A Washington Post opinion writer believes that President Biden is receiving worse treatment from the media than Trump did. It is a laughable theory, so naturally the media loves it.
Dana Milbank’s piece is headlined, “The media treats Biden as badly as — or worse than — Trump. Here’s proof.” Using a data analytics unit, called forge.ai, the writer claims he was able to confirm his sneaking suspicion: journalists are being meaner to the “empathizer-in-chief”, as the Hill once dubbed Biden, than they are to “The Monster Who Feeds on Fear”, as the New York Times once dubbed Trump.
According to Milbank, the artificial intelligence “combed through more than 200,000 articles — tens of millions of words — from sixty-five news websites (newspapers, network and cable news, political publications, news wires and more) to do a ‘sentiment analysis’ of coverage.” As Nate Silver and others explained, this flawed analysis is based on results from an “especially bad algorithm” and is “complete crap.”
But the results confirmed Milbank’s feelings, and that is all that matters. Biden’s fan club of ice-cream-flavor-inquirers are way harder on their hero than they were on his predecessor. Funnily enough, while trying to prove why Biden deserves the world’s smallest violin, the author is demonstrating the exact kind of bias that drove Americans crazy during the Trump presidency.
Milbank writes a laundry list of Orange Man’s failures, some of which include that Trump presided “over a worst-in-world pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths” and that he “attempted to discredit mail-in voting.”
It is obvious that Milbank thinks any negative coverage of Trump was necessary and well deserved. Democracy dies in darkness you know. But he can’t wrap his head around why, oh why, there would be any less than positive stories about dear old Joe.
“Sure, Biden has had his troubles, with the Delta variant, Afghanistan and inflation.But the economy is rebounding impressively, he has signed major legislation, and he has restored some measure of decency, calm and respect for democratic institutions.”
Back it up for a second. Biden had his “troubles” with the Delta variant, Afghanistan and inflation? Is Milbank unaware that Joe Biden has presided over more Covid-19 deaths in his time as president than Donald Trump? Or are those 350,000 plus deaths under Biden not considered as important because they can’t be pinned on Trump? I wonder if the families of the thirteen US service members who were killed during a suicide bombing in Kabul would belittle the botched Afghanistan withdrawal as one of Biden’s “troubles”. I doubt it.
After reading this tone-deaf puff piece, it is painfully obvious why American trust in the media is nearing a record low. People who pay attention don’t need an AI analytics unit to tell them the media never gave Trump a chance, let alone the kind of fawning fanfare they continue to give to Joe Biden. It’s also intriguing that the Washington Post column came out the same week as a poll showing that Trump’s favorability is currently higher than Biden’s.
Still, it didn’t take long for the talking heads to run with Milbank’s consensus. Everyone from Joy Behar to Brian Stelter began trying to convince their small, sad audiences that the man they spent four years obsessively vilifying actually had it pretty good.
While these Trump-Deranged Baghdad Bobs were defending the president against his non-existent battles, Joe was receiving a standing ovation at the Kennedy Center Honors in DC. At least the president isn’t letting all of this so-called “unrelentingly negative” coverage ruin his fun night out with David Letterman and Bette Midler. That’s the spirit!
While it’s absurd to suggest that Biden is getting as much harsh media coverage as Trump, there is a case to be made that the activists in the news are having a harder time sugar-coating Biden’s constant disasters. Sometimes even the most loyal Biden supporters slip up and accidentally acknowledge reality, or as Rush Limbaugh used to say, “commit a random act of journalism.”
For example, when Biden fell asleep during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell admitted on MSNBC that these “can be embarrassing situations.” O’Donnell quickly caught herself being honest — the horror! — and back-pedaled. She immediately began offering up excuses for Joe’s snooze fest. “It is also true that the hours are long, the time differences are real and the president has kept a rigorous schedule over several days, having lots of meetings, appearances and speeches. And, quite a late night last night.” In other words, Sleepy Joe was tired. That adds up.
While Kelly’s attempt to course-correct is admirable, this kind of reporting is unacceptable in the eyes of the Biden-Harris administration. Which is why the networks were called to the principal’s offi- I mean to the White House, to discuss their lackluster performances. CNN’s Oliver Darcy tweeted, “Senior White House and admin officials have been holding briefings with major newsrooms over past week as they try to reshape economic coverage.” Apparently not every journalist is as well-trained a parrot as Katy Tur. Some need a reminder on how to do their jobs properly.
Can you blame Biden’s administration for having high expectations for these newspeople? At one point these dedicated journalists weren’t just asking Joe softball questions, but they were actively burying any stories that could hurt his campaign. In October 2020, NPR’s managing editor for news Terence Samuel gave his reasoning for why the news organization wouldn’t be covering the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” It took a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the news media to push Joe Biden over the finish line. But lately the cheerleaders seem to be losing their cringeworthy spirit for the Big Guy.
On the bright side, it would appear that the White House’s meetings with the media are working. On Tuesday night, Don Lemon made the administration proud when he gushed over gas prices. “Just look at that! Ahh!”, Lemon exclaimed. “$3.35 the lowest… since October.” I hope Jen Psaki gives Lemon a gold star for that A+ performance. He deserves it.
Between the White House meeting with news networks and Milbank’s whining, I have a feeling Joe is about to get a nice stretch of positive news stories for Christmas. Perhaps a sentimental piece on Joe and Jilly Bean’s holiday traditions? Or maybe a column on why POTUS refusing to take questions from the press is actually a good thing. The possibilities are endless guys! Get to work.
