Joe Biden's Media Problem

[ZiprHead]

A wave of good news for Biden wrecks media's doomsday narrative​

Less than 48 hours after the political press unleashed collective convulsions about the apocalyptic prospects facing the Democratic Party in the wake of two statewide elections last week, a wave of good news has scrambled the media’s preferred storyline.

Addicted to “Biden crisis” reporting since August, and often bending common sense in order to adhere to the Dems in Disarray narrative, the Beltway media now face a conundrum. Do they stick with their GOP-friendly script about an ineffectual president in free fall? Or do they follow the facts and report on Biden’s increasingly impressive list of accomplishments and a runaway U.S. economy that’s flourishing?

Three events unraveled the Biden Doomsday narrative on Friday. A white-hot jobs report not only counted more than 530,000 new jobs created in the month of October, but the Labor Department revised its estimates for September and August and confirmed an additional 235,000 positions were created — or 766,000 U.S. jobs we didn’t know about until Friday. That shocker naturally sent to the Dow Jones upward, ending the day at yet another all-time high under Biden, 36,327. Since he was elected last year, the stock market is up a jaw-dropping 40 percent, and has created $14 trillion in new wealth.

Then as the clock ticked down Friday night, Democrats passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, the largest transportation package in U.S. history. The sprawling and historic legislation will produce hundreds of thousands of union jobs, transform the nation’s transportation system and represents the largest passenger rail, roads and bridges investment in 70 years.

Combined, the three Friday wins produced the type of day most sitting presidents dream about. They also came amidst a premature funeral procession, eagerly sponsored by the media, which featured an avalanche of doomsday pronouncements following disappointing Democratic election showings in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

How reluctant was the press to sing Biden’s praise on Friday? Both “ABC World News Tonight” and “NBC Nightly News” ignored the stunning October jobs report. “Nightly News” though, did find time to report on Biden’s “plummeting” approval rating Friday night.

In the middle of the afternoon on Friday, news consumers visiting WashingtonPost.com had to scroll down past 75 different stories and links before they found the first mention of the blockbuster jobs report. Ironically, at the top of the Post site Friday afternoon was a column about how the White House is having trouble spreading good news about the economy. Over at CNN.com, readers at the “US” homepage had to scroll past 70 stories before seeing the first jobs headline.

Shining a light on the legitimate topic of inflation and how it’s hurting families at the grocery checkout, CNN for some reason decided to feature a very large family with seven children that buys an astonishing 12 gallons of milk a week to highlight how inflation hits the pocketbook. The piece was clearly framed as a Biden hit job and felt more like GOP propaganda than straight news reporting. When critics pointed out the absurdity of the premise (each family member drinks 1.5 gallons of milk each week?), the CNN reporter who did the piece went on Twitter to denounce “assholes” who questioned it.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) noted that if the family has seven children that means they’re likely receiving $2,100 per-month in child tax credits, which is helping with the milk purchases. CNN anchor Brianna Keilar confirmed that the family receives generous support from the government. Yet for some reason that information, which reflected well on the Biden administration, wasn’t included in the CNN report, which reflected poorly on the Biden administration.

🗞 GOOD STUFF:​

This definitely isn’t “good,” but I want to highlight nonetheless, because it dovetails so closely with the oversized role the press plays in portraying Biden as a failure.

This was a Times front-page piece from yesterday about how the economy is by all accounts on fire, but consumers and voters think it’s floundering. What’s so astonishing is nowhere in the piece does the Times hint that the media’s misleading, doomsday coverage of the economy might be one reason why Americans have a skewed vision of the economy under Biden.

From “Americans Are Flush With Cash and Jobs. They Also Think the Economy Is Awful”:

The reasons seem to be tied to the psychology of inflation and the ways people assess their economic well-being — as well as the uneven effects that rising prices and shortages have on different families. It may well be shaped by the psychological scars of the pandemic, one manifestation of this being an era of exhaustion.
Regardless of the exact causes, after decades in which the availability of jobs (or lack thereof) drove economic sentiment, inflation now appears to have become the more powerful force.

So much for the "liberal media" being in the pockets of the Dems.

A wave of good news for Biden wrecks media's doomsday narrative

Still obsessing over Va.

pressrun.media

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Media is struggling because Biden isn't making a mockery of the nation, the Democrats have gotten two larger bills through Congress and now try a last one before our damn election cycle starts up after the holidays, and Trump is still blacklisted on social media. Their ratings are down a lot!

Afghanistan was a mess, but it is so far in the rear view mirror, Americans likely forget we ever invaded. Meanwhile, inflation continues to show up here and there due to supply issues, but we aren't seeing it in wages, so it isn't a problem yet. The backlog in CA Ports is slowly dropping down. And jobs are starting to look better. We still have pandemic issues however, and millions of Americans continue to keep making this pandemic endemic. Overall, Biden should be looking at having all the bad news in the past, and all the good news up ahead and during the election cycle, which will suck for the GOP... well it won't, they'll just say we are in a depression, billions unemployed, and CRT being physically crammed into babies heads at government run nurseries. But the left will counter with the Roe v Wade repeal.

The GOP could be in major trouble this November. I'm not counting chickens, by far, but the wrong things are happening at the right time. And the good things look aligned for the right time as well.

 

[Elixir]

Apparently there’s something in the water that has reduced the American attention span so drastically that nothing that happens prior to the week before voting starts, is going to matter in the next election.
We will probably deserve the evil that will therefore be visited upon us by the seditonists.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Media is struggling because Biden isn't making a mockery of the nation, the Democrats have gotten two larger bills through Congress and now try a last one before our damn election cycle starts up after the holidays, and Trump is still blacklisted on social media. Their ratings are down a lot!

Afghanistan was a mess, but it is so far in the rear view mirror, Americans likely forget we ever invaded. Meanwhile, inflation continues to show up here and there due to supply issues, but we aren't seeing it in wages, so it isn't a problem yet. The backlog in CA Ports is slowly dropping down. And jobs are starting to look better. We still have pandemic issues however, and millions of Americans continue to keep making this pandemic endemic. Overall, Biden should be looking at having all the bad news in the past, and all the good news up ahead and during the election cycle, which will suck for the GOP... well it won't, they'll just say we are in a depression, billions unemployed, and CRT being physically crammed into babies heads at government run nurseries. But the left will counter with the Roe v Wade repeal.

The GOP could be in major trouble this November. I'm not counting chickens, by far, but the wrong things are happening at the right time. And the good things look aligned for the right time as well.

I'll never understand why CNN turned on Biden so hard regarding Afghanistan. You can make a strong argument that Trump made the withdraw much harder for Biden with all his missteps there. But even I didn't blame Trump for it because we were put in an impossible position there due to the Bush Administration.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

People love bad news and when there isn't any they'll invent some, particularly when it concerns your political rivals. I think it's how people make themselves feel better, pretending that they have answers to problems when there aren't really problems.

And "the media" wants ratings. They need the unbelievably believable to sell their product. Even Orange Mouth knows this and is why his stooges send him millions.

 

[Harry Bosch]

People love bad news and when there isn't any they'll invent some, particularly when it concerns your political rivals. I think it's how people make themselves feel better, pretending that they have answers to problems when there aren't really problems.

And "the media" wants ratings. They need the unbelievably believable to sell their product. Even Orange Mouth knows this and is why his stooges send him millions.

Good point. The media knows that people are drawn to drama and sensational stories.

 

[TomC]

People love bad news and when there isn't any they'll invent some, particularly when it concerns your political rivals. I think it's how people make themselves feel better, pretending that they have answers to problems when there aren't really problems.

And "the media" wants ratings. They need the unbelievably believable to sell their product. Even Orange Mouth knows this and is why his stooges send him millions.

Good point. The media knows that people are drawn to drama and sensational stories.

It's an unfortunate aspect of capitalist media.

Depth and breadth of coverage is expensive. Nuanced explanations are expensive.

But sensationalism, true or not, makes money. A "source" can lie all they want if people watch the advertising enough to make the content profitable.

Tom

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

People love bad news and when there isn't any they'll invent some, particularly when it concerns your political rivals. I think it's how people make themselves feel better, pretending that they have answers to problems when there aren't really problems.

And "the media" wants ratings. They need the unbelievably believable to sell their product. Even Orange Mouth knows this and is why his stooges send him millions.

Good point. The media knows that people are drawn to drama and sensational stories.

It's an unfortunate aspect of capitalist media.

Depth and breadth of coverage is expensive. Nuanced explanations are expensive.

But sensationalism, true or not, makes money. A "source" can lie all they want if people watch the advertising enough to make the content profitable.

Tom

Sounds like Orange Mouth and his minions aren't into delayed gratification. Gotta have that instantaneous emotional fix.

I agree Trumpo is a symptom. He definitely sees politics as winner-take-all sport, not as an aspect of government. If he wins the superbowl he thinks he gets to run the NFL. He's fucked up. If he doesn't win the superbowl then all the teams he lost to are cheating so he still thinks he should be running the NFL. He really is fucked up.

 

[ZiprHead]

More proof of media bias against Biden.

Yes, the media IS the problem, not "messaging"

There has been debate here and elsewhere regarding why Biden has such poor polling numbers despite things improving significantly under his watch. Many criticize Democrats for their messaging, claiming that we are inferior to the GOP in this regard....

www.dailykos.com

Artificial intelligence can now measure the negativity with precision. At my request, Forge.ai, a data analytics unit of the information company FiscalNote, combed through more than 200,000 articles — tens of millions of words — from 65 news websites (newspapers, network and cable news, political publications, news wires and more) to do a “sentiment analysis” of coverage. Using algorithms that give weight to certain adjectives based on their placement in the story, it rated the coverage Biden received in the first 11 months of 2021 and the coverage President Donald Trump got in the first 11 months of 2020.

…

After a honeymoon of slightly positive coverage in the first three months of the year, Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as — and for a time worse than — the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.

Think about that. In 2020, Trump presided over a worst-in-world pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths; held a superspreader event at the White House and got covid-19 himself; praised QAnon adherents; embraced violent white supremacists; waged a racist campaign against Black Lives Matter demonstrators; attempted to discredit mail-in voting; and refused to accept his defeat in a free and fair election, leading eventually to the violence of Jan. 6 and causing tens of millions to accept the “big lie,” the worst of more than 30,000 he told in office.

And yet Trump got press coverage as favorable as, or better than, Biden is getting today. Sure, Biden has had his troubles, with the delta variant, Afghanistan and inflation. But the economy is rebounding impressively, he has signed major legislation, and he has restored some measure of decency, calm and respect for democratic institutions.

 

[ZiprHead]

Media is more negative toward Biden today than Trump in 2020 - Lawyers, Guns & Money

Hey kids! Have you ever asked yourself: Why exactly does Donald Trump have such a great shot at being re-elected — or more likely, “re-elected” — president in 2024, despite everything he did and didn’t do as president the first time around? One reason is that the Republican party is now a...

www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com

But there’s a big problem here, which is that it’s an apparently unalterable axiom that there are two legitimate major parties in the USA, which means that describing the current situation accurately would violate that axiom, which in turn means that the Mainstream Media ™ simply can’t do that, or at least not in any sustained or coherent way. Sure they may accurately report incidents like Donald Trump attempting an autogolpe at the end of his presidential term, but very soon they’ll be back to the good ‘ol both sides narrative, in which Republican Daddies get if anything more positive coverage than “feckless” Democrats, because you know Both Sides.

Surely the astounding contrast between Donald Trump in 2020 and January of 2021 and Joe Biden in the months since would break this model though, right? I mean Joe Biden has been doing in my view a pretty good job by normal metrics of presidential performance, but that’s not even the point here: the point is that the contrast Normal President doing Normal Presidential Things in a Normal Way and Aspiring Fascist Dictator Donald Trump is just so extreme that the Mainstream Media ™ surely can’t just go back to their old ways, not in America in 2021?

About that:

Even the extraordinary news that jobless claims had dropped to the lowest level in 52 years came with a qualifier: “BUT, BUT, BUT…don’t expect [the numbers] to immediately change Americans’ negative perceptions of the economy.”
It isn’t just Politico. My impression of other outlets’ coverage of President Biden had been much the same: unrelentingly negative. Was it my imagination?
No, it wasn’t.
Artificial intelligence can now measure the negativity with precision. At my request, Forge.ai, a data analytics unit of the information company FiscalNote, combed through more than 200,000 articles — tens of millions of words — from 65 news websites (newspapers, network and cable news, political publications, news wires and more) to do a “sentiment analysis” of coverage. Using algorithms that give weight to certain adjectives based on their placement in the story, it rated the coverage Biden received in the first 11 months of 2021 and the coverage President Donald Trump got in the first 11 months of 2020.
The findings, painstakingly assembled by FiscalNote vice president Bill Frischling, confirmed my fear: My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.
After a honeymoon of slightly positive coverage in the first three months of the year, Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as — and for a time worse than — the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.
Think about that. In 2020, Trump presided over a worst-in-world pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths; held a superspreader event at the White House and got covid–19 himself; praised QAnon adherents; embraced violent white supremacists; waged a racist campaign against Black Lives Matter demonstrators; attempted to discredit mail-in voting; and refused to accept his defeat in a free and fair election, leading eventually to the violence of Jan. 6 and causing tens of millions to accept the “big lie,” the worst of more than 30,000 he told in office.
And yet Trump got press coverage as favorable as, or better than, Biden is getting today. Sure, Biden has had his troubles, with the delta variant, Afghanistan and inflation. But the economy is rebounding impressively, he has signed major legislation, and he has restored some measure of decency, calm and respect for democratic institutions.

In other words, American liberal democracy came within a fingernail’s length of being destroyed n that faraway time known as January of [checks notes] this year, and Donald Trump and the Republican party are both working feverishly to make sure it is destroyed the next time they get a bite at the apple, but this has done absolutely nothing to stop the Mainstream Media from falling all the way back into their Both Sides frame, even as Rupert Murdoch’s right wing scream machine and Mark Zuckerberg’s social network continue to hollow out the remnants of liberal democracy from the inside.

 

[ZiprHead]

Americans don't feel the direct payments or expanded child tax credits doled out earlier this year helped them much, according to the latest NPR/Marist poll, and they don't see Democrats' signature legislation as addressing their top economic concern — inflation.

Additionally, they're down on the job President Biden is doing, don't give him much credit for the direct payments or tax credits, and have soured on the direction of the country.

The results, out Thursday, come as Democrats prepare a nationwide push to sell voters on their policies ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when the party will defend its slim majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Americans do mostly endorse the new infrastructure law but are less supportive of Democrats' Build Back Better bill that has passed the House. And while that legislation would expand the social safety net, survey respondents weren't convinced that it would help people like them.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Okay, I'm curious, how is inflation a problem we are dealing with? I am having more problems finding certain things at a store or online than I am with an inflated price tag.

We'll see how the American people feel come the Fall, and whatever the heck the nation's state is at that time. Things could be much different and in the Democrats favor. Usually it takes time for people to realize the Democrats passing legislation they actually support, is a good thing.

 

[ZiprHead]

Okay, I'm curious, how is inflation a problem we are dealing with? I am having more problems finding certain things at a store or online than I am with an inflated price tag.

That was my first thought too.

Here's why I think it's an issue:

inflation - Google Search

They say nothing about wages being up almost 5 percent and that the improved child tax credit has decreased child poverty significantly, covering that inflation quite well.

I've said it before. A little inflation driven by regular people having more money to spend is a good thing.

 

[ZiprHead]

How media coverage drove Biden’s political plunge

The mainstream media has played a huge, underappreciated role in President Biden’s declining support over the past year. Its flawed coverage model of politics and government is bad for more than just Biden — it results in a distorted national discourse that weakens our democracy. The media needs to find a different way to cover Washington.

One of the sharpest dips in Biden’s approval rating — which has dropped from 55 percent in January 2021 to less than 39 percent today — happened last August, when it declined almost five points in a single month. There wasn’t a huge surge in gas prices, nor some big legislative failure. What caused Biden’s dip was the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — or, rather, the media’s 24/7, highly negative coverage of it.

To be clear, Biden deserved criticism. The early stages of the U.S. exit were tumultuous, with desperate Afghans clinging to U.S. military planes and massing outside the Kabul airport. The Taliban took control far more quickly than the administration anticipated. But for much of August, the homepages of major newspapers and cable news programs were dominated by Afghanistan coverage, as if the chaotic withdrawal was the only thing happening in the world. Journalists and outlets tore into the president, with Axios calling the withdrawal “Biden’s stain,” NBC News correspondent Richard Engel declaring that “history will judge this moment as a very dark period for the United States,” and CNN’s Jake Tapper asking an administration official on his show, “Does President Biden not bear the blame for this disastrous exit from Afghanistan?”

Biden’s poll numbers plunged, closely tracking the media hysteria. As The Post’s Dana Milbank wrote in December, data analysis showed a marked increase in negativity in media coverage of Biden that started last August. After the withdrawal, the media lumped other events into its “Biden is struggling” narrative: infighting among Democrats over the party’s agenda, Democrats’ weak performances in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, rising inflation, and the surge of the delta and omicron variants. Biden’s role in these issues was often exaggerated — there are many causes of inflation besides Biden’s policies; presidents can’t stop the emergence of coronavirus variants. This anti-Biden coverage pattern remains in place.

 

[BH]

I'm doing okay economically. I'm single with no kids though. The only thing bothering me is the gas prices but I'll take that than have Trump back anyday.

Here is some thing I dont understand about people. Why dont they understand that the economy, by its nature, is going to be doing well for some some of the time and not well for others.

Another thing. even if people did the right thing, worked hard, was disciplined, learned a skill or were capable of learning said skills there still would not be enough jobs that pay a whole lot to go around for everyone. At times you will have smart hardworking people get a degree or trade knowledge that there just isnt enough jobs to go around to give them one.

 

[ZiprHead]

Payrolls increased 528,000 in July, much better than expected in a sign of strength for jobs market

Nonfarm payrolls were expected to increase 258,000 in July, according to Dow Jones estimates.

www.cnbc.com

• Nonfarm payrolls rose 528,000 for the month and the unemployment rate was 3.5%, easily topping the Dow Jones estimates of 258,000 and 3.6%, respectively.
• Wage growth also surged, as average hourly earnings jumped 0.5% for the month and 5.2% from a year ago, higher than estimates.

Or...

July Jobs Report Shows Workers Under Strain | National Review

Press coverage has been straight out of the White House hymnal, but a closer look suggests why a lot of workers are not feeling so thrilled right now.

www.nationalreview.com