If you are not subscribing to Press Run media by Eric Boehlert, why not? How else are you going to find out things like:
...the number of unaccompanied children held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, "dropped nearly 84% in the span of a month, according to a White House official, underscoring the significant progress made by the administration after reaching record high custody figures."
Boehlert cites CNN as getting a scoop on this (although he links to a NY Times article). His issue is with the way The Washington Post is covering the story — or isn’t.
In March, the Post considered the number of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells to be a very big deal. In fact, they reflected "the magnitude of the crisis" Biden faced. Today, the Post considers the plummeting number of migrant teens and children in detention cells to be less newsworthy. On April 23, the Post published just a single sentence about how the administration had reduced, “by more than half the number of unaccompanied teens and children held in dangerously overcrowded Border Patrol stations and tent facilities.”
The relative silence is telling considering the Post for months has been committed to breathless border coverage. Leaning heavily into conservative talking points about how the border surge was threatening to sink Biden's entire presidency, the Post over and over posted doomsday headlines:
• "Biden administration rushes to accommodate border surge, with few signs of plans to contain it"
• "Biden officials fall behind in race to add more shelter space for migrant teens and children"
• "Biden faces growing political threat from border upheaval"
• "‘No end in sight’: Inside the Biden administration’s failure to contain the border surge"
• "At the border, a widely predicted crisis that caught Biden off guard"
There was a phrase that was prevalent in the liberal blogosphere once upon a time: “It’s always good news for Republicans.” It was an observation about the way the mainstream media always seems to be trying to find a way to put a positive spin on news dealing with the GOP. The corollary is that it’s always bad news for Democrats.
You’ve doubtless seen any number of stories about how ‘ambitious’ Biden’s plans are, and how unlikely they are to pass Congress. (Read that as unreasonable/impractical/overreach, or worse — “progressive” or even “woke”.) Senator Joe Manchin is getting lot of attention as objector in chief. Not getting nearly as much attention is the near universal GOP Congressional rejection of all of it, despite popular support for the plans that crosses party lines.
Boehlert also notes the media seems to be having a problem with President Biden’s emergence as a potentially transformational president. “If Biden were a Republican, press would tout him as the new Reagan”
...Politico actually posted this April headline: "How Good News Could Complicate the Biden Agenda." Apparently, too much good news is bad news for the White House.
Let's face it: If Biden were a Republican and had posted the same jaw-dropping first 100 Days, the Beltway press would be marveling at his accomplishments and crowning him a political phenomenon. They'd also be making the case for why he was the next Ronald Reagan, whom the media still tout as a universally loved, master communicator.
Consider that it took two impeachment trials and an insurrection before the media stopped trying to spin news about Trump in a positive way. The New York Times for example referred to Trump’s countless statements at odds with the facts as “exaggerations” and “misstatements” — avoiding the word “lies” if at all possible.
There was also this. Trump was effective at dominating the news cycle and making everything about him. Biden has deliberately tried to tone things down, and has eschewed the reflexive self-promotion Trump uses to perpetrate his scams.
For the media this has been a problem. They can only write so many stories about the return of ‘normality’. They need need a fix, something they can use to grab eyeballs.
There’s also the conditioned reflex mainstream media has developed to avoid the appearance of “liberal media bias”. Long before Trump, Republicans hammered the press among others as “the enemy”. (Richard Nixon even had a list. Paranoia and revenge is a GOP tradition.) Under Trump, Republicans took it to a new level. During the insurrection, reporters came under attack.
It’s not to say the media has been completely blameless. Has everyone forgotten the Clinton Rules?
The problem for mainstream media is that this complicates reporting, because reality has a well known liberal bias. When Democrats talk about climate change, inequality, systemic racism, and similar items, the problem for the press is that Republicans deny all of those things and instead complain about “cancel culture”, the dangers of being “woke”, and go straight to culture war talking points. Reporting that wealth does not trickle down, or that tax cuts neither pay for themselves nor create jobs is to invite full-blown hissy fits by Republicans and their right wing propaganda machine.
Speaking of which, this week’s cartoon from Tom Tomorrow lays out how the right wing outrage cycle works. (This Modern World is another good place to put your money.) Right Wing disinformation is amplified by mainstream media which has a bad habit of picking up right wing talking points as ‘news’ (Cokie’s Law) and mainstreaming it.
Just when you thought the coverage of this election couldn't get either worse or weirder, veteran NPR centrist-whisperer Cokie Roberts chimes in. She became more famous during the first Clinton administration when Cokie's Law was established on her behalf by the redoubtable Digby, leader of the then-uncivilized tribes of the Intertoobz:
"At this point," said Roberts, "it doesn't much matter whether she said it or not because it's become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about."
Thus did Cokie Roberts rearrange American journalism in such a way that truth no longer mattered, and in such a way that something that didn't happen could be said to have happened because people were talking about it, as if we could all gossip an actual plesiosaur into Loch Ness. This also led to certain Great Premises which could be found in scurrilous book-like products.
There’s also the problem that reporting on right wing Conspiracy Theory to debunk it has the contrary effect of further perpetrating it.
It’s unnerving to realize that some of the most powerful truths have to be spoon-fed to us as a joke. It’s an old phenomenon in America, and probably elsewhere, humans being human. I’ve just finished a biography of Mark Twain’s final years; he was beloved not least because he had mastered the dangerous skill of speaking truth while making people laugh instead of reaching for a gun or a rope. At that, he arranged matters that his more controversial material could not be released until after he had died.
To current right wing assertions that America is a Christian Nation, Twain long ago pointed out that Hell must be even more so, having as it does, so many Christians among its population. If you’d like a sampling of his more controversial material, Letters from the Earth will do for a start.
The best contemporary take-down of mainstream and right wing media is still Stephen Colbert’s 2006 address at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. It’s not quite 17 minutes long, but it’s as timely as ever. The audience is laughing, but you can hear more than a little nervousness and shock as Colbert says Things That Must Not Be Said.