Anyway, getting back to the OP: What’s the proposed solution?
Should the media slack off on Democrats a bit?
Should they hammer Republicans much harder?
If they did the latter, the accusations of media bias would be an even bigger rallying cry and get-out-the-GOP-vote factor in elections. Right now the media is walking a tightrope as is already.
The media has been aware of its own “Horse Race” bias and its “both sides” bias basically ever since Trump won. There’s been a lot of media think pieces out there explaining how the media needs to not try to do 50/50 reporting when the actual comparative behaviors are nowhere near 50/50, and to not do “Horse Race” reporting just to drum up attention.
The question is, has the media actually improved? I think they actually have. I think in the 2020 campaign they ran far fewer stories on “Trump ephemera” i.e. nonsense things Trump randomly said to shift attention around, and I think they ran far fewer stories on “silly” Biden nonsense from his campaign–this is the kind of nonsense they used against Gore and HRC extensively in 2000 and 2016 to “keep the campaigns interesting” or to show that they can criticize both sides. Largely they only went after Biden in the 2020 campaign for stuff that was pretty legitimate and newsworthy, they didn’t just artificially report on stupid shit about him to keep “balance.”
There was actually an Op-Ed in the Washington Post recently, which I know many people won’t be able to read, but I’ll link because it is on this topic and I think covers some of it well:
Opinion | How the rise of Politico shifted political journalism off course - The Washington Post
The particular Op-Ed doesn’t entirely blame the website Politico, but it does kind of point to Politico as being really popular among political journalists, and to have pushed them to report more on “insider drama” and other issues instead of focusing more on substance. The Op-Ed author shares my opinion that the media did a much better job in 2020 than it did in 2016. It didn’t become a shill for the Democrats (much as TrumpReich denizens would claim it did), but it didn’t artificially create drama to talk about in regard to Biden to try and “balance” out Trump’s oversight of a chaotic and insane response to a pandemic, his multiple assaults on democratic norms and constant gaffes. Trump said and did a lot of things much worse and much dumber than Biden did in 2020, and largely the media reported on that, meaning he just got much more bad press than Biden.
This is healthy when one candidate is actually doing many more bad and stupid things.
Now I actually don’t think Biden has had it too bad as President, but I do think obviously the level of negative press you get as President is always going to increase versus as a Presidential candidate, because the stage is bigger. There also isn’t anyone else as prominent to talk about. Biden isn’t currently in a race, he’s the only President, and reporting on random lower tier Republicans or former Presidents like Trump, is never going to compare to the level of press attention Biden will get while he’s in the White House. That will cut good and bad for Biden.
While I won’t say all of the reporting about Afghanistan was fair, I think the press actually didn’t do too terrible a job with Afghanistan. At least compared to some of their stupidity in the past (like how they covered Hillary’s emails.) For example a decent chunk of Afghanistan reporting did take pains to mention that Trump had negotiated a withdrawal with the Taliban, that Trump had released 5,000 terrorists in exchange for virtually no known concessions from the Taliban etc. But Trump isn’t President right now, so expecting him to catch as much flak for Afghanistan isn’t really reasonable.
I also think the press moved on from Afghanistan pretty quick, to the point right wing media is already crying that the mainstream media isn’t talking about Afghanistan enough anymore. They aren’t giving Afghanistan the same level of long term platform the media gave the HRC email scandal or Benghazi, and that’s good.
I will say in response to OP though–Biden should be held to a higher standard than Trump, because Trump was held to basically no standard of behavior at all. That isn’t good for society.
This is my answer. There is basically a 35-40% baked in Pro-GOP anti-Democrat vote baked in. This is the kill somebody on 5th avenue group. The Democrats probably have their own baked in number but its probably less. We fortunately don’t have a Democrat who is dreadful enough to find the rock bottom of Democratic support the way Trump has of Republican support, but we can forming a guesstimate would be to note that while Trump has generally been approved by somewhere in the vicinity of 80% of Republican’s the disgraced Coumo is only approved of by 57% of Dems.
So in any case, If Trump does something bad nothing changes since he is already at rock bottom, but if Biden does something bad, he may lose support.
That’s my take on it too. Biden is having several unfortunate things happen at once early in his presidency, AND he’s got the burden of having been portrayed or at the very least expected to be a mature, competent President, by way of not being Trump, regardless of how impossible some of that might actually be.
Except the thing is, he’s not superhuman. I doubt ANY of the presidents in my lifetime would have handled the Afghanistan pullout or the Delta variant surge very much better- doing so was pretty much impossible considering the hand he was dealt when he was inaugurated. I’m not sure what he could have done to significantly improve either one, to be honest. I tend to think drawing a line in the sand and pulling out by a specific date was the “rip the band-aid off” solution we needed in Afghanistan after 20 years. Any other choice could have led to some sort of lingering presence and/or more US casualties and money thrown down that particular hole. And the Delta variant issues are pretty much squarely due to the opposition party’s people having politicized common-sense measures to fight it; what is he supposed to have done there?
But since he’s not Trump, they’re potentially having some sort of rebound phenomenon happening where they’re expecting Biden to be something he’s not.
I’m assuming they’re pining for someone pre-Trump; in effect they’re saying Trump sucked, and now so does Biden, and we want someone like the guys before them, before things became insane.
IOW a miracle worker.
Exactly. I have a feeling that as abysmal as Trump was, there are a lot of people whose expectations of a “normal” president are way too high now as a result. Merely being a President of average competency isn’t enough after Trump; they’re expecting an exceptional president.
It’s almost as if they’re expecting Biden to be competent and awesome in direct proportion to how bad Trump was, which is completely unrealistic.
It’s probably because his supporters think that they’re better, but in reality both parties follow the same neocon/neolib policies.
I’m a Biden supporter, but I don’t know what you mean by “better”. Do you mean, for example, wear a mask during a pandemic because science shows that it protects the wearer as well as those around the wearer; as opposed to violently opposing masks because reasons?
Have either of you ever read a WSJ editorial?
This one was written by Jason L. Riley, “a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.”
Here is the unpaywalled editorial:
Wow. He actually is pining for the competency of the Trump White House. Whoda thunk it?
The thing is, I wish the media would simply say the hell with it, the hell with the GOP trying to work the refs and such, and just CALL them on their bee ess with no equivocation or yeah but’s or etc, Let the Repo’s bloviate about it all they want. This normalization of the Abby Normal actions (or inactions) of a dysfunctional political party HAS to be called out by the media, who golly gee are paid to do just that.
Yeah I know, Mr. Idealist here and his pie in the sky wishes…
Guys, not to be overly snarky, but if anyone here is surprised by the content of a WSJ editorial, you shouldn’t be posting in P&E.
That’s a surefire way to make Fox and OANN’s influence double or triple. The moment the media sheds even any remaining fig leaf of neutrality and goes full-knives-out, the Fox ratings skyrocket. (Assuming Fox can still cast itself as a right-wing source - there were hordes of people who were abandoning it after their Election Night coverage, accusing it of being too liberal - isn’t that a frightful thought.)
I’d monitor this: How Popular Is Joe Biden? | FiveThirtyEight
And take a note of this:
SDCQNze.png (882×497) (imgur.com)
The reality is neither Obama or Trump’s approval ever moved all that much. The green line is Biden’s rating juxtaposed with the relevant portions of the Obama/Trump terms (note this shows Obama’s first four years in office, not all 8). All three Presidents started out at the strongest they would ever be; all three immediately started to lose approval and drifted towards a middling rating.
Trump really went hard at making it so virtually no Democrats could stand him, and alienated many moderates as well. He went very hard at making the worst part of the Republican base love him. This essentially zeroed out his cross-partisan and moderate support and massively solidified his hardcore partisan support. This resulted in a very stable approval rating–almost no matter what was occurring, in the 38% to 43% range.
Obama was in many ways much better at politics, and actually made attempts to appeal to more than just hardcore Dem partisans. He was, frankly, a much better President than Trump (by the way and so no one forgets and for those who don’t know me–I’m a conservative, I voted against Barack Obama twice, and frequently found fault with his Presidency–but I can freely say he was a better President than Trump.) What did this get for ole Barry? It got him an equally very stable approval rating; a few notches higher than Trump’s. As Barack’s honey moon period ended he gradually fell to just below 50%, and he bounced around in the 45-48% range, with a little dip above 50% (when Osama bin Laden was killed), but that was mostly his range. He dipped a little over 50% right before the 2012 election.
Why am I blathering about all of this?
Well, if you go to the page and look, historically this wasn’t normally. Historically Presidents enjoyed (or suffered) fairly large swings in approval rating based on…political events during their Presidencies. H.W. Bush’s rating soared as he won the Gulf War with minimal American casualties. It tanked as he oversaw an economic recession. Clinton’s got stuck in the doldrums as he governed very centrist (thus alienating some of the liberals who had passionately supported him in the primary), but suffered a lot of rough GOP partisan attacks. The Lewinsky scandal undermined some of his achievements for a time, but by the last 2.5 years of his Presidency Clinton basically was sailing so hard on economic largesse, and the House GOP had largely converted itself into an imbecilic clown show in terms of public perception, that Clinton enjoyed extremely high approval ratings right until his last day in office.
Nixon’s approval rating was above 50% reliably, peaking at 68% about 1500 days into his Presidency. Mostly due to the public…frankly approving of his governance and what was going on in the country. Then Nixon experienced a precipitous decline, obviously linked to Watergate. Nixon bottomed out at only 25% approval by the time he resigned, which obviously is why he resigned–that low approval rating translates into political capital and legislative backing, and is largely why Senate Republicans bailed on him, when they informed him, they would vote for his impeachment in the expected impeachment trial, he resigned rather than face the shame of being forcibly removed from office.
My theory is that we’ve entered an era of such intense, hyperpartisanship, in which both sides basically believe the political affiliation of the politician is 99% of the justification for supporting/opposing the politician, that no President can enjoy Nixon’s highs no matter how good they do. But conversely, they are never in danger of his lows.
Biden could prove me wrong there, which is why I think you should watch this page. If Biden’s rating falls down to really low levels, then it means we’re in a very bad era–where Republican hyper-partisanship means Republican leaders are not accountable at all for their bad actions, but Democrat leaders are. So far, Biden’s numbers are not in the range where I see that this is the case.
There’s a difference between an editorial and an article on the opinion pages, and that’s not an editorial. He wasn’t speaking on behalf of the WSJ, just as himself as one of their regular opinion columnists.
I had assumed that it was a bona-fide editorial and beyond a paywall, and just didn’t see the WSJ as an entity pining for Trump, even if they’re historically conservative.
They’ve always been conservative, but for the past 14 years they’ve been a Murdoch publication.
I’m shocked by this stunning turn of events. I imagine @Velocity is even shockeder!
I agree with you, at least up to this point. Trump coverage in the papers I subscribe to (NY Times, WaPost, Philadelphia Inquirer) says over and over that he’s lying. Never saw anything like it with prior presidents.
As for Biden, after a bit of a honeymoon, he is getting the normal highly critical, but not insulting, coverage.
As for Afghanistan, it is normal for foreign correspondents to file stories, as hard news, that might be slapped with an analysis tag if domestic. They feel guilty about any Afghans who worked for them, now living in a likely soon-to-be totalitarian state, and their concern shows.
It is almost impossible to fairly analyze media bias. You need rigorous methods or you will be sensitive only to the arrows aimed at your side. Yes, this also has to apply to me.
I agree. The modern world is nothing like the previous 50 odd years I’ve been a political junkie. I still see demographics as the primary cause and the primary driver in the future (a party cannot survive by catering solely to demographic groups that are relatively and absolutely shrinking), but the rise of two different views of reality is new and frightening. The media as a whole used to be center-right in pov (see below) and so allowed all sides to agree on a common reality, even if opinions on reality diverged. Now the competition for eyeballs on the right requires ever more extreme distortions and allegations. It can’t get much farther without major fractures.
(Below.) Really. LBJ was the first time ever than a majority of newspapers endorsed a Democrat and then they did only one more time before Obama.
