If the traditional media had done their civic duty, there would have been not merely a Blue Wave but a Blue Tsunami; the horrific Roe vs Wade decision, plus their widespread continued support for an attack on democracy, would have doomed the Republican party ... R.I.P the G.O.P 11/08/22
In fact, just the tone and conduct of the GOP, when given a chance to misbehave: from the GOP SCOTUS and its many vital decisions done in secret chambers with no proper explanation, to MTG’s monstrous-manic-madness and virulent-vocalizations-validating-violence, never mind McConnell’s nonchalant-nihilism as he betrays his oaths to the Constitution; would have prompted public outrage if presented as deliberate insults to proper public conduct … which they are.
In contrast to the front page coverage of Hillary’s email nothing-burger, everything bad the GOP has recently done has been swept under the rug: from the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died or are suffering long term Covid-19 because of Trump’s stupidity, corruption and incompetence in doing his job to fight it, never mind Trump undermining public confidence in vaccines and making the refusal to wear masks into an act of noble civil disobedience; to the present where increasing GOP willingness to voice insane conspiracies theories based on blatant lies about “socialist:” Democrats and “stolen elections” , vile dehumanizing rhetoric and deranged and dangerous accusations, and refusal to support the democratic process, have brought the USA to the brink.
A Trump supervised vaccine rollout was looking to be as sad a shit-show as the previous debacle with protective gear! The economy was in crisis with unemployment going off the deep edge, and the GOP solution was more gilt for the gluttonous and more scarcity for the precarious! Then the Democrats swept in and the vaccine was effectively distributed and the economy salvaged in a remarkable recovery. Employment came roaring back and major legislation was attempted.
Biden dealt with the Putin invasion of Ukraine with great effectiveness.
Meanwhile the GOP were going from mere spineless-sycophants-to-a-deranged-demagogue to full on promoters of fascism, and were increasingly showing an ever more reckless willingness to put ruthless partisanship over country -- or even sanity, and to treat truthfulness as a quaint conceit.
The traditional media is supposed to play a vital role in the U.S. political process : not only to report specific facts, but also to show to the public why those facts are important. The more any item of news is printed in big type on the front page, the more often it is referred to, the more importance pundits place upon it, the more a naive reader is likely to think it significant.
If stories of the many, many tragedies that the change in abortion rights is already imposing on very many real women — from long term complications from mandated medical delays, disastrous financial and work problems, and in extreme cases devastating unnecessary fatalities ; real personal stories with hard facts and pathetic cruel details …. had been on front pages -- as they deserved to be -- the cost of gas might have seen appropriately trivial in contrast.
Had the so-called liberal media done its job, blaming Biden for any spike in the rate of violent crime or the oft mentioned price increases at the pump, would have been shown to be simplistic and partisan framing: Biden has no easy solutions he has been ignoring and the GOP have ZERO concrete proposals to make things better. In fact any attempt by Biden to attack the profiteering of gas companies or the greed of pharmaceutical ones to tackle this supposedly terrible inflation is rejected as anathema by the GOP, who are once again allowed to undermine America without facing mainstream media criticism.
In a shocking betrayal of public trust and their traditional duties to US democracy, the corporate media have allowed themselves to become shills for the shameless, ignoring both Democratic triumphs and GOP awfulness; using their influence to dupe the public as to what is important, who is to blame, and what our citizens should fear as they look at the future.
By echoing the relentless drumbeat of GOP talking points, by using the GOP false framing as default, the media has sabotage not only the Democratic Party, but democracy in the USA.
Let us consider how the front pages (literal and metaphorical) that should have been dominated by:
1) The Climate Crisis, which is coming on even faster and more devastating than we had feared
2) The Governance Crisis, that comes when wreckless partisanship is prioritized by the GOP
3) The Legal Crisis, when the SCOTUS turns rogue — and is belligerent about it
4) The Affordability Crisis, as rental costs, medical costs and school expenses go crazy
5) The Plutocracy Crisis, where so much of the wealth, political influence and power is concentrated
6) The Hate and Bigotry Crisis, red in tooth and claw and impatient for more
and so on,
and so forth …
a whole lot of other real and urgent crises at home … and abroad are crying for more attention.
Instead of focus on any of these truly important problems … that urgently need public awareness, the US mainstream media have instead first obsessed about Trump’s refusal to concede, repeated his endless lies, featured his cronies’ crazy conspiracy theories, high-lighted any Biden stumble, misrepresented any unfortunate leftist slogans, used false equivalencies to normalize the GOP as it flirted with madness and fascism, and promoted the false “gotcha” narrative that people’s pain at the pump was Biden’s fault, then used that to argue Democrats were too “woke” and shamefully oblivious to ‘normal’ Americans and their daily struggles, supported the notion that Republicans were “good” on economic issues (!!! as if) and finally let the GOP use a deluge of biased partisan polling to create a narrative of a Red Wave, and ultimately prepared the US public for a Democratic Waterloo — which undermined the confidence of marginal potential voters just when barriers to voting were being raised higher every day … and extreme lines were clearly created with partisan bias and arbitrary last minute rules (and more extreme even threatening tactics in many instances) who knows how many gave up on 8 hours lines and went home for Southern Comfort.
If US democracy falters and fails…
if in the future Trump’s triumph trumps truth, common sense, decency and democracy …
if we slide backwards and blind into a devastating delirium while the world goes to hell …
if fascism, random murder&mayhem, unverified ‘facts’ , vitriol and violent rhetoric devastate us …
be sure to write the editor of your paper of record (or web-based equivalent) ... and thank them.
