MAGA NEGATIVITY = ANTI-DEMOCRACY! CORPORATE MEDIA VULTURES

Jennifer Rubin:

"Until recently, the gulf between President Biden’s performance in office and the coverage of his presidency was as vast as it has been in any modern presidency. Biden has steered the country out of a recession and pandemic, gotten through a slew of critical legislation (some bipartisan), avoided a default on the debt, set the stage for about 14 million new jobs and overseen a resurgence of manufacturing. Internationally, he has restored the United States’ image and solidified and expanded NATO in defense of Ukraine. Nevertheless, mainstream media coverage has been incessantly negative, dwelling on fears of recession, pointing to failure to “unite the country” (as if unity were possible in the MAGA era), obsessing over premature polling of dubious value and regurgitating MAGA talking points about his age.

Jon Allsop at the Columbia Journalism Review captured the cycle of negativity that has distorted coverage of Biden. “If Republicans are pushing a But her emails! media strategy in an attempt to tar Biden, the primary motivation, as I see it, is to foster cynicism; the aim is not a false equivalence that equally apportions credit, but one that conveys a sense that everyone in politics is just as old, just as corrupt, just as bad as each other, and that consequently, integrity doesn’t really matter and anything goes,” he wrote. “Journalists who indulge this effort can convince themselves that they’re only asking questions, or covering what voters think or what politicians are saying.” He added, “It’s the logical endpoint of a media ecosystem that approaches every story through the prism of elections — an approach that has always been cynical itself.” And worse, it legitimizes unacceptable Republican behavior and distorts the threat MAGA forces pose to democracy."