Eric Boehlert: It's time to bury the New York Times' Biden-stuck-in-the-basement narrative

[babylonsister]

It's time to bury the New York Times' Biden-stuck-in-the-basement narrative
Misreading the campaign
Eric Boehlert
Jun 9

snip//

The storyline is that Biden became a spectator while Trump was running the campaign show. Today, that narrative has proven to be dead wrong and it ought to be buried.

This is a perfect example of the press firmly clinging to the idea that Democrats are in a constant state of confusion and that Trump and Republicans can easily outmaneuver them. (See: Dems in Disarray.) And preferred media narratives are hard to break.

"At a moment that is emerging as a critical test for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president is constrained by the limitations of a pandemic that has confined him to his home in Wilmington, Del., for the past three months," the Times recently stressed, as huge protests against police abuse began spreading nationwide. Ironically, that weekend it was Biden who had met with protesters out in the streets while Trump was whisked down to the White House underground bunker as protesters amassed outside. Nonetheless, the Times insisted, "For Mr. Biden, the risks of staying in political isolation are likely to escalate as these twin crises play out."

The Times and much of the campaign press have routinely presented the Biden-basement coverage as reflecting a "fear" that "anxious" Democrats have. ("Democrats who fear he has slipped off the radar screen.&quot But a close reading of the coverage usually produces very few Democrats officials who are fearful, and certainly very few Democratic voters. Instead, the narrative seems driven by journalists assuming Democrats are freaking out.

Note that news outlets often raising doubts about Biden's visibility this spring are the same ones not covering Biden's public events, while simultaneously covering every Trump utterance as breaking news. The media's message is confusing: Biden's stuck inside vs. Biden's boring when he leaves his home so we're not covering him.

The continuous stuck-in-the-basement coverage has become reminiscent of the media's But Her Emails storyline from 2016, a Republican-built talking point designed to define the Democratic nominee. And make no mistake, the Biden narrative is a GOP taunt.

more...

https://pressrun.media/p/its-time-to-bury-the-new-york-times

[Arkansas Granny]

1. K & R

[calimary]

2. Kicking this!

[onetexan]

3. NYT has been full of BS for a long long time now. It needs to put a sock on the Biden bashing.

[The Magistrate]

8. It Needs A Good Bash With A Sock Full Of Sand, Sir

Their political coverage has been disgraceful since the 1990s....

[mountain grammy]

20. Actually since the 1930's

When Hitler was a joke, but the trains ran on time.

[The Magistrate]

21. In That, Ma'am, They Were Hardly Outliers

There has been a bit of 'memory hole' come into operation in regards to the widespread anti-semitism of the 1930s, once the Second World War revealed just what Nazi anti-semitism had progressed to. Bigotry against Jews was a staple of life, particularly among upper-crust people, and evident anti-semitism was no bar to being recognized, and supported, as a sound opponent of Bolshevik Communism. This, in fact, was widely believed to be a movement loosed on the world by Jews, and so the two things were quite compatible.

[mountain grammy]

23. And yet

publications like the New Yorker and Vanity Fair never found any compatibility with Nazis.

The NYT and others seem to lose their courage when it comes to anti-Semitism or racial justice. Sad they would be the outliers.

[Cha]

4. NYT should be ashamed of themselves for being

so lazy with drivel.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

5. KnR...nt

[dlk]

6. The corporations that largely control the media are conservative

The false “liberal media” meme was started decades ago by Spiro Agnew, when the media began reporting on his many crimes. It has been a useful false flag ever since. In fact, Republicans are wholly unfit to govern. Exhibit 1: Donald Trump. Every Democrat running for office needs to continue repeating, over and over, about Republicans unfitness to lead. It’s the only way to begin to shift this pervasive false narrative.

[c-rational]

17. +1 - Agreed. The liberal media died long ago. Per the Powell Doctrine, do not argue with the media

simply buy them, and they did, and the subtle brainwashing and propaganda ensued.

[dlk]

22. Yes, Rule #1 of propaganda...

When people hear something often enough, true or not, they begin to believe it. Republicans have excelled at hammering their false message home.

[Paladin]

7. I'll cancel my NYT subscription if they don't come around on this, and soon.

If I want to hear the "Democrats are inept losers who are handing trump a second term" line, I'll just force myself to watch Chuck Todd on MSNBC. And I don't want to do that.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. He's up 8 points in poll averages

8! He's blowing Trump out in several key swing states. Basement? LOL, he's crushing it right now.

[NRaleighLiberal]

10. bothsidesdoitism sells papers. it's about $$$, not us.

[McKim]

11. I Complain to the NYTimes Every Time!!!!

I complain to the NYTimes every damn time they do this in the comments section and in a letter to the editor. They need to be called on it over and over. They are not covering Biden’s events and giving huge free publicity to Trump’s every utterance. This is what I call the Tabloidization of news and it is even happening at the NYTimes.

[LiberalFighter]

12. I rather attack the writer of the article instead of the NY Times.

Sure they okayed it but might be more effective to know who wrote it.

[GeorgeGist]

13. When you hire a non-journalist as Editor ...

it shows.

[mountain grammy]

14. Oh NYT..how you try to be fair and balanced

because Nazis deserve to be heard? WTF is wrong with you? Still trying to understand how Hitler was a joke until he wasn't. Yes, we go back that far.

[dalton99a]

19. +1. The New York Times has always been about access to power and caters to moneyed interests

[quaint]

15. VP Biden should dump Terry McAuliffe now.

Terry McAuliffe recorded saying Dems prefer Biden stay 'in the basement'

Top Joe Biden surrogate Terry McAuliffe told a videoconference meeting of Virginia Democrats over the weekend that the former vice president should remain in his basement -- where he has famously campaigned remotely during the coronavirus pandemic -- and that Democratic officials are broadly "preferring" that Biden stay out of the limelight.

[c-rational]

16. K&R - The NYT is subtle propaganda masquerading as journalism and the paper of record.

[ancianita]

18. Where are all the links that this essay quotes from. Why should we have to dig to find them.

Titles, if that's what the phrase "Dems in Disarray" refers to, just aren't enough to go on.

As presented here, the Boehlert piece doesn't link to any NYT article. Not one.

I read one 2018 article by David Leonhardt which clearly snickers at the phrase. Two things the writer does
-- explain the "Dems in Disarray" meme's history. Then
-- proceeds to show that since the first silly phrase was uttered by Hertzberg, Dems have been anything BUT.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/opinion/dems-in-disarray.html

Googling the meme, I see that that latest written piece on the phrase shows up in April 2020, and continues on Trump's YouTube and on right wing podcasts.

That said, I do agree with his take on news outlets in general...

news outlets often raising doubts about Biden's visibility this spring are the same ones not covering Biden's public events, while simultaneously covering every Trump utterance as breaking news. The media's message is confusing: Biden's stuck inside vs. Biden's boring when he leaves his home so we're not covering him.

But when I agree, I know that's my political bias showing.

I don't see the point of feeling "besieged by NYT bias" when people here are overreacting to some longstanding, and now just typical messaging used by the right. Censoring a major news outlet around here is not wise.

I've gotten the NYT every day for 32 years. As the "paper of record," and it's the only paper in the nation that writes news at a 12th grade reading level. Given my exposure to its "biases," I have to say that its reportage is grounded in fact, and that its opinion pages mostly skew left, while occasionally presenting a right wing p.o.v. As a newspaper it does what it's supposed to do.

If anyone on DU wants to discredit the NYT, they'd have to present a far broader case about its journalistic biases than to just attach some meme started in some other outlet fourteen years ago. That the right tries to run with that meme as part of its theme of "journalism is the enemy of the people" is what we deal with. We know that right wing theme is absolutely not true.

This country has a tough general election ahead. A lot of bot action in social media bugs us, and right wing tv news bugs us. That doesn't mean that Democrats should then go ahead and trust media feeds that try to cast doubt on major journalism outlets. NYT has made mistakes. It corrects them 99% of the time, either in its "corrections" box or by firing editors with poor judgment. The way I see it, the 1% shouldn't be the standard for tossing out its credibility.

Don't fall for right wing hype. Don't fall for it. Think. The right wing never proves its claims true about "liberal bias" or anything else when it comes to media. It simply uses them for its ideological ends which have nothing to do with latest breaking news or science or facts.

And about the New York Times, Eric Boehlert isn't helping us or Biden.