Why is the Mainstream Media So Obsessed with Biden “Failing?”
The commentariat refuses to give President Biden the credit that he richly deserves.
We’ve now reached 100 days of the Biden administration and so, with the a predictability matched only by the changing of the seasons, major news organizations are falling over themselves trying to find ways in which Biden has failed to live up the lofty expectations that he expressed on the campaign trail and in his first days in office. Heaven forbid that a Democratic president be allowed to celebrate his accomplishments — including the passage of an enormously consequential piece of COVID-19 relief legislation — without disingenuous and bad-faith takes from the commentariat.
Take, for example, Catherine Rampell’s newest opinion column for The Washington Post, entitled “Biden has an opportunity to ensure an FDR-like legacy, and he might blow it.” Look, I get it. We all have to give our pieces inflammatory titles in order to get eyeballs; I’m not stranger to that vice. However, one would think that a major news organization, one of the most prominent in the country, in fact, would be a little more circumspect — dare I say a little more thoughtful — in how it chooses to frame issues of national importance. It is, to put it bluntly, a little ridiculous to create a seemingly explosive headline with a cynical hypothetical at its center.
This is especially galling because the opinion column itself is relatively limited in scope, mainly wondering whether Biden will ultimately opt to make the child tax credit reform permanent or whether he’ll allow it to expire. It is, of course, a very important question and a vital issue, but it seems a bit misleading to hinge his entire legacy on this particular issue, still less to blow it up to FDR proportions. Though I don’t disagree with Rampell that Biden has to keep pushing for the sort of transformational legislation that he’s uniquely positioned to pursue, I think she does more harm than good when she makes his potential — and, seemingly guaranteed — failure central to the way she frames her argument.
However, Rampell is not the only one to engage in such dishonest framing. In the wake of a new poll showing Biden’s approval rating, ABC News framed it as the third lowest since Harry Truman in their tweet announcing the results, setting themselves up for some well-deserved roasting for what was, at best, a misleading way of presenting this information. Aside from the fact that other polls have him at a higher approval rating, this was actually the second tweet ABC News had sent out, with the previous one misstating that Biden’s approval was worse than any president in 75 years. Add to that the fact that even a 52% approval rating is relatively good in these times (as E.J. Dionne Jr. put it, “not being hated is a major political achievement”), and you can’t help but feel that ABC News is determined to follow the Fox News template for good news for Democrats, i.e., find the negative and emphasize the hell out of it.
It’s not as if all of this is a surprise. Almost from the beginning the mainstream media has been positively obsessed with the idea that Biden will somehow fail. Most notably, they fell over themselves in an attempt to paint the issue at the border as somehow of Biden’s making, whether because of his more sympathetic rhetoric or some other nebulous failing. Time and again, organizations liked Politico and The Washington Post proved far too willing and able to carry water for Republicans, often going so far as to parrot the GOP’s very talking points on this (obviously very significant) issue. Never mind that Trump left an absolute mess that Biden had to clean up; no, it was all, somehow, Biden and the Democrats who were to blame.
Whence comes this desire to see the Biden fail? I’m not so cynical as to think that it comes from a place of ill-will (though that could be true, I suppose, given who actually owns most news organizations). Instead, I think it comes from something more basic. The truth is that we live in a very negative and cynical age; it’s far easier to get people excited about bad news than good. What’s more, most mainstream journalistic organizations and outlets persist in the (mistaken and dangerous) belief that there are, in fact, two sides to every issue. Thus, if some of us see the data and realize that Biden is, actually, pretty darn popular, they must seek out (or create) those who see the opposite. It doesn’t take a political genius to see why that’s a huge problem.
This phenomenon is bad enough on its own, but it becomes exponentially worse when mainstream news organizations start twisting the facts so that they fit into their pre-determined narrative. When, for example, they make it seem as if Biden is always on the brink of failing, and when they blow up every single gaffe or misstep into a catastrophe, it starts to have a corrosive effect. Yes, journalists aren’t supposed to carry water for politicians, but there’s a difference between not holding their feet to the fire and not holding them accountable (both of which are the purview of ethical and responsible journalism) and actively feeding the flames of partisanship simply because it’s the easy and established thing to do. We know that Republicans are just looking for an excuse to hate Biden, and it doesn’t help when a disingenuous media does the job for them.
Every so often, I like to indulge in a bit of wishful thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice, I think at such times, if the mainstream media would give the Biden administration the same benefit of the doubt that they bent themselves into pretzels doing with Trump? Of course, I never allow myself to think that such a thing will happen, but a girl can dream. Alas, it seems far more likely that they’re going to continue the same destructive cycle. Nothing Biden says or does will ever be enough for a certain sort of journalist.
