(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The New York Times is bad for America - the story, continued [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-21 If you missed it, Joan McCarter had a January 20, 2023 story The New York Times is bad for America. The gist of the story is this: the “paper of record” habitually normalizes bad behavior by Republicans and frames it as a both-sides thing. The case in point are the current plans by House Republicans to force the government into a default on the debt, which could potentially crash the global economy. Why are they doing this? To force cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Who are these people? As McCarter points out — and The NY Times won’t: ...That’s the same GOP that tried to overthrow the government just two years ago. Speaking of, 11 of the 17 Republicans tapped to head up House committees voted on Jan. 6 to reject the 2020 presidential election results. After Trump’s violent mob ransacked the place. The all-important House Oversight Committee now features “13 election deniers, 10 impeach-Biden-world advocates, and 3 congressional subpoena dodgers.” There really isn’t anything that the GOP can do that the Times will condemn as extreme and un-American, including creating a constitutional crisis over the debt limit... The “Gray Lady” is systematically enabling bad behavior by the Republican Party by choosing to report what they are doing with innocuous wording, slanted framing, and false equivalence that makes it appear that both sides are equally to blame. Charles P. Pierce as usual nails it when writing about what’s going on. I have full faith that the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives will wreck the economy, and I give them full credit for that disastrous notion. That is my commitment to full faith and credit as I watch this entire unfolding mess in Washington… ...As these things go, we are still in the Wishful Thinking stage of this very predictable crisis. A representative from Moody's told the Post that "a debt limit impasse will likely be resolved before a missed interest payment occurs because of public, political and financial market pressures on Congress reflecting concerns about the potentially severe consequences that a missed payment could have on financial markets and the economy.” And some people actually believe that a) moderate Republicans will be reasonable on this; b) moderate Republicans are honest brokers in the whole business; and c) that moderate Republicans are actually, well, moderate. emphasis added And let us not forget the Times’s periodic forays into the Heartland to carefully ask Republican ‘normal people’ why their feelings are hurt all the time, and why Donald Trump is their Lord and Savior. Pierce has a background as a sports writer. The tendency of the mainstream press to cover politics like a horse race is often and rightfully decried, but it is beyond ironic that someone with a background in sports does a far better job covering politics than alleged journalists... But That’s Not Where It Ends Digby has a must-read piece, also published January 20, 2023. But His Documents is a look back at how the media demonized Hillary Clinton over “her eMails” and is doing the same thing to President Biden over the classified documents now being found. The ‘both-sides’ treatment isn’t just about normalizing bad behavior by Republicans — it’s also about inflating negative stories involving Democrats into serious “crimes and misdemeanors”. As Digby reminds us, it’s all about Cokie’s Law. Reposting from 2015: Cokie’s Law renewed by acclamation As we rush headlong into the first of what are sure to be many “Clinton Records Scandals” (it’s a perennial) I just thought I’d remind everyone of one thing: Cokie’s Law, in which she proved that truth and facts are rarely the issue when it comes to arcane Clinton scandals: “At this point,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.” Once people are talking about it, they believe it’s a legitimate news story. So they publish stories that imply something or other “doesn’t pass the smell test”, the news media get weirdly excited about it, convey that to the people and then we’re off to the races. Liberals are all aflutter this morning over this e-mail scandal. They have no idea if it’s true or what specifically is wrong with it other than it allegedly “shows bad judgment” but they are very upset. Moreover, I have no idea why I’m supposed to be so shocked, appalled that it’s time to run for the hills and beg Jim Webb to come to the rescue. But that’s what I’m hearing. And it’s as predictable as the sun. Maybe there’s something truly nefarious going on. I’m open to believing it. But at this point what I see is that Villager hysterical impulse asserting itself once again. emphasis added To be “fair and balanced”, this isn’t just a NY Times thing — it’s all through the media, wherever “the Villagers” of the nattering class hold sway. They do not get excited by Republican wrongdoing (it’s the GOP brand after all) nearly as much as the least hint of Democratic failure to live up to perfection gets their juices flowing. And it’s also driven by the right wing, which systematically looks for any and every thing that can be used to tar Democrats, blowing it up into conspiracy theory territory, and gets the mainstream media to retransmit their desired talking points to legitimize them because “it’s become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about.” Beware the villagers, aka “The Church of the Savvy” It’s also about Democrats failing to live up to their expectations. Maureen Dowd had lunch with Nancy Pelosi the other day, and was gobsmacked by the way Pelosi was behaving. She begins her ‘tribute’ with this: WASHINGTON — It’s not a pretty sight when pols lose power. They wilt, they crumple, they cling to the vestiges, they mourn their vanished entourage and perks. How can their day in the sun be over? One minute they’re running the world and the next, they’re in the room where it doesn’t happen. Donald Trump was so freaked out at losing power that he was willing to destroy the country to keep it. I went to lunch with Nancy Pelosi at the Four Seasons to find out how she was faring, now that she has gone from being one of the most powerful women in the world — second in line to the presidency — and one of the most formidable speakers in American history to a mere House backbencher. I was expecting King Lear, howling at the storm, but I found Gene Kelly, singing in the rain. Pelosi was not crying in her soup. She was basking as she scarfed down French fries, a truffle-butter roll and chocolate-covered macadamia nuts — all before the main course. She was literally in the pink, ablaze in a hot-pink pantsuit and matching Jimmy Choo stilettos, shooting the breeze about Broadway, music and sports. Showing off her four-inch heels, the 82-year-old said, “I highly recommend suede because it’s like a bedroom slipper.” How dare Pelosi not be shamed and despondent over her loss of power? How dare she openly flaunt her privilege with such elitist dining and fashion choices? How dare she be better than Donald Trump? Doesn’t she know her place? When Digby talks about the Villagers, this is a prime example. And this: I’m having a hard time even reading some of this swill or watching cable news right now. [The Biden papers.] There is nothing new about this story being reported today, but they are still leading with it on the front pages and at the top of every hour for at least 20 minutes, regurgitating every story from the past week and throwing out breaking news chyrons as if it all just happened this morning. I’ve seen this movie before. There’s a very special feel the news coverage gets when the Villagers see an opening to go after a Democrat. This is because they are hit constantly by the right for their “liberal bias” — because they are compelled by the facts to discuss Republican malfeasance, criminality and corruption all the time. When they can turn their focus a Democrat it gives them the opportunity to signal their partisan neutrality. And they always overcompensate. Keep in mind, they just do this for each other. The right doesn’t care (although they are happy to use their coverage to make their own political points.) They’ll never stop screaming “fake news” whenever the media reports anything they don’t like. So this is really just a way for them to preen and pose for each other. emphasis added It should be remarked that Dowd got a 1999 Pulitzer Prize for her columns on the Clinton-Lewinski scandals, AKA the Good Old Days for the media. Dowd also manages to harp yet again on the age problem for Democrats, that Biden is too old to run again in her opinion. Dowd should be asked how much longer she intends to keep working, having just turned 71, but no matter. (There’s no shortage of geriatric extremism on the GOP side, but that’s never an issue for the press.) Dowd has plenty of admiring things to say about Pelosi, but there’s a certain amount of poison to be found under the deceptively sweet Mean Girl schtick. The OTHER Elephant in the Room Digby quotes David Roberts on a twitter thread about the problem the press never acknowledges: how much THEY are part of the story. Commenting on a Washington Post article about Biden and the documents, Roberts observes: Take a step back and ask yourself: what is the missing causal link between 1) the Biden administration doing everything right and 2) a political shitstorm happening regardless? It’s the media. The ghost haunting the story. The invisible presence. One of the cardinal unwritten rules of objective, voice-from-nowhere political journalism is that the media itself, its role in making the story, must must be rendered invisible. The media is a transparent eyeball. It does not choose or shape, merely respond & report. That the sheer tonnage of coverage might have had a role in generating hysteria and overreaction is never mentioned as a possibility. That it is a Major Scandal almost purely because the media has chosen to cover it as a Major Scandal is not on the table. The media is nowhere. It is a running theme through the media’s coverage of every over-hyped right-wing pseudo-scandal in memory (and there are so many): its resolute denial of its own agency. Originally tweeted by David Roberts (@drvolts) on January 20, 2023. emphasis added The NY Times is as guilty of this as any of the mainstream media, but there are times when it is so blatant it is hard to believe it’s not deliberate. Remember when, during an earlier presidential run, the media called for Biden to withdraw from the race after he was accused of plagiarizing certain remarks? Biden had correctly sourced the remarks in other speeches but inadvertently rushed over it that one time, and was forced to pay a price. So how is it George Santos is still with us? Or, for that matter, Trump? IOKIYAR is still in effect apparently. There’s no question that documents with some level of classified markings need to be managed better — but equating what appears to have been an inadvertent mishandling/misfiling here, rapidly corrected, doesn’t even begin to match deliberate theft, lies, obstruction, and worse. And the budget ‘crisis’ would make more sense if reporting acknowledged the people behind it are eager to see things burn, as they did on January 6... Still it is, perhaps, at least a little appropriate to acknowledge that the sheer levels of malevolence, grift, mendacity, and outright Fascism coming from the GOP and the oligarchs behind them is more than the fourth estate (with its corporate masters and consolidation) can be expected to handle, if not excused. It is only to be expected after years of defining deviancy downward for the benefit of the right wing… It should also be remarked that there are times when The NY Times does an outstanding job of reporting. What we need is to make that happen more often — and remember that it’s awfully hard to beat Sturgeon’s Law. Our own vigilance in sorting through conflicting information, pat narratives, and outright fabrications is not something we can abdicate either. At least we can laugh our way into the abyss while getting some truth along the way. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/21/2148467/-The-New-York-Times-is-bad-for-America-the-story-continued Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/