet verified. They are conservative, so it stands to reason.

The New York Times deserves special attention, though still owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger Family, via a trust. The publisher is A.G. Sulzberger, a fifth-generation family member.

We have the New York Times to thank for Clinton’s impeachment. It all began with Whitewater, a nothing burger propagated exclusively by the Times. The Times was a cheerleader of Dubya’s Iraq War. The Times participated in 2015/2016 media frenzy that helped elect Trump.

Regarding Hillary’s emails, a study showed: “In just six days, the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.”

More specifically, they published four front page stories when FBI Director, James Comey decided to re-open the investigation into Hillary’s emails ten days prior to the 2016 election. Hillary dropped two points in the polls.

To date, Biden has refused to sit down for a one-to-one interview with the Times. A.G. Sulzberger is offended. When Special Prosecutor Hur released his hit job on Biden’s memory, the Times put four articles and an op-ed on their front page.

I wish I had $100 for every time I have read the MSM use the word “disaster” or “disastrous” to describe Biden’s debate night. Once they agree on a word, they repeat it, ad nauseum. Call me traditional, but I equate the use of disaster to events like floods, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, and pandemics.

Two can play this hyperbole word game. What we are seeing is a tsunami of negativity from the media.

Here’s a reality check of the damage our MSM has done—a Wall Street Journal poll found that 52% of voters claim that Trump “has a strong record of accomplishment” but only 40% say the same for Biden. Earlier this year, 154 presidential specialists/historians ranked Biden 14^th , after just three years, and Trump dead last.

There is only one explanation for the results of that poll—our media.

The media watchdog, Media Matters, studied the aftermath of Hillary’s 2016 use of the phrase “basket of deplorables,” and the aftermath of  Trump’s pronouncement and threat that some of us were “vermin” who he intended to “root out” and eliminate from American society.

For a week, they charted the primary news programs of ABC, CBS and NBC, including the morning shows, evening news and Sunday morning shows.

Their findings:

Those televised programs aired 54 minutes of Hillary’s “deplorable” comment but just 3 minutes regarding Trump’s “vermin” remark.

As for cable news:

·      On CNN, there were 553 mentions of “deplorable” compared to 70 for “vermin.”

·      On Fox News, there were 513 mentions of “deplorable” compared to only 9 of “vermin.”

·      On  MSNBC, there were 596 mentions of “deplorables” compared to only 112 of “Vermin.”

As for major dailies:

·      LA Times—3 articles about “deplorables”, 2 on front page.

·      New York Times—7 “deplorables” articles, 4 on the front page.

·      Wall Street Journal—8 “deplorable” articles, 4 on the front page.

·      Washington Post—9 “deplorable” stories, 1 on front page.

None of these four bastions of print journalism mentioned Trump’s “vermin” pronouncement—anywhere.  

Biden is getting the Hillary treatment. And who can forget the “swift-boating” of Kerry.

Thanks to Thom Hartmann for his recent blog: “Yellow Journalism Exposed: The Unfair Targeting of Biden’s Flaws vs. Trump’s Crimes!”

Hartmann feels “profitable” and “spectacle” is the new yellow journalism. He recalled that the icons of nightly news, Walter Cronkite, and Huntley and Brinkley, were never meant to deliver profits. Those days are long gone. So, to reap more profits, we get spectacle.

As for Biden’s cognitive and mental decline, I give you this from the actual neurological report of Biden's physical done last February, released as Health-Summary-2.28.pdf (whitehouse.gov)

"An extremely detailed neurologic exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, ascending lateral sclerosis, nor are there any signs of cervical myelopathy. This exam did again support a finding of peripheral neuropathy in both feet. No motor weakness was detected. He exhibits no tremor, either at rest or with activity. He demonstrates excellent fine motor dexterity.”

Thanks to the DailyKos website for posting this. It is available to view by anyone, including the MSM.

How do we push back? As for me, I haven’t watched a nightly news program from the big three in 25 years. I stopped watching CNN a year ago, except occasionally at the gym on the treadmill. I was a nightly regular with MSNBC beginning with Joy Reid. No more, but I will tune in Lawrence O’Donnell. I will focus on a few websites, and on these daily blogs in my email: Heather Cox Richardson, Judd at Popular Information, Robert Reich, Thom Hartmann, Simon Rosenberg of the Hopium Chronicles, Charles Pierce on Saturdays, and Matt Stoller’s weekly Monopoly Round-Up.

I will keep my LA Times subscription, for now, though they are now part of the anti-Biden echo chamber. They have two columnists who consistently “get it,” Jackie Calmes and Michael Hiltzik.

Find what works best for you.

We are on our own to save our democracy, and take back our country from a predominately White Christian Nationalist minority, the Supreme Six, and the media’s election coup attempt.

We have four months.

Keith Frohreich, July 2024