Concha on media’s double standard about gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic
Fox News contributor Joe Concha weighs in on the mainstream media’s coverage of election celebrations vs. Trump rallies on ‘America’s Newsroom.’
Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan suggested that her journalist peers "never fully learned how to cover" President Trump but "might have saved democracy" following his projected defeat against Joe Biden.
"Over the past four or five years, I’ve been sharply critical of the media, including that subset I like to call the 'reality-based press,'" Sullivan wrote on Sunday. "My continuing complaint has been that mainstream journalism never quite figured out how to cover President Trump, the master of distraction and insult who craved media attention and knew exactly how to get it, regardless of what it meant for the good of the nation."
Sullivan indicated that the press was too obedient of the "deeply abnormal president," writing "When he said 'jump,' journalists all too often said 'how high?'" and that the media "constantly sought to normalize him, treating his deranged tweets like legitimate news and piously forecasting, every time he sounded the least bit calm, that he was becoming 'presidential.'"
MEDIA OUTLETS FALSELY CLAIM LONDON FIREWORKS, PARIS CHURCH BELLS WERE CELEBRATING BIDEN VICTORY
"From the beginning, TV news far too often took his public rallies and speeches as live feeds, letting his misinformation pollute the ecosystem. And we took far too long to call his falsehoods what they often were: lies. And far too long to call his worldview what it clearly was: racist. Instead, we danced around — for years — with euphemisms like 'misstatements' and 'racially tinged comments,'" Sullivan explained. "Maybe worst of all, we employed the time-honored method of treating both sides of a controversy as roughly equal. This might have been fine at an earlier moment of history. But it was almost criminally misleading in the Trump era, particularly when it came to the coverage of his Republican enablers in Washington."
The media columnist went on to insist despite being "flawed," the mainstream media "managed to tell us who Trump is," and that "the best of the Trump-era journalism has been crucial, true to its democratic mission of holding the powerful accountable."
"Without the reality-based press, whatever its flaws and shortcomings, we would be utterly lost," Sullivan concluded.
The Post raised eyebrows among conservatives on social media while sharing the column, tweeting the headline, "The media never fully learned how to cover Trump. But they still might have saved democracy."
"Media during the last four years, captured perfectly in one tweet entirely bereft of self-awareness," Resurgent commentator Drew Holden reacted.
"The media congratulates the media for its hostility to voters. I don't think this is a plus for democracy," RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway tweeted.
"Am I a hero? I can't really say, but yes," Washington Free Beacon's David Rutz said, quoting Michael Scott from "The Office."