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
I launched a newsletter, called Holden Court, about the media, what they get wrong & why it matters. The goal is to reach beyond what my 🧵s have on Twitter & to build a better recent history of media & media criticism.
You can sign up at the link in my bio. More ⤵️
At that link you can read my launch piece and get a better idea of what it is that I’m trying to do.
The piece also walks through a recent example of bad media coverage that I worry we’re already forgetting about: the start of Covid.
My general premise for the newsletter is that media criticism could be a lot better; more driven by what the media actually does and says and more set in recent context, rather than an impressionistic sense that the media is hopelessly off-track.
I’m launching something new, so naturally I figured the best explainer was a 🧵thread🧵.
Introducing Holden Court, my Substack about the media, what it gets wrong, and why it matters.
You probably know the drill, but more details & links to sign up in the tweets below. ⤵️
Holden Court aims to unpack media failures, particularly when the media misses in unison on important political topics. But I’ll also have one-off content, Q&A opportunities, a mailbag and maybe virtual (or even in person) happy hours, too.
That doesn’t mean the threads are going away. But the amount of context and nuance I can capture in a thread is limited. So the Substack will (hopefully) provide that more robust analysis, aiming ultimately at *why* the media misses the way that it does.
“15 days to slow the spread” kicked off four years ago Saturday, sending the media into perhaps its most deranged cycle of my lifetime.
I dove back into some of the worst lockdown media coverage from those early days.
Buckle in, this one’s long. ⤵️
The real worst of the coverage was when states started reopening. The media outrage was palpable. Republicans wanted people to die, we were told.
Remember @TheAtlantic’s “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice”? You may’ve forgotten how wild the text of it was. I did.
But that wasn’t a one off sentiment. The belief four years ago among the media was that allowing people to leave their homes was tantamount to killing people.
@washingtonpost called it a “deadly error” — not in an opinion piece, mind you, but in a “health” news headline.
Another media conspiracy, this time that Trump attacked a Secret Service agent on Jan 6, imploded yesterday.
Remember when the media—in unison—reported the “bombshell” allegations as fact?
I do. And I’ve got screenshots.⤵️
You’re familiar with the story I suspect but just in case: when former aid Cassidy Hutchinson testified Trump had “lunged” for a secret service steering wheel on Jan. 6, the media rushed to print the salacious (& false) claims as true.
Here’s @NBCNews @CNN @ABC @washingtonpost
Trump was allegedly going to drive himself to the Capitol to take part in the riot.
That’s what @CBSNews @Independent @NPR @NewsHour said.
The new change is stark. I went thru @nytimes digital archive.
Since Biden said the border wasn’t secure in late Jan, “border crisis” appeared in 26 NYT stories, even as crossings declined.
When crossings peaked in Nov & Dec, but there was no one but Biden to blame?
5 mentions
So what changed? Well, Biden empowered the press by saying the border wasn’t secure in late Jan. Then Republicans voted against a “bipartisan” border deal.
After that, the media were off to the races: yes, there was a border crisis, and it was the GOP’s fault. Here’s @CNN.
What happened to the media’s legal “experts” who said Colorado was right to kick Trump off the ballot? Remember them? I do. @FreeBeacon.
Quick trip down memory lane after even the liberal SCOTUS justices rejected Colorado’s claims. ⤵️ freebeacon.com/media/watch-su…
Here’s a link to the video which is incredible. Lot of media hosts and talking heads were convinced Trump was toast. (H/t @thaleigha_ for making this gem).
The “experts” said so!
Print reporting read the same way.
@nytimes cited an “expert” who said Colorado’s case was “legally sound” and that the only thing that could stop it was politics.
Why, then, did the 3 liberal justices also side against Colorado?