What the mainstream media doesn’t report speaks louder than what they do report. They still avoid any talk of issues, of course. But notice that this week there are multiple headlines announcing that “Trump and Harris are neck and neck”. Which is strange, because if you’ve been following these headlines, all you see is how Harris has been on the rise and Trump has been flailing. The truth, of course, is that the media sees any positive momentum from Harris as newsworthy, but reporting on positive momentum from Trump would be bad journalism. The saddest thing is, they believe it.
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Notice how all the news about Trump continues to be anything but the issues. Liz Cheney said this. Chris Christie said that. A supposedly unhinged Trump “threatens” his lawyers, donors, and election officials. Trump is “cashing in”. He promises a “bloody story”.
In the meantime, Harris coverage is indistinguishable from parody. AP news—I kid you not—has an article talking about her “favorite foods”. This has gone past being farcical.
Newsweek swoons as a “video of Harris embracing a crying woman” (does anyone remember what they said about the video where Trump was comforting the families of the soldiers who died in Afghanistan? Of course, even though Harris was “the last voice in the room”, she wasn’t really. I read in the Washington Post that GOP congresspeople “labor to find a connection”).
Oh, and Trump isn’t the only villain today. YOU are one too. Harris changing her accents from “white” to “black” isn’t her pandering in front of crowds, it’s a reflection of YOUR racism. Or so MSNBC says. Notice their careful use of language. It’s not “the debate over her choice of accents”. It’s “the debate over her voice“.
The one opportunity that Trump will have this entire election cycle to allow the American people to see him and Harris side-by-side talking about actual issues will be the debate on Tuesday (which CNN reports as “the showdown she’s long sought with Trump”, even though she turned down the opportunity to have three debates and is sticking to the one debate and the one 18-minute interview). But watch as they spin every sentence Trump says out of context, and ignore everything Harris says so they can replace her words with theirs.
The question is—are the American people so brainwashed that they can’t see any of this? Let’s pray not.
Monday, September 9, 2024
Remember when Joe Biden was running for President and the media circled the wagons talking about how age wasn’t important? Most Americans don’t, and that’s why the New York Times, USA Today, and The New Republic are piling on how Trump (who has been on podcast after podcast sometimes articulating policies for more than 2 hours) is somehow “barely coherent”. The Guardian manages to find another rock band that doesn’t know how music licensing works. And the Washington Post ominously reports that Trump said, “There will be blood” even though the only blood that was spilled was his and his followers.
In the meantime, the media continues to praise Dick Cheney (wasn’t he the devil incarnate at one point?), cover up for Harris’s role in the botched troop withdrawal in Afghanistan (wasn’t yesterday’s story that this was Trump’s fault?) and telegraph how Harris will be a “prosecutor” in tomorrow’s debate. Oh yes, and an ABC News poll reports that Harris’s support is rising, but the headline doesn’t mention that the poll cited was taken over a week ago.
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
I’m typing this about three hours after the Presidential Debate happened. There is a surprising number of “objective” headlines in today’s Google News, but that’s because everyone who works at the mainstream media has gone to bed for the night. But stalwarts like Politico never sleep with their hit pieces on Trump.
Kamala Harris had one job to do tonight: escape the debate unscathed, unlike what President Biden did in June. By most accounts, she did that with substantial help by David Muir and Lindsey Davis. CNN was actually fair and objective in June, but ABC wasn’t about to repeat that mistake.
- The moderators did multiple “fact checks” on Trump (in some cases injecting their personal opinion or getting the fact checks wrong), while letting Harris sail through despite her bringing up every hoax the mainstream media has been pushing for years (fine people, January 6 insurrection, dictator on day 1)
- The moderators focused most of the time on issues that charged up the progressive left wing base, like abortion (which last I heard is no longer an issue the Federal Government has control over).
- ABC broke its own debate rules and opened Harris’s mike when Trump was speaking.
- Notice what wasn’t even mentioned. The assassination attempt on Trump less than two months ago. Not even as a side comment. NOTHING was to be mentioned that would give Trump any kind of advantage.
Tomorrow, ALL of the mainstream media will be high-fiving each other on how Harris (meaning they) beat Trump. In actuality, as Nicole Shanahan observed it was more of a draw (her analysis is worth a watch).
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
You do not hate the mainstream media enough.
Predictably, the entire day was spent piling on, high-fiving each other, and gloating. The masks are off. The Atlantic calls Trump “a dope”. Politico says, “it’s go time”. The New York Times and Vanity Fair giddily talk about Taylor Swift’s endorsement. Even Fox News can’t help itself but mock Trump and paint Harris as a conquering hero.
On the Trump side, it’s predictably all negative. Opinion pieces by MSNBC, The Washington Post mock Trump’s performance.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind any of this—it’s a free country and they can say what they want. What I mind is, the majority of Americans still think that Google News is unbiased. Does this look unbiased?
Not ONE mainstream media outlet pointed out the lies that Harris was allowed to get away with during the debate, all while Trump was being tag-teamed by Muir and Davis. The Federalist published a piece that outlined every single one of her lies and stretching of the truth. Breitbart News published a piece as well. These are legitimate news outlets with real journalists doing real reporting, just as legitimate (or more so) than the junior reporters running the show at CNN and ABC News.
But you will not find it on Google News, nor cited by any mainstream outlet. Why? They’re not as “important” as “credible” sources like NPR and The Atlantic.
The worst thing of all is that nothing of substance was discussed in yesterday’s debate. The contest was simply to see who would look better on TV. Harris won that contest. But will the American people ever know her real positions on inflation, the Ukraine war, the Middle East, China, the economy (other than how she’ll tax unrealized gains and put price controls on groceries), or what she will do for the cause of Liberty and free speech? Of course not. That’s not part of the story that Hollywood and Madison Avenue have so carefully crafted. And if America fails to ask those questions, we will deserve everything that happens next.
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Same old same old today. Trump’s a racist. More Republicans are supporting Harris. Germany hates Trump. Trump’s going to throw everyone in jail. Trump is talking about eating dogs. The Supreme Court is going to cheat. Trump is extreme right-wing. Trump is a sexist.
I was going to do this for a few days and stop, but at this point I’ll just continue because I want to see if they can keep this up until Election Day. If Harris starts falling in the polls, watch carefully for a wag the dog event, or a crisis that must not be put to waste.
Friday, September 13, 2024
During the debate, Trump used the line “eating the dogs, eating the cats”. TikTok warriors pounced on it to make viral videos mocking Trump, but the videos turned out to be so catchy that conservatives have started spreading them.
It’s the perfect microcosm for what happens on every issue. Low-information voters (sorry, most of them young) are fed lies from mainstream outlets (remember, young people just out of teenage years are more conditioned to accept what people in authority tell them, especially ones that aren’t their parents). Note how CNN uses the words “false rumor”, BBC calls them “lies”, and the Washington Post and NPR on unrelated stories reinforce that Trump “smears” and has his “own version of reality”.
The truth is that yes, Trump speaks in hyperbole. He always has. That’s what real estate developers do. And yet professional journalists seem to forget what they learned in third grade—that there are such thing are figures of speech and rhetorical devices. But of course they didn’t forget. They know exactly what Trump is doing, but just hope that Americans are all idiots. And sadly, many are.
What’s the truth? No, there is not an epidemic of dogs and cats disappearing in Ohio. But yes, there are some illegal aliens coming to the country, breaking laws, establishing their own laws, refusing to assimilate, and yes, in some cases doing to household pets in our country what they did to them in their country.
Calling Trump a “racist” completely ignores the important questions about immigration. Should there be tighter controls on illegal immigration? For legal immigration, are there things the USA can to ensure that those we allow into the country are all productive citizens and not just coming here to suck at the teat of social services paid by your tax dollars?
It’s a debate it looks like we will never have.
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Trump coverage continues to not be about Trump’s policies, but about everything else. One of his supporters said something mean. A comedian thinks his campaign is over. A celebrity didn’t ask for his endorsement. In the new articles that do talk about policies, again it’s not about anything that Trump said, but mind-reading, projection, and twisting Trump’s hyperbolic speech into works of fiction.
There are rare sightings of objective news about Harris, but of course unlike with Trump those are counterbalanced by the typical swooning. When the work week starts again, expect her column to turn bright green again.
