There’s media bias, and then there’s a press actively pushing government propaganda because the president told them to.
Today we saw perhaps the most egregious recent example of the latter. Follow along ⤵️
@FreeBeacon freebeacon.com/media/biden-im…
Yesterday the White House sent out a memo to heads of major media organizations telling them to more aggressively defend the president as he faces impeachment.
Rather than be insulted that the president would presume to use the American press as his mouthpiece, the media largely obliged.
Just look at this from @CNN.
And it wasn’t just CNN of course.
Here’s @NBCNews doing the same thing.
The “thought bubble” from @axios is basically a summation of the Biden admin’s talking points from the memo.
And @politico wasn’t much better.
This comes as outlets are already parroting Biden’s talking points about the impeachment more broadly.
The media keep repeating that there’s “no evidence” connecting Hunter and Joe Biden, as @ap does here.
@TIME did the same thing.
All these claims were made despite the evidence already presented. @mirandadevine summarized it eloquently in her piece about the memo today: nypost.com/2023/09/13/med…
After the memo was sent, @NewsHour had the guy who sent it on! The guy who had just told the media how to do their jobs. Unbelievable.
A few journalists did push back. Credit to @Ingrid_Jacques and @KimberlyEAtkins for doing so in the (conceptual) pages of mainstream outlets.
One tidbit I can’t get over — @CNN has seemingly changed its tune on whether an impeachment amounts to an “attempt to effectively reverse a democratic election” … something tells me they wouldn’t have said that about the last one.
I cover the press, so I’m not gonna wax poetic about how they’re immune to political pressure. But this has to be the worst capitulation to a politician for nakedly political reasons that I’ve ever seen.
And they have no shame about doing it.
The White House told the press to jump, and their response was “how high?” Just a shameful showing from the people who are supposed to hold the government to account.
A couple more because this is really egregious behavior.
The White House pressures outlets including @CNN to be even more skeptical of impeachment. @AnnieGrayerCNN, @MarshallCohen and @ddale8 are out with a fact check mere hours later.
@CNN @AnnieGrayerCNN @MarshallCohen @ddale8 Another from @AP - “no significant evidence” is simply not true (see above) and also the point of an impeachment — to have the power to gather all the evidence.
@CNN @AnnieGrayerCNN @MarshallCohen @ddale8 @AP @NewsHour did the same thing.
These are campaign talking points. It isn’t journalism.
@CNN @AnnieGrayerCNN @MarshallCohen @ddale8 @AP @NewsHour And it even went international. @BBCNews
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I know it’s been a few days, but the entire legacy media ran with the claim that Don Lemon was arrested for doing journalism, when he was actually indicted because a grand jury found he violated worshippers’ freedom of expression.
Quick live🧵thread🧵, starting with @nytimes. ⤵️
Same thing at @NBCNews.
Omitted from the headline is what the actual charges are: interfering with these churchgoers rights.
Predictably, @CNN has gone to bat for Lemon.
What’s at issue isn’t “reporting” of a “protest,” and claiming to the contrary is pretty obviously misleading.
There’s another media hoax from Minnesota. Legacy outlets churned out headlines about a 5-year-old child used as “bait” by ICE.
The reality? The kid’s father, an illegal immigrant, abandoned him when he saw the agents. As even these outlets later concede.
Look ⤵️
Here’s how these hoaxes start. @washingtonpost alleges ICE used a 5-year-old kid as “bait” to arrest his father.
Not until five paragraphs into the piece do they acknowledge what really happened: the child’s father, an illegal immigrant, abandoned him when he saw ICE.
But this allegation was everywhere. We saw the same thing from @AP.
Explosive claim in the headline: “used as ‘bait’” (from the school, no less)
Reality: six paragraphs down, father abandoned child.
Do you remember, all of four weeks ago, when democracy was imperiled by CBS News, under new management, delaying a 60 Minutes segment about a prison in El Salvador?
The segment aired last weekend.
Democracy survived. The takes haven’t.
Just look. Screenshots ⤵️
I usually start with the media but I’ve gotta flip that here, because the dumbest voices came from the halls of Congress.
@ChrisMurphyCT, as someone “warning about democracy’s potential disintegration” (his words) called it proof that the media has been “coopted by the regime.”
For @SenMarkey, delaying a segment was “what government censorship looks like.”
With an ambitious new health care plan proposed by the Trump administration, you should read some of the recent pieces on the subject at @commonplc. Quick 🧵👇
And out this week is @Chris_Griz on why market concentration looms over the health care industry, undercutting more a more hands-off approach: commonplace.org/p/chris-griswo…
For a real and much-needed alternative to Obamacare, dive into @ChrisEmper’s explanation of community health centers, and why they could unlock better outcomes for patients: commonplace.org/p/chris-emper-…
With the news that Walz’s reelection campaign won’t survive the spiraling child care center fraud scandal in his state, I wanted to reup some of the worst legacy media efforts to put lipstick on this particular pig.
Follow along: ⤵️
I have to start with @nytimes, who seemed positively incensed that a video from @nickshirleyy caught fire, accusing him of being “in search of politically charged footage,” while burying whether there were any kids at these child care centers in the first place.
This from the same @nytimes who a few weeks ago wrote an extensive piece about “how fraud swamped Minnesota’s social services system on Tim Walz’s watch.”