"Journalist Jennifer Schulze of Heartland Signal noted today that as of 8:00 this morning, 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."
@wdlindsy Given the elite forces arrayed against him — corporate media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, corporate churches, racist oligarchs— #Biden is the anti-Establishment working families President. #voteblue#biden
"Although Trump has frequently slurred his words or trailed off while speaking and repeatedly fell asleep at his own criminal trial, none of the pieces mentioned Trump’s mental fitness."
"The New York Times has run 192 stories about Biden’s debate performance and only 6 about Project 2025, according to media watch groups, since Thursday night."
@Piousunyn It does, indeed. It's a feeding frenzy, and it dishonors them in the most glaring way possible — but from where I stand, most of these commentators and the outlets they represent have long since dispensed with any shame.
@Piousunyn Yes, I'd agree. And I'd say that dispensing with shame — being given permission to do that and giving others permission to do it — is one of the major energies driving the whole Republican party and its supporters rightnow.
Rebecca Solnit asks why the pundit class is so desperate to torpedo Biden in the same way it did to Hillary when she ran against Trump. People so "utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity" at the same time they have no clue about their emotional lives, biases, and motives….
"We are deciding if this nation has a future as a more-or-less democratic Republic this November, and on that rides the fate of the earth when it comes to acting on climate change. If the US falters at this decisive moment in the climate crisis, it will drag down everyone else’s efforts. Under Trump, it will."
"But the shocking supreme court decisions this summer and the looming threat of authoritarianism have gotten little ink and air, compared to the hue and cry about Biden’s competence. …
The electorate votes based on how they understand the situation and evaluate the candidates. That is, of course, in large part shaped by the media, … and the media is right now campaigning hard for a Democratic party loss. The other term for that is a Republican victory."
Part of the answer to the good question R. Solnit asks is that the pundit class is overweeningly arrogant, convinced of its own objectivity and neutrality when it's wildly the opposite of objective and neutral. I think corporate media mavens, who want to position themselves as powerbrokers, imagine that the fascism the Republicans promise to bring us will be fascism-lite for them, though hapless others will be hurt.
The movers and shakers of Germany as Hitler rose to power, including its media mavens, had the same fantasy: we can control Hitler, and the ones who get hurt will, of course, be the usual victims. Not us.
Then Hitler and the Nazis quickly proved them wrong and their arrogance was exposed as colossal blindness, and they found out that EVERYONE gets hurt when you open the door to fascism.
@wdlindsy would 1000 articles in NYT change anyone's opinion on trump? I personally don't think so. I would bet less than 0.001% of NYT subscribers are voting for Trump.
I personally agree with the mainstream outlets that we have a better chance of winning without Biden now. If they can convince you of the same, then maybe we'll have a shot, but Biden won't step down unless more people desert him.
@bonkerfield So NYT should go right on putting Biden under a microscope and excoriating him at every turn while giving Trump a total pass and claiming to be objective and balanced?
@wdlindsy why not? for a few weeks with the hope that he steps aside before it's too late. If he remains stubbornly in the race then they should give up when it's too late and then start reporting on Trump. I looked it up and 7% of NYT subscribers are republican 91% identify as democrat. The only sizable effect NYT's reporting could have would be drumming up campaign donations at this point.
Now if you wanted to complain about WSJ or other moderate conservative media I'd more agree.
@bonkerfield Why not? At the very least, because the glaring disparity in how they're treating the two candidates radically undermines their claim to be objective and impartial. All the more so when we saw them do precisely the same thing to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Some of us don't have the short attention span of others and we remember well the maleficent role the New York Times played in the 2016 election by its treatment of the Democratic candidate. Déja vu is hardly coincidental.
@wdlindsy
Alas, not all. John J McCloy ( also of Warren Commission fame) got Hjalmar Schacht of German Central Bank to finance the Nazis off with about 4 years after Neremburg. Schacht then settled in Houston where he became quite wealthy.
@NoctisEqui More than one former Nazi prospered following the war, when other nations took these folks in. I'd still say that they paid a high price in seeing their country destroyed in large parts, their economy devastated, their nation humiliated, and in being forced to go into exile.
Ignoring TFG when he says he wants journalists and editors arrested and put in prison for straying from the party line would be a monumental mistake.
And a mistake I think the media is currently making.
@wdlindsy you know it's funny.. not ha-ha funny, but I was watching this ep of 12 Monkeys today, the Hitler/Nazi ep
as many times as I've seen it, I never noticed before, they briefly flash a newspaper after, with a minor headline, Hitler dead, Himmler takes over
they actually managed to kill Hitler, and practically nothing changed
I don't even think Trump realizes how evil he is at this point
@wdlindsy
In my own theory, billionaires are colluding to promote fascism everywhere where the economy is based on oil (ie everywhere in the world). Because they know that an informed electorate would eventually vote to LIVE and resist having their children die in climate disaster. Trump’s job is to make fascism entertaining. SCOTUS job is specifically to kill the power of democracy to restrain oil oligarchs. Chevron is their knife in the heart of human survival.
@davidarnell I agree. I wrote something similar to a friend yesterday who for mystifying reasons wants to claim that "the left" is driving people to authoritarian solutions. From all I can see, those in the driver's seat are economic elites who want us divided and afraid and focused on bogus culture-war issues so that their economic hegemony and exploitation of us and the planet won't be challenged.
@wdlindsy I wish I could be part of a transnational resistance that pressed every politician of every stripe on the life and death requirement to restrain the billionaire oligarchs and promote intelligence and global cooperation to really press for solutions.