I was never holding my breath for Siskind to be a good faith actor but the sheer depravity of her content (this is only a sampling) makes it impossible to keep her off the thread.
Listen, my expectations for Vogue weren’t high, but just look at these headlines and ask yourself “is it any wonder @NYGovCuomo got away with what he did?”
This article may be the worst of the Cuomo coverage from a mainstream outlet not named CNN, and that’s really saying something. google.com/amp/s/www.wash…
A brief aside here to point out that, with only a couple of exceptions, all of the people in this thread bill themselves as critics and/or objective.
If DCCC says this kind of stuff, well, that isn’t news.
Back to the program. Pretty incredible to me that Tanden, famous for being a mean person on the internet, had nothing but incredibly complimentary things to say about Cuomo.
It takes a lot to have so much badness that, even spread across an entire network, it’s still damning. But from their nightly Cuomo Bros saga to their ridiculous coverage, CNN has earned this spot.
Honorable mention. @SethAbramson, a man who needs no introduction.
I will point out, though, that each of these tweets were within two weeks of Cuomo’s having signed a decree requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients.
It is a testament to the outrageous level of Cuomo fangirling that Rubin barely cracks the top three. Here’s just a sampling of some of her remarkable tweets about Cuomo that have aged...imperfectly
(This will always be my favorite tweet of all time)
Where stupid goes, Schmidt and company are never far behind. The Cuomo situation was unsurprisingly no different. And this from a man who still pretends to be conservative about a liberal Governor.
Even above his network, Cillizza’s fangirlish coverage stands alone as the most egregious.
We can leave it to history whether @NYGovCuomo was a “terrific bureaucrat” who “benefited from radical transparency” but let’s just say that I’m skeptical.
There you have it, folks. The worst of the worst, in my eyes, accounting for both content and reach.
There are a lot of takeaways here, but I think one of them is pretty simple: stop worshipping politicians.
Lots of them are just bad people, and eventually the truth will out.
Perhaps the best takeaway is that, when a fawning mainstream media & blue check environment tells you a Democratic leader is without blemish, it probably just means that there are no blemishes that those folks are interested in talking about, even if many might exist.
It’s important to call out that, interspersed with these awful examples, there was a lot of reporting - particularly from local outlets - that was really, really good.
This may finally be the time some of these folks block me.
Folks will ask on occasion if they can support the work that goes into these. I’m flattered, but your local food bank needs that money a lot more. For those in DC, Capital Area Food Bank does great work. capitalareafoodbank.org
A newly declassified CIA report on Joe Biden & Ukraine blows the doors off claims from the legacy press, in the lead up to the 2020 election and beyond, that Trump was pushing a “conspiracy theory” about Biden’s corruption.
Remember how the press buried Burisma? ⤵️
First, the facts. The report unearths how Biden blocked the release of intel from Ukrainian sources validating allegations of bribery tied to Biden’s diplomatic push to oust a prosecutor there in 2015, tied to his son Hunter’s work with the gas company Burisma.
You may remember this story because Biden’s having helped oust a prosecutor in a foreign country to allegedly protect his family’s corruption came up in the 2020 election.
To hear @ABC tell it, that was a “debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory.”
The media are melting down about former FBI director Jim Comey’s indictment, calling it Trump’s “retribution.”
But if prosecuting a political rival is such an outrage, why’d they cheer along when Biden went after Trump, Bannon & Navarro?
Some side-by-sides ⤵️
I want you to help me spot the difference in tone.
With Comey, @CNN put five — five! — reporters on the byline to declare the indictment was an “escalation” in “Trump’s effort to prosecute his political enemies.”
Where was that when Biden’s DOJ indicted Bannon? “A victory”
And @CNN wasn’t any better on Peter Navarro, another Trump aide indicted under Biden.
Rather than an “effort to prosecute…political enemies,” CNN quoted the prosecutor to tell the story.
Why is the claim of the government the framing of the piece under Biden? I have a guess.
The outrage over Kimmel’s canning is incredibly stupid, but it’s also enormously rich coming from the same media outlets who have cheered the government actually censoring people, particularly during COVID.
Let me know if you can spot the difference in tone? ⤵️
This @CNN headline made me think this story needed a thread.
Kimmel’s suspension is “straight from a European strongman’s playbook,” per @CNN’s @brianstelter.
When Biden cracked down on free speech during Covid, CNN hyped up the effort.
Few promoted the government’s actual attack on free speech more aggressively than the same @brianstelter now calling a comedian’s shelving evidence of autocracy, or something.
I know there’s a lot going on but we just had a media conspiracy implode that I think captures something important about the corporate press.
Did you hear about how Trump was allegedly going after John Bolton as retribution for his criticism?
Well…follow along ⤵️
We saw a week straight of media suggestions that Trump was abusing the powers of the state to deal out “retribution” to John Bolton following the news that the FBI (“Trump’s DOJ!” headlines rang out) raided his house.
We were in “unsettling” times, to hear @nytimes tell it.
The *Editorial Board* at @nytimes put out an even more dramatic statement, asking who Trump’s next payback victim after Bolton would be.
A single poll has bootstrapped a media narrative that DC residents are outraged by Trump’s takeover.
I poked around the cross tabs of the poll — of 600 or so of DC’s more comfortable residents — and I think it’s pretty suspect.
How come? Follow along: ⤵️
Let’s start with the poll. The @washingtonpost talked to 604 people, of whom 90% — 90%! — self-described as living in “very good” or “good” neighborhoods.
So, fine. 80% of people who like where they live in DC are upset.
But even beyond that, it’s worth asking whether this poll really captures DC’s opinion.
In the poll, only 31% describe crime as a “serious” or “very serious” problem in DC.
When @washingtonpost asked this same question in May, *50%* said it was a serious problem.
I feel like I’m losing my mind about the Biden autopen pardons.
The former president said he made every decision. His staff says that he didn’t actually make the final call on thousands of them.
We’re supposed to treat this as normal?
I try to unpack. ⤵️
This got new life from a Biden interview w/ @nytimes.
NYT leads by repeating Biden’s claim that he made the calls…burying the admissions that 1) he really didn’t & 2) where he allegedly did, the aids sending details to the autopen weren’t in the room when the call was made…
…instead, they relied on what senior staff had allegedly heard, which was then passed along.
The piece ends with the revelation that Biden’s then-chief of staff gave the final sign off.
Given what the former admin has lied about, why should we trust this reporting of events?