News coverage may be starting to catch up to the reality of the Republican strategy on Russian energy imports and gas prices. Hopeful signs come in headlines from ABC News—"GOP blames Biden for gas prices after pushing for Russian oil ban"—and NBC News—"Republicans cheer Russian oil ban and jeer Biden for rising gas prices." But this turn comes late, and it doesn’t look like the media coverage will consistently call out the cynical Republican approach of pushing for a policy that would increase gas prices while attacking President Joe Biden over gas prices.
The Washington Post, for instance, made the situation all about Democrats and the political threat they face from moving forward with the bipartisan policy of banning Russian energy imports in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Only in the fourth paragraph do Republicans even enter the story, in a way that downplays the level of partisan hypocrisy on display.
Both Greg Sargent and Eric Boehlert have taken on the media’s willingness to ignore or seriously downplay what Republicans are doing, while endlessly reporting on concerns about high gas prices. As Sargent notes in recent stories in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, “The mere fact that Republicans are using something as political ammunition justifies treating their claim about it like a newsworthy and thus respectable argument, regardless of how painfully ridiculous it is.” The Post is repeating that way of reporting on exactly the same issue.
When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says, “Don’t be fooled. This was more than a year in the making,” he is in fact trying to fool people. Yes, gas prices have risen from early pandemic lows, and as people are going out more. But that is a separate issue from how much gas prices have risen as a direct result of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has spurred a recent and sharp increase that is likely to go up even more given the new ban.
Meanwhile, coverage of people legitimately concerned about what rising gas prices will mean for them (and people less legitimately concerned, like the ones complaining about gas prices as they fill the tanks on their extremely expensive gas-guzzlers) is totally swamping coverage of polls showing that people think the Russian energy ban is worth higher prices.
And while coverage of gas prices may feel like a constant in life, the fever pitch now is not the way things have always been. Boehlert reports, “The last time gas in the U.S. climbed above $4 per-gallon was in 2008. But we know news coverage then wasn’t as incessant and breathless as it is today because at the time President George W. Bush had no idea prices were heading towards $4 a gallon — that’s how little coverage there was.”
The reality is right in front of us: Republicans pressing for Biden to do something at the exact same time as they are attacking him for its consequences. That needs to be in the headlines, something ABC News and NBC News have showed is entirely possible. Unfortunately, much of the high-profile traditional media is still portraying this as a political problem for Democrats without being upfront about why that is, and airing Republican attacks as if they were anything other than a political ploy.