The news media is afraid of Republicans

The GOP has “worked the refs” and intimidated the media. They’re afraid to be seen as liberal even if it means not challenging Republican lies and distortions.

Approximately 0% of mainstream news editors / reporters worry about being seen as having a right-wing bias. (Even though most vote Dem. That shows "openness"! )

Approximately 100% of them worry about being seen as leaning left.

That's your guide to mainstream coverage. https://t.co/sSt53bAzZW
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) July 28, 2023

News media coverage on Biden’s positive impact on the economy has been bad

The GOP will pay a price for its extremism. But its merciless attacks on Biden poison the political atmosphere & foster cynicism—a tough combo for a president with a good story to tell about the economy & government’s achievements.
Free link to my column https://t.co/uGK26dpfEg
— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) July 30, 2023

The news media’s job as related to economy is not to report how some voters “feel” about the economy but what are the facts related to the economy and what decisions were made to improve economy. The news media should inform voters, not reflect voters feelings.
— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) July 29, 2023

This. If Biden is not getting credit for actively leading the remarkable economic recovery in the US, it is a clear indictment of the failure of the media to adequately cover that recovery. https://t.co/L9JlEQMosp
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) July 29, 2023

We need some Trump-free TV news

@CNN @MSNBC
I have stopped watching your networks because of your excessive coverage of Trump. I can’t stand the sight or sound of him. How about designating one hour a day where you don’t cover Trump? I’d watch that.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) March 29, 2023

Excessive coverage influences news

I never thought I would use Donald Trump and Lamar Jackson in the same sentence – sorry, Lamar.

What they have in common is endless media coverage by TV and radio stations and websites that have time and space to fill. The problem is the coverage influences events.

The excessive coverage of the Lamar Jackson contract situation (when there is very little actual news) has alienated some fans from Lamar and made the rest of us just sick of hearing and reading about it. I think it’s been unhelpful to having a resolution and probably helped both sides to dig in.

Trump is evil but he is an expert at getting attention which the media gladly gives to him. I doubt that he ever would have been nominated in the old days when national TV news was only on for half an hour. I blame the media for helping him – even negative coverage takes up space that could have been used on other candidates and stories.

More on excessive Trump coverage

I stopped watching CNN and MSNBC because they are addicted to Trump. The media has learned nothing. https://t.co/CBgJR87AEG
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) March 23, 2023

The media needs to take responsibility for their addiction to Trump and the excessive coverage they have given him since 2015. I stopped watching CNN and MSNBC because I can't stand the sight and sound of that evil lying bigot.https://t.co/CBgJR87AEG
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) March 28, 2023

Three poor tweets by the Washington Post

They are trying to appear unbiased but the tweets should say that Republicans are doing this. The articles are better.

Republicans don’t want to raise the debt limit.

Republicans want to limit the response to future pandemics.

Republicans want to limit voting rights.

In a sane world, lawmakers might respond to bank turmoil by recognizing that there's more fragility in the financial system than once understood. Maybe they'd back off on threats to default on U.S. debt.
Unfortunately we do not live in that world. https://t.co/VYYYdvNrA2
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) March 17, 2023

In the next pandemic, North Dakota can't make residents wear masks.

Ohio health officials can't shutter businesses.

The president can't force a vaccine or test mandate.

Inside the 3 year culmination of public health handcuffing w/ @JoelAchenbach https://t.co/OjjJzQMzKx
— Lauren Weber (@LaurenWeberHP) March 8, 2023

President Biden came to a seminal site of the civil rights movement — one that led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 — to try to inject urgency into changing the country’s voting rights laws once more. My latest from Selma: https://t.co/Bp0G8iGaD5
— Matt Viser (@mviser) March 6, 2023

More tweets on the decline of newspapers

U.S. local newspapers are dying at a rate of 2 per week. By 2025, a third of them will be gone. If you’re not convinced that’s a doomsday-level threat to democracy, read this state-by-state list of what local reporters uncovered in 2022. It’s a sample of what we stand to lose.
— Joseph Cranney (@joey_cranney) December 23, 2022

great piece by @vivian. The collapse of local news has created vacuums which are being filled by disinformation, "pink slime" and partisan content

https://t.co/9H916JLdW0
— Steven Waldman (@stevenwaldman) December 6, 2022

New by me —>

Alden Global Capital makes for a better Hollywood villain — but the scale of local news destruction in Gannett's markets is simply astonishing.

Staff size is down 59% in 4 years.

At its biggest local papers, paid readers are down 77%. https://t.co/XgnYdMTa3h
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) March 9, 2023

A long-running story: the decline of local media which covered hometown Members of Congress, allowing some to build personal brands beyond the party label and increasing accountability. Absent this, voters & legislators are more apt to just default to partisan voting patterns. https://t.co/a6WG2ckuhX
— David Karol (@DKarol) March 4, 2023

Based on these figures, the Chicago Tribune lost 82% of its newsroom staff in a 16-year period. https://t.co/fmuRhH7uJW
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) February 28, 2023

The sole reporter left at the St. Cloud Times is leaving the paper next month, raising questions about how the 93-year-old paper will continue operations.https://t.co/FCpCgk6AmF
— Axios (@axios) January 25, 2023

Interesting op-ed about the nonprofit newsroom boom that is helping to fill local news gaps across the U.S. https://t.co/YXqQo965Nh
— Stephanie Beasley (@Steph_Beasley) November 16, 2022

Poor Washington Post article on the Ohio train derailment

Very unbalanced article:
1) You cite Vance's attack on what Buttigieg said but you don't include what Buttigieg's original remarks were.
2) You didn't include the Trump administration's weakening of rail safety rules
/1
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) February 18, 2023

You did include some responses from the White House but you put it after all of the criticism.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) February 18, 2023

The media’s continuing failure to cover Trump properly

The media is addicted to Trump because he boosted their ratings. They have never covered him properly since he started running in 2015 and they haven’t learned from their failures. This is addressed in a recent column by Oliver Dary and an old one by the great Margaret Sullivan. I am really worried about how badly the media will do for the 2024 election.

News outlets are still struggling to cover trump. The latest example: Coverage of the Bob Woodward lawsuit. More in @ReliableSources: https://t.co/HgWcjWaczj
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) February 1, 2023

As always, a very thoughtful and insightful piece from Margaret Sullivan's final column, advice for media covering Trump 2024 – The Washington Post https://t.co/amuUk6CdNx
— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) August 21, 2022

This is exactly why I stopped watching CNN. They’re addicted to Trump. https://t.co/SyFt4myu5j
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) January 29, 2023

Poor wording by the New York Times

The article says:

“Some of the conspiracy theories have already seeped into the Republican mainstream.”

This is crap. The theories didn’t fall out of the sky and land on Republicans. They intentionally spread them.

“Seeped” sounds like it’s unintentional. This is deliberate activity by Republicans. It should be something like “Some mainstream Republicans have tolerated or even supported false conspiracy theories”.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) November 1, 2022