A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

The Media's Role in Biden's Popularity Decline

Surprise: Mainstream media outlets insist they're not to blame. But
how much coverage have they given to Biden's economic policies?

This past week saw our three most influential newspapers-The Wall
Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times-publish
lengthy thumb-suckers asking roughly the same question: If the items on
President Biden's agenda are all so popular, why are his popularity
ratings underwater and the Democrats preparing for doom in 2022?

Each of these analyses fails its readers, however. Because, typical of
virtually all mainstream media, they cannot bring themselves to
acknowledge that the Republican Party is in thrall to a group of
dangerously deluded, pro-fascistic lunatics.

And the reason that so many regular people are unaware of this, as they
are also unaware of the content of Biden's and his party's big
bills, is because
(a) so many in the right-wing media consistently lie about them, and yet
manage to set the agenda for their alleged colleagues in the traditional
media, and

(b) so many members of the MSM focus exclusively on the "he said/she
said" minutiae rather than the content of the legislation in question
and the ways it might affect the lives of actual people.

Gerald Seib's Journal piece

argues that "the virus has scrambled the two parties' traditional
positions. Right now, for example, Democrats, even as they push for
higher taxes and more regulation on big business, are also arguing for
the right of corporations to impose vaccination and mask mandates on
their workforces." He notes that, ironically, "Republicans ... are
making what is, for them, the unusual argument that government enforcers
should step in and stop private companies from making their own
policies."

Seib's analysis would benefit from pointing out that the Republican
argument is insane, and has consistently led to the unnecessary deaths
of hundreds of thousands of people. The closest he comes is to quote
Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who admits that "some politicians in
his party have 'created a box for themselves' by arguing that the
coronavirus vaccine should be voluntary, not mandatory, for everyone.
'Does that mean they are going to be opposed to mandatory vaccinations
for school children that have been required for decades ... It's a
real stretch to argue that vaccinations against a world-wide pandemic
that has killed more than three-quarters-of-a-million Americans should
be voluntary, and vaccines for mumps and measles should be
mandatory.'" A "stretch," perhaps, but one that virtually every
Republican politician has felt compelled to endorse (and one wonders how
long Mr. Ayres can remain a "Republican pollster" so long as he says
things to reporters that are not sufficiently insane to satisfy Trump
and company).

Dan Balz's Washington Post article

notes that Biden has so far failed "to tame the coronavirus pandemic
and deal with its effects on the economy," as well as "to persuade
Congress to enact the most sweeping domestic policy initiatives in
generations," and finally to "unify the country the best he
could." He admits that the latter goal was "a long shot" given
what he describes as a "recalcitrant Republican Party." Of course,
this polite euphemism does not begin to do justice to the party of
Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert. A better
description than "recalcitrant" would be "crazy, conspiratorial,
and eager to incite even more violence on the part of followers should
they fail in their plot to steal future elections." As for his
observation that "[t]he programs are popular, but perceptions of his
leadership nonetheless have taken a hit," one need only examine the
personality-driven reporting of almost all full-time mainstream
political reporters, together with the contempt they demonstrate for
what they consider to be the boring work of explaining complex policy
trade-offs. That should dispel any mystery about the gap between
programs and public perceptions.

And yes, Mr. Balz, it is true that "Biden and his advisers have not
found the best ways to explain and sell what they are doing." This is
hardly surprising when cable news coverage is driven by the purposeful
lying-up to and including the doctored editing of Biden's speeches
at Fox -coupled with the "Who's up?
Who's down?" and "What will it mean for the next five minutes?"
style of coverage pioneered by Politico and now imitated by so many.

The Times' Nate Cohn has complained on Twitter about the reaction to
his piece

by noting
that
"A really staggering share of the replies (*on twitter*, though
conspicuously not on any other channel) essentially just assert that the
media is singularly responsible for Biden's low approval rating." I
read through many of these tweets, and not surprisingly, the fellow from
The New York Times doth protest rather too much about having to endure
the indignity of seeing his work legitimately criticized. There is quite
a distance between saying the media are "singularly responsible" for
Biden's troubles and the MSM (and Cohn's) position that the coverage
is not even worth mentioning as a cause of Biden's difficulties.
Paying more attention to Kyrsten Sinema's wardrobe
or
Joe Manchin's dinner dates

than to the expansion of Medicare or the reduction of the price of
prescription drugs is naturally going to interfere with people's
understanding of what is at stake in Biden's success. Contrary to
Cohn, nobody is saying that the coverage is everything in explaining
Biden's falling polls. Cohn and colleagues, however, pretend that
it's nothing.

How is it possible, for instance, that in a recent CNN poll
,
of those Americans who put the economy as our most pressing problem,
fully 72 percent of those same people say that Biden isn't paying
attention to the right issues, when shaping a more functional economy is
pretty much all Biden is doing? Yes, lots of people are dummies and many
are not paying attention, but can the members of the MSM honestly evade
responsibility for this pathetic state of affairs? Can they do so when
their desperate attempt to cling to outmoded beliefs both about
themselves and their role in democracy and the threat the Republicans
present could help engender the complete collapse of American democracy
should Trump and company be allowed to lie their way back into power?

Alas, yes.

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Three Short Follow-Ups

There are now 200 U.S. counties without any newspaper, according to
researchers at the University of North
Carolina, and more than 2,100 papers have shut down since 2004. Two
studies of phony right-wing propaganda sites preying on readers looking
for local news can be found here

and here
.

You'd think people would have learned by now, but here's Martin
Indyk compounding his mistakes vis-à-vis the love letter he wrote to
Henry Kissinger, by agreeing to talk to Isaac Chotiner
.

And if you've written any book at all, you almost certainly sold more
copies than Chris Christie
.

Altercation Gift-Giving Guide, Continued

My good friend Johnny Freedland
at The Guardian
is, I think, the best political pundit to be found anywhere. I recently
learned, however, that in addition to his career as a podcaster, a BBC
reporter, an expert on Israel and the Jews
,
and an author of a series of pseudonymous thrillers
, the SOB apparently
also writes beautifully about the Beatles. A great deal has already been
published about Get Back. And if you are going to read only one piece
about it, read Johnny's piece on what he nicely calls our beloved
"aliens from the future
."
(Fortunately for you, dear reader, I won't go into the disappointment
I originally experienced viewing the original Let It Be after I won
tickets, at age ten, to a premiere sponsored by WABC-AM with a
brilliantly conceived essay.) But since this is a gift-giving guide, I
am here to tell you that no one you love will be disappointed in
receiving the "super deluxe" (and expensive) "Let It Be" box
set. Remixed by Giles "son of George" Martin and Sam Okell, it's
full of the outtakes, rehearsals, and jams that we've come to expect
from these releases, many of which ended up either on Abbey Road or on
George's, Paul's, or John's early solo albums. We also get the Let
It Be EP and the first release of the 1969 Glyn Johns mix of the Get
Back album that became Let It Be when it was finally Phil Spector-ized
and released and then turned "naked" by Mr. McCartney. I like Glyn
Johns's version best.

P.S. Yoko did not break up the Beatles. They broke up because with
George's blossoming as a songwriter, there was just too much damn
talent to be contained in one group. Imagine not being able to find room
for "All Things Must Pass" on two albums in a row!

P.P.S. Here is Paul working out "Get
Back" in the film; caution: "Genius at Work!"

I saw Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theatre last week, and I am so happy for
Bob that Sylvester Stallone

is finally getting the due that Zimmy is so certain he deserves
. It was great to hear him play virtually
the entire Rough and Rowdy Ways (minus, thank goodness, the 17-minute
"Murder Most Foul"). It was no surprise that the bard did not turn
to any of the songs on Volume 16 of the "Bootleg Series" box set,
the five-CD "Springtime in New York," covering 1980-1985. This was
when Hibbing's favorite son wrapped up that Christian interlude-the
less said about, the better-and moved on to the appropriately
respected Infidels and the much underappreciated Empire Burlesque. OK,
that last one was overproduced with lots of '80s crap on it, but
listen to these songs "naked"-to coin a phrase-and one is once
again, as one so often is, awed to the point of speechlessness at the
depth and breadth of this man's genius even when operating on fewer
cylinders than usual. All five discs are really good Dylan albums; not
great-at least not great for Dylan-but more than good enough to make
anyone on whom you want to spend quite a bit of money quite happy. (Here
's
a really long review of the set, as the "length" police are already
on my back, and here's a new video for "Jokerman
," the new/old version of which is
better than the old/old one.)

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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