It’s actually a whinge post by his partner Mike Allen, with bylines by three other Axios ‘reporters’ — “How Biden, Trump favor safe spaces”:
… Why it matters: Call it the safe-space election. Biden is more likely to talk to mainstream outlets, and Trump to echo chambers. But both pop up for questioning with sycophants, supporters and sympathetic journalists.
The big picture: It wasn’t always so. Biden and Trump not long ago loved mixing it up with more serious reporters. But whether it’s age or bitterness about coverage, they’re hiding in their own witness protection program…
Case in point: This is the first time in 60+ years that the sitting president has stiffed the newsroom of The New York Times for a formal interview. (The White House regularly engages with the paper behind the scenes.)…
Reality check: New York Times readers aren’t the voters who’ll decide the election…
It’s you, Jim. You’re the problem. It’s YOU.
We know you love your traditional journalism narrative bullshit but many of us are over it. Biden will gain nothing from talking with you. The fact that you think Biden & Trump are the same in any way says everything.
— Rachel Vindman 🌻 (@natsechobbyist) April 21, 2024
Nixon is when Joe Biden gives lots of interviews to a wide range of people but not me or my friends https://t.co/EifbZqdHbl
— The okayest poster there is (@ok_post_guy) April 21, 2024
Biden knows where to find the voters he needs. Podcasts attract a younger audience than legacy media. Besides the publications mentioned barely mention Biden’s accomplishments and try and normalize trump. Why on earth would he give them an opportunity to do more of that.
— Kevin (@TheBondGuy2) April 20, 2024
The problem is that you no longer ask good questions.
The press has become a never-ending quest for click bait & rage bait because the internet broke your business model and you have no clue how to deal with it.
You’ve optimized incorrectly
— verdverm (@verdverm) April 20, 2024
Journalists act like the Times and the Post have some divine right to interviews with the president no matter how they treat him in coverage, and when he objects, its grounds for more of the coverage driving him away from them.
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs.bsky.social) Apr 21, 2024 at 7:36 AM
This isn’t to say that presidents shouldn’t get challenging coverage. What the Times and Post have been doing, abdicating their roles as papers of record, is different than that, even as it intersects so that they can squint and say it’s what they’re doing.
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs.bsky.social) Apr 21, 2024 at 7:37 AM
This honestly feels sort of like incel stuff. “We are entitled to you and if you do not recognize and accede to that entitlement then I guess we will have to neg you.”
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs.bsky.social) Apr 21, 2024 at 8:47 AM
My understanding is that Jane Mayer is good friends with Susan Glasser and Both Sides Baker.
That is what is clouding her judgment.
(also, WSJ is Murdoch owned, WaPo's new publisher is a former Murdoch henchman and we all know how horrible the NYT's political reporting is)— Art Martin (@gartmartin9) April 21, 2024
There's no Maggie Haberman because Biden isn't a bottomless hole of human need so thoroughly terrified of being alone with his thoughts that he'll dump his entire twisted subconscious to any reporter who'll nod, transcribe and save the most incriminating stuff for a book. pic.twitter.com/9htLda7xcj
— zeddy (@Zeddary) April 21, 2024
The Biden era offered up the chance to go back. With big stories hopeful and tragic and complex happening far from Twitter and DC.
Instead you kept the millionaire stenographers, infotainers and talking heads whose only prism is DC gossip and the endless horserace.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) April 21, 2024
Imagine waking in the morning after the first week of Trump’s criminal trial
And making this comment
Imagine thinking you’re so important that it matters to the voters that Biden make the media happy.
As if he could.
— Seeking Justice (@combienDUtemps) April 20, 2024
Well, VandeHei finds space for the truly significant details of Trump’s courtroom antics…
🚨🚨Inside Trump’s shadow grievance campaign https://t.co/ula4wdVv6A
— Jim VandeHei (@JimVandeHei) April 18, 2024
War for Ukraine Day 789: Russia Continues Its Bombardment of Ukraine
Another Scott
That verdverm tweet is [ chef’s kiss ]. It really is perfect.
Thanks, AL, for all you do.
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
Thanks, AL. This is maddening.
schrodingers_cat
Beltway stenos can go fuck themselves.
Martin
I saw CNN fact checking a Biden speech, saying he misrepresented some stuff. They don’t do that for Trump because Trump lies non-stop and there’s no way to cover it. So, CNN, not knowing any other way of operating, casts Biden as the liar and by omission Trump the one that tells the truth.
lowtechcyclist
I remember how angry Nixon was at the Washington Post for running all those Watergate stories.
And Biden won’t sit down for an interview with the FTFNYT after they do a zillion stories about him being old.
Both sides! //
Shalimar
I am guessing the other big thing Trump and Biden have in common is that the NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal coverage of both of them is equally mostly negative. I would do an actual study of articles but I refuse to give any of those 3 publications my subscription money.
Scout211
@Another Scott: You beat me to it! I was about to post the same thing. But let me just highlight that tweet.
AL, what a nice collection of whiny tweets from whiny reporters. Do they really think that essentially calling Biden a coward would make him want to be interviewed by them!?
geg6
Cry harder, hacks.
Gin & Tonic
Somebody remind me when Trump sat for even a semi-adversarial interview with a “serious” reporter. Was it in this century?
Scout211
I remember there was “blood coming out of her whatever.”
Shalimar
@Martin: I don’t watch CNN so I have no idea how much they use him anymore or what he is reporting on, but they did hire the excellent Daniel Dale half a dozen years ago because he was so good at fact-checking Trump’s word salad.
Chet Murthy
@Scout211: I remember there was an interview with a guy named Jonathan (?) Swan that seemed to be pretty decent.
lowtechcyclist
And look how the FTFNYT and the WaPo have covered the economy under Biden. The bottom 50% are doing way better than they have in eons, manufacturing jobs have come back bigly, you’d better book that vacation the year before you’re going because places are filling up that early, and all they talk about is inflation.
They had plenty of time for Decaying Rust Belt stories back when, but now that it’s booming, they take no notice of it.
And they think that they’re entitled to the time of day from this Administration, as if it’s some God-given right that they be the inner circle around the king, even as they fart in his direction. Fuckem.
piratedan
yeah, the idea that Biden needs to sit down with WaPo and NYT because… when they do such a stellar job of reporting his failures, or rather his perceived failures rather than talk about his policy those passed and that still on the table and the repercussions of that policy seems just a tad disingenuous. If Dark Brandon sat down for a chat with them, they’d likely ignore 85% of what he shared with him and instead drop back to their tell tale vibes and age impressions.
You want good faith, you gotta give some in return. All he’s doing is making a call on past behavior and they’ve got a long history of publishing all sorts of shit sans context and JB is nothing but a guy who is is fully aware of context.
zhena gogolia
@Shalimar: I can assure you that the NYT never has a positive HEADLINE about Biden, even if the story ends up being mostly positive. He’s always “struggling,” “trying,” “hitting roadblocks,” etc., while Big Daddy Trump is always boldly doin stuff. The emphasis in the Business section is on how Norwegian towns are suffering because Biden’s energy policy has moved the clean-energy industry to the USA. Today the screaming headline on the Opinion section was (advertising Kristof): GAZA IS BIDEN’S WAR NOW
Shalimar
Also, speaking solely about the New York Times, when was the last time they weren’t relentlessly negative covering completely irrelevant bullshit about a Democratic presidential candidate? I can’t think of any particularly stupid stories about Mondale, but he didn’t really need any help self-imploding.
HumboldtBlue
I enjoyed wandering through those various threads today. Just clueless navel-gazing whining. It’s the arrogance of it all, as if these people have been anointed by some cosmic force to be the keepers of record, and now that they’re being treated in a manner more befitting the quality, or lack thereof, of their political coverage, they whine like a hit dog.
ewrunning
Who are these “more serious reporters” of which they speak? They’re a bunch of insufferable jerks. Also, let’s hear about all the lengthy interviews with “more serious reporters” done by W, Bush pere, and Reagan. They’re full of it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
That’s a great collection of quotes from and about the media.
Shalimar
@ewrunning: It’s disappointing to see Jane Mayer, probably the best long-form investigative journalist currently working, complaining about how both sides are equally bad. Of course, she somehow can’t find any significant scandals to investigate the last 3+ years that I can remember, so maybe she’s hoping that getting Trump back will be good for her career.
Miss Bianca
Cry harder, media trash talkers.
And Jesus, Jane Mayer? The Dark Money chick? I thought she was actually supposed to be a serious journalist, not a “Don’t You Know Who We Are?!” access whinger.
Scout211
Jane Mayer’s tweet in response to the Axios story:
This isn’t normal?! WTF, Jane Mayer? You should be reporting on the other guy who has never been normal. Ever.
One of the tweets that AL posted above hinted that Mayer is friends with NYT reporters and her judgement on this is biased due to that. But it seems more like reporter friends propping each other up and then they become the story. Moar clicks!
The "I Want" Song
Wow, did Rachel Vindman lead off with a riff on Taylor Swift’s “Antihero”?
Anne Laurie
This post was partially an experiment: Can y’all read the BlueSky comments from The Fig Economy?
Can’t yet switch wholly to BlueSky, sorry, because most news orgs (like the Associated Press) and my most valued pandemic-coverage aggregate sources (Delthia Ricks, Eric Topol) aren’t there. But if the embeds here work, I can at least *add* more BlueSky comments to my posts. Assuming I can find a 25th hour in the day…
Another Scott
Biden’s an old guy who has been around the newspaper interview cycle a few times. Let’s look at the record.
Biden talked with FTFNYT Editorial Board on January 19, 2020.
Their first question was about Hunter.
Their second topic was about reparations.
Their third topic was about marijuana.
Etc.
They’re clowns. They were fishing for gotcha sound bites and that’s all.
I too am disappointed that Jane Mayer decided to get involved in this topic. But “where you stand depends on where you sit” so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The story that always defined the NYT to me was the guys running the DRNK News Service said both the BBC and the NYT didn’t realize they were a parody and tried to interview them. The BBC reporters though it was hilarious when they found out they had been pranked but the NYT reporter was indignant that they dared let the NYT get fooled.
Another Scott
@Anne Laurie: The figgy stuff shows up fine for me (I don’t have a BS account).
Heh.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jackie
Jennifer Rubin and other opinion writers at the WaPo are good reading. I know which writers to ignore.
hueyplong
I’ll be a little bit surprised if this Biden media bullshit narrative survives tomorrow’s Trump-related adventures, and shocked if it’s still a thing after Tuesday.
So it hardly seems worth a “fuck ’em.”
piratedan
@Anne Laurie: looks great to me AL and ty for taking the time to include it. If you’re looking for quotable peeps over on Bsky, I’m sure that Major^4 may be clued into more folks than me, but happy to share if you have a need.
ewrunning
So the idea is if you’re a “serious” White House reporter you’re entitled to lengthy interviews with the President to grill him on your “narrative” obsessions. Also, White House staff are supposed to come dish to you on internal policy disputes and give you advance leaks on upcoming policy moves. Look how well that worked out when Cheney and Co played the NYT on Iraqi WMD. Sorry, guys but apparently Biden and his team have proven capable of learning something over the past several decades.
Another Scott
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Patrick did a great, great job with the DPRK News thing. I only saw it when I glanced at Popehat’s stuff (he always reposted it there) but it was always fun (it took me a while to get the joke too). I’m glad he fought back on the demand that he put “parody” in the header – and won!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Poe Larity
I am outraged Biden will not talk to that NYT Pitchbot guy.
zhena gogolia
@Anne Laurie: I could read them.
Scout211
I noticed that, too! Very clever of her.
Very strange that your nym got truncated when I clicked the reply. Maybe it can’t read spaces?
PatrickG
@Anne Laurie:
I don’t have a Bluesky or Twitter (never x!) account and had to scroll up after reading this comment to even notice you’d included the former. Works great!
Scout211
Yes, and the links work. Like PatrickG, I didn’t even notice they were BlueSky embeds.
Ken
@Scout211: I’ll bet it’s the quotation marks in the nym (The “I Want” Song), which tells me someone isn’t sanitizing their inputs.
matt
So the story is that Biden is like Richard Nixon because he went on Bateman and Bojack Horseman’s podcast? I’d bet they asked just as many serious policy questions as Vanderhei would have.
ewrunning
@matt: Yes, because Nixon went on “Laugh-In” and said, “Sock it to me.” Clearly, it’s exactly the same thing.
frosty
@Anne Laurie: If you can stop obsessively reading every B-J post (and comment!) like I do, you should be able to work a 25-hour day. I can’t believe all my retirement leisure time is spent deciding who is wrong on the internet.
But at least this week I’m finally cleaning up the raspberry patch. And buying and planting more to make up for the deferred maintenance (aka neglect).
ETA I appreciate everything you do, particularly the COVID posts. I have a friend with Long COVID and I’m scouring your posts for anything that will help. And for the record, I don’t care where they come from. Blue Sky, xTwitter, news organizations, science journals, whatever.
matt
@ewrunning: So, like Trump on SNL? This is a comparison that can be made to anybody if it’s that loose. Also, it’s not really a comedy podcast exactly – they do serious interviews with famous people.
Timill
@Anne Laurie:
Just do it on Pluterday
sdhays
@Poe Larity: Biden called out NYT Pitchbot as doing great work in his speech at the last WH Correspondents Dinner.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
The Nixon playbook? Like the time Colson, Liddy and E. Howard Hunt planned to kill Jack Anderson? Or when Daniel Schorr found out he was on the White House Enemy List John Dean mentioned as he was reading it out loud on the air.
All successful politicians—or their staff people—do their deal-level best to game the media; it’s one of the reasons they’re successful. If Jane Mayer is ignorant of that, perhaps she is losing her grasp on affairs, and if she can’t work out the logic behind Biden’s choices, her insight into current affairs isn’t nearly as good as her friends say it is. Trying to draw an equivalence between Joseph R. Biden and Richard Nixon is a real reach, especially for someone who was just shy of 20 when Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment and federal prosecution, and so old enough that the Watergate scandal should not be a near-mythic event.
Another Scott
@Ken: Good catch.
It’s the apostrophe thing again, isn’t it?
Do you suppose FYWP would accept ctrl-g??
Cheers,
Scott.
ewrunning
@matt: I should have been clear that I was kidding. I was attempting sarcasm at Mayer’s expense.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
BR
@Anne Laurie:
Hmm, Eric Topol and several other really good pandemic news sources are on Mastodon, as are feeds of AP and all the other major outlets.
Jackie
OT: I’m furious! AFTER we granted Israel military aid, THIS HAPPENED:
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-04-21-2024-8c027f2587c2c433d0fde41b63a0e0c3
Sickening. More revelations of Netanyahu’s atrocities at the link if you can stomach it.
ascap_scab
Team Biden knows who he needs to reach and they aren’t hiding behind a paywall.
Odie Hugh Manatee
“… more serious reporters.”
I was just about to take a drink when I read that. Holy fuck, they think of themselves as the “more serious reporters” out there”? The FUCK they are! Oh Hell no. I could vacuum my carpets with the NYT/WaPo/WSJ if I could find a way to connect a hose to their papers, they suck that much.
The I Want Song
Hmm… well, I do see other nyms with spaces in them that don’t seem to have that problem. Maybe it’s the quotation marks?
EDIT: Looks like this issue has been flagged above
EDIT 2: Just read the sanitizing inputs link — oh dearie me…
Nettoyeur
The Trump Normalizers are all pissy because now that The Donald is snoring, farting, breaking gag rules and overspending his way through the sordid Stormy hush money trial,they are not getting any opportunities for Bothsiding or Lauding Trump’s Refreshng Alternative Views of Presidenting. The Trump Beat is now the City Desk, which is for underpaid , overworked cubs like Woodwsrd/Bernstein back in the Watergate era, not the exalted pundits of the NYT op ed page or Politico.
Another Scott
@The I Want Song: Several of us have had to change our ‘nyms over the years because of that issue.
You can fool the software by using a glyph that looks like the quotes, if you want.
How to fix ‘nyms with apostrophes.
More on quote marks glyphs here.
HTH a little!
Cheers,
Scott.
wjca
@Gin & Tonic:
Pity the author’s paper doesn’t employ any.
Gvg
@piratedan: they weren’t very fair to Obama or Hillary either, and Joe Biden got a close look at that. I bet he resented how they misrepresented Obama after he was elected.
it was odd, they loved him right up until he was sworn in. But the economy is complicated. Among other problems, I don’t think the journalists know enough to be able to report on it, over and over. Besides the other issues.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jackie: Approving aid and delivering it are two different things. Time we demonstrate that to Bibi.
It would be a shame, a damn shame, if the military aid got misdelivered to Ukraine. But hey, shit happens.
But seriously, Biden needs to make delivery contingent on good behavior.
hitchhiker
I see that a whole bunch of us have zeroed in on that oh-so-self-serving “serious reporters” bit … but look at the beginning! Biden and Trump, those two old guys, those two candidates, Biden and Trump, just equal and opposite, what a pair.
The truth is that nobody ever, ever, ever “loved” mixing it up with the people who have anointed themselves as our trusted interpreters of truth and morality. Trump used those people while pissing on them, and they let him. Biden has been in the game since he was the father of toddlers, and he’s the president. He knows exactly what the serious people want from him, and he gets to dole it out on his schedule now, not theirs.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: NPR likes to say Democrats and Biden are “trying” to do things. They say it a lot, implying failure. They don’t say it about Republicans or TFG that much. Once you notice it you hear it a lot. It’s an editorial comment, although I doubt they realize it.
Sure Lurkalot
Great post AL, there are some clever quips on the socials and you always put them together just right. No idea how you do it but I hope you keep on keeping on.
ewrunning
@Soprano2:
gwangung
@Sister Golden Bear: I think he’d better do that. The Israel issue is getting more and more dangerous for him.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: Good Lord, that’s probably when he decided not to do any more interviews with them. What a waste of his time.
Chet Murthy
I’m reminded of Colbert’s
excoriationsend-up at the 2006 WHCD:The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction
Lyrebird
Yeah. I love Rachel Vindman, glad she highlighted the same awful core of fals equivalency. I would vote for her as well as for her BIL if I could!
And how dare they call this bs “reporting”, “safe space” election… about a demagogue on one side and the pres. who went to wartime Kyiv and who joined a picket line on the other.
ewrunning
@Chet Murthy: That was one of Colbert’s best. Also loved how he skewered both the press corps and W’s catastrophic administration. To wit,
“Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write, “Oh, they’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@ewrunning:
From the article:
Uh, couldn’t the Hunter Biden laptop and lab-leak theory stories’ lack of follow-up for example be explained by the fact that they’re BS?
Chet Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I haven’t read the article, but …. it doesn’t seem like “that’s bullshit” has stopped them in the past (e.g. “BenghaaaaAAAaaaAAaaazzzzzziiii!”) So it’s gotta be something else. Maybe ? Don’t really have a dog in the fight.
I personally believe the reason “Hunter’s peen” didn’t take off is that it just didn’t grab the American public’s ….. [we’re going with] interest
ETA: an even better example “buttery males”. I mean, complete bullshit, but somehow the media were completely willing to grab onto that and run.
TS
@Jackie:
And she did a 90 degree turn during the original trump campaign. She used to be a supporter on the right.
At the moment the WaPo pundits are lauding the Speaker of the House for doing his job – ignoring the months when he did not do his job.
ewrunning
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, I think she’s straining for false “equivalence” herself there. The parts I found more revealing were her accounts of the editorial meetings where they were given marching orders to balance each report if Trump lying with a reported lie by Hilary Clinton. When a reporter asked what to do if one lied more than the other, the response was silence. Also, at another meeting they were told Trump wouldn’t win because Americans wouldn’t vote for a racist. A reporter of color asked what if he’s winning precisely because he is racist and again got no response.
prostratedragon
@Anne Laurie: Yes, as text with working links.
piratedan
@ewrunning: I kind of find it shocking that Ms. Mayer has apparently never read the comments on articles by Ms. Glasser, Mr. Baker and many of their OP-Ed columns to understand just how out of touch their reporting is.
Chet Murthy
@piratedan: I’d say the answer to that is pretty simple: “you don’t shit where you eat.” If she were to actually understand her colleagues and their disservice to American democracy, she might have to do something about it. And then, well, y’know, she might find her finances a bit straitened. Can’t have that now.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@ewrunning:
Yeah, those parts were pretty revealing, absolutely. It’s just that paragraph set alarm bells off for me and made me scratch my head. She seemed to be rejecting the “wokeness destroyed NPR” framing
@Chet Murthy:
It was just such a bizarre paragraph from this journalist, who earlier in the article rejected the “woke NPR” framing
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chet Murthy:
It’s infuriating how they all circle the wagons whenever one of them get criticized by a lefty/Dem, but I don’t recall that ever happening with a right-winger Rufo type
@piratedan:
Probably one of those “I don’t look at social media” people
Chet Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Remember how they rose up en masse to defend Fox News when (IIRC) Obama (or somebody in his admin)( criticized ’em ?
https://niemanreports.org/articles/fox-dominion-lawsuit/
eldorado
i immediately noticed the bluesky embeds and it’s very much appreciated
piratedan
@Chet Murthy: I get the idea that Ms. Mayer “knows” them personally, they are colleagues. It’s no longer “abstract” to her, how can you lump them in with those at Faux News. It’s like well, sister, you KNEW they were a propaganda outlet for years and defended them and allowed them to profane your profession and then watched your own institution follow suit…. so sucks to be you. From where we sit, your buddies aren’t;t any better and in fact we consider them to be even worse considering that they offer them a patina of legitimacy.
cain
@matt: he should get on that one guy on Spotify.. I forgot his name he is popular with the young men.
Chet Murthy
@piratedan: Reading between the lines of Mayer’s Wikipedia entry, I gather she lives in DC. So does Baker (and, one presumes, Glasser). And they say that elite DC is really a village. As in our well-loved commenter’s nym “Villago Delenda Est”.
ewrunning
@piratedan: I seriously think the NYT goes out of its way to publish stuff that will get liberals to criticize it. Then it can point to that and the constant disparagement from the right and say, “We must be correct, because we are being criticized by both sides!”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chet Murthy:
God, I would’ve loved to have confronted someone like Tappper about this to hear their justifications for their defense of FOX. It was a right-wing propaganda mill then and always had been, plenty of examples to choose from
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@ewrunning:
I think it’s simpler than that. They do it for clicks and possibly because the paper’s owners have an agenda against the left. I’ve read that the NYT was always a paper for the Establishment and it even gave Hitler favorable coverage prior to WW2
Kristine
@Anne Laurie:
Yes!
matt
@ewrunning: oh, that’s funny!
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Not to excuse the positive coverage then but the NYT was far from alone. Favorable treatment granted the Hitler/Nazi regime once in power was the Establishment line. Both Ford and General Motors, for example, rushed to create deals and increase business alliances with the Hitler government. The NYT didn’t create the rosy agenda, they reflected (yes, and amplified) it.
Villago Delenda Est
VandeHei and Allen both need to FOAD. So does Tapper.
Chet Murthy
@NotMax: one is reminded of the businessman’s plot, that smedley Butler exposed, as well as for instance that Joe Kennedy was an admirer of Hitler. Lots and lots of our elites Were either proto fascist or pro-fascist.
The I Want Song
@Another Scott: Thank you for the info! I’m not very experienced at this, so it’ll be a good opportunity to pick up some knowledge and put it to use.
NotMax
@Chet Murthy
Also too, Prescott Bush.
Poe Larity
@Chet Murthy:
Maybe if he’d said crazy uncle. But sister?
Jay
@Poe Larity:
Have you met his sister?
Chet Murthy
@Poe Larity: I remember reading at the time that MSM journos viewed Fox News as a viable next job, as part of their career environment, so to speak. So of course, Fox couldn’t be beyond the pale, a propaganda outfit, if they were a place that well-meaning, decent kind, patriotic journos like them, would go work. amirite?
Sigh.
scav
Oh, they fancy themselves gatekeepers (ever so special they are) but why bother the gate let alone its preening keeper if it doesn’t lead anywhere one would want to go? Hell, there’s not even much of a fence to be let through anymore, just their gilded gates standing alone in a field being ever so kept.
Martin
I feel like the upcoming EMTALA USSC case isn’t getting enough attention. Idaho is challenging the law because it requires that emergency rooms treat patients – specifically including pregnant women in labor. Idaho has a no abortions even to save the life of the mother law. So the feds say you have to save the mothers life and the state says its a felony to. So hospitals are increasingly just refusing to admit the pregnant woman.
Given our deference-to-state-law-when-it’s-politically-convenient-for-us majority, that could just completely negate the law or set up another showdown between the mostly deranged and completely deranged factions of the court.
The law was designed to both stop patient dumping (which it mostly did) and not leaving people dying on the sidewalk because they couldn’t pass the credit check for treatment. If this goes down, even partially to state laws, expect a bunch of states to instantly allow hospitals to deny care to undocumented residents, and wipe out the can’t pay protections.
sab
@Chet Murthy: Also too Mayer writes for The New Yorker magazine and Glaser is one of its editors, so of course Mayer is going to be speak well of the couple.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Clap clap clap👏🏾👏🏾
JWR
@Anne Laurie:
Yes! I was going to say something about that before reading all the comments, but since you ask, yes! Very clean looking post, too. And unlike the X links, which for me show zero comments, the bsky links allow me to see some of the discussion going on. Good job!
PS. Jane Mayer? It always hurts when one of my heroes commits political suicide online, and with only two tweets! Sad, but you asked for it, Ms. Big Media Mayer.
piratedan
@JWR: I imagine the ratio will be unforgiving.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: “Abortion is healthcare” was once considered a radical slogan. We’re finding out in real time just how true it is.
TBone
Spot on.
The harder they neg, the harder us sexy, fun people ignore. Or giggle derisively, then ignore.
JWR
@TS:
Same over at CNN, where earlier today, their big headline story went like this:
First Jane Mayer, and now Stephen Collinson, who’s usually a bit better than this.
Martin
So, my take on the current campus protest situation.
Treating adult students like children is a sure path to making the situation worse. Ignoring the problem is a sure path to make the situation worse. Giving in to dishonest actors with a chaos agenda by arresting your students is also a sure path to make the situation worse. If you engage with the students and the student community like adults, without presuming their views are unworthy of interaction, and remind them of the importance of having a community where things can be discussed – they’ll respond. Congress may not, but they require a different strategy.
It makes me mad to see these prestigious universities fuck this up so badly. I’m not terribly surprised (a little bit with USC – their genocide program is quite good and they should have leaned on that), but I am mad.
p.a.
NYT, WaPo: technological & social change means working people must suck it up, retrain, and find new jobs.
NYT, WaPo: tech & social change in media access is WAAAAaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
TBone
Ugh, didn’t want to click on xitter BUT this was so compelling and important by Timothy Snyder that I had to do it. What will it look like when Russia loses?
https://twitter.com/Intellect_Vids/status/1782006388497011039
Betty Cracker
@Martin: I haven’t seen much reporting on how less high-profile universities are handling student protests. I wonder if that’s because protests aren’t as large, the admins are doing a better job of containing them or if it’s that those institutions are invisible to the media. 🤔
Baud
@Martin:
Idaho has a life exception, at least on paper.
ETA: It doesn’t have a health exception.
Baud
Great post, AL.
Baud
Also, kudos to Biden for stiffing these jerks.
RedDirtGirl
Late to the party, but how nice to see Bluesky posts getting some love!
Nukular Biskits
@Anne Laurie:
I’m sure others have already answered this (I’m still working through the comments) but after I approved the bsky.app script (I run Firefox with the NoScript add-on to cut down on the junk), it embedded nicely.
bjacques
@JWR: To be fair to Collinson, I think “accidental Churchill” could apply. Johnson’s obstinacy and delaying tactics over the last few months are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. This isn’t a patch on Churchill causing the Bengali famine, but Johnson still has another 8 months as speaker (assuming the Dems prop him up) and thus potential opportunity for further lethal mischief.
sab
@Baud: I remember back in the Bush years when Biden was on the Sunday morning talk shows every Sunday.
I am enjoying their (NYT, Wasington Post, Wall Street Journal) public complaining. Sort of a Streisand effect. They are calling attention to the fact that they have made themselves irrelevant by doing their jobs so badly.
My almost 40 year old stepkids, and their kids, all get their news elsewhere
ETA No criticism of Streisand. What I mean is by calling attention when nobody was paying attention, thus making their problem worse. Now we are laughing when before we were indifferent.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
Axios: How Tip O’Neill and Pol Pot are the same.
Subsole
@Anne Laurie: I seen ’em.
Subsole
@ewrunning: Nah. I think they’re a bunch of soft-c conservatives. They just don’t like us.
Baud
@sab: Glad to see more people recognizing the harm that these people are doing. They basically helped Trump beat Hillary. We could have been done with him 7 years ago.
@Subsole:
They don’t like that we no longer know our place.
Subsole
@Baud:Yep. The rabble are revolting.
lowtechcyclist
@Subsole: We’ve been roused.
zhena gogolia
@JWR: Oh, vomit, vomit (although sc might agree that he resembles Churchill)
catclub
They cannot bring themselves to call the trial today election interference. They have to go with hush money. I bet they will have to slide over much of the Prosecution opening arguments for this reason.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Lots of mainstream media folks are so hysterically allergic to introspection that they seem genuinely puzzled by the response to their shoddy work. It’s not just the DC media hacks themselves but also their colleagues who in some cases are actually great reporters/editors — and completely in denial about the state of political coverage in the U.S. and its horrendous consequences.
I have a dear friend who’s a media big wheel in the FL newspaper scene — whip smart, intuitive, tenacious in pursuit of a story, exactly the kind of person you’d want running a newsroom, and she does it well and gets results for her community. But in our discussions about national political coverage, she simply does not see what’s happening, IMO. Of course, she thinks it’s me who’s biased.
Mousebumples
@Anne Laurie: they work and look great to me, thanks!
Eyeroller
@Subsole: That’s what I think as well, but they use the “taking flak from both sides means we must be over the target” as their standard excuse.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Unlike with right wing media, you can’t see what the mainstream media is doing if you look at only a single article or news piece. You have to look at the pattern over time, which can be hard to do (and also requires us to be vigilant to avoid seeing false patterns).
Geminid
Turkish President Erdogan is visiting Iraq today. His Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, says Erdogan and the Iraqi PM will sign 20 bilateral agreements relating to trade and water rights when they meet in Baghdad.
Erdogan will stop at Erbil later in the day. That is the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government.
Fidan has been laying the groundwork for these visits for some weeks now, but they were announced just a couple days ago, I expect because of security concerns.
Erdogan is scheduled to visit Washington next month, on May 9.
Baud
Not sure why this is posted in the Joe Rogan subreddit, but hilarious and infuriating
https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/1c9lv9b/rfks_vp_pick_lamenting_her_childhood/
K-Mo
Remember when Biden mean-girled Helen Thomas? Me neither.
Wordle is good though.
catclub
@Baud: smart reddit commenters! They agree with my opinions.
catclub
The BJ media commenters want a morning thread.
Baud
@catclub:
I like to think we’re the standard by which the rest of the world is judged.
catclub
At CNN: (Don’t worry they kept it out of the headline.)
strong economy right now
TBone
Getting my head on straight for today’s festivities 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MS9oLa2BO98
ewrunning
@JWR: Remember all the times they were ready to tell us that Trump “became president?”
Uncle Cosmo
I am poisonally convinced that long ago the Far Wrong in a fit of eeeevil geenyuss set out to worm its agents of effluence into precisely those niches in the world of urinalism** responsible for writing the headlines – because they know full well 85-90% of “readers” are actually scroll-by lookers who never get any farther. Buncha mortarforking barstids.
** Urinalism, You know, when members of the “press corpse” whip out their metaphorical Little Willies, wave them around like they were battle ensigns, & slapdash a foolsgold shower of smelly words onto the nearest wall in hopes it’ll stick…
There go two miscreants
@Anne Laurie: Very late to the party but yes, I can see the Bluesky stuff just fine. (Firefox on Win10)
different-church-lady
Nice to see so many people calling out the BS.
pajaro
@Betty Cracker:
Betty, My field of vision includes the small liberal arts school where I graduated, the large state universities where my wife and I taught, and the schools where I visited during my career. IMO, they have gotten less publicity because only the ivy league is important to media outlets like the NY times, and because those schools have in fact been more calm. They are more calm because the percentage of students on the barricades are smaller, because the pressure of donors has been less toxic, and because most of the Presidents of the schools I know have seen their job as protecting their two different groups of emotional students, rather than opining on MIddle East policy. Those presidents have emphasized both the rights of students to voice their opinions but the need to do it in a way that avoids any harassment of other students who have different views, or no views at all.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Really gratifying to read the pushback.
They are ENTITLED.
It’s like a good or great restaurant that earned their reputation. Then, even if their food isn’t as good or the service isn’t all that great anymore, they skate on their previously-earned reputation for a period of time.
After while the grace that’s been accorded based on the good reputation – oh they are super busy, must be training a new cook, that waiter has too many tables – falls away.
And the restaurants go out of business.
Maybe that’s what we are seeing here with the whining from formerly great newspapers? Sharp people are starting to “eat” somewhere else where the food is good and the service is better.
wvng
Jane Meyer has been epically ratioed, I would guess 95:5, at best for her. She is such a fine investigative journalist one would think that she has the skillset to investigate why this happened.
wvng
@zhena gogolia: exactly right. Headlines are the key element here, because most people only read headlines and then maybe the lede. In a different sphere, the mainstream media poohpooing influence of The Enquirer, ignoring the fact that those mags are on every news stand in every store and their headlines screamed out to everyone who walked past them. The Enquirer clearly played a role in Trump elections.
Geminid
@pajaro: A friend of mine took a Calculus class at an Atlanta University last Fall, and he didn’t see any Gaza protests. But that was Georgia Tech.
Chris Johnson
@ewrunning:
Given that they were working so diligently for Trump and the condition they have been in for decades, i.e. fully engaged with MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego) vulnerabilities and going out of business due to the Internet while completely and utterly unable to admit it, when you say ‘New York Times’ I just assume they’re run out of Moscow as by far the most effective tool that Russia could have, more even than the internet troll legions.
They’ll be run differently (more directly) but the effect, we have seen. And there are limits to how hard they can push it while maintaining any credibility at all, and they’ve been at that limit for years and years now.
They’re just RT in a halloween mask. There is no point thinking anything different. This will come to light, all the more since they are not themselves powerful or government officials or anything. I think they’re ideologically Russian-oligarch friendly, I think they’re taking money, AND I think they’re compromised and there’s blackmail of NYT higher-ups for insurance. And the least surprising thing about any of that is that they’re egomaniacs, which is why they are so blackmailable: at all costs they will maintain their social position.
How would they be acting any differently as intelligent malefactors wholly run by Putin and hostile to America, as full-on traitors. I mean, how. It’s been so many years now that we’ve watched this. Enough. They know what they’re doing and what all this is. They’re fucking New York, they’ve known what Trump was this whole time, and so they are soldiers in their way to the best of their ability. Nothing more.
Captain C
@Chet Murthy:
I dunno, if my sister was that much of a destructive racist psycho liar, I’d try to get her help, not enable and defend her actions.
wjca
Wow. Just Wow. Thank you so much for this!
Another Scott
@TBone: Excellent. Well worth 8 minutes.
Thanks very much for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.