Relentless hit pieces and biased reporting caused US President, Joe Biden, to drop out. Today, they are taking a victory lap.
When former US president, Donald Trump, was in power, COVID-19 deaths in the United States was ranging into the tens of thousands. The economy was in tatters and the only thing Trump was concerned about was how the media was being oh so mean to him and that COVID-19 was just a hoax. American’s finally had enough and ultimately chose to vote him out of power. In response to the decision by American’s, Trump got his supporters to launch a terrorist attack on the US Capitol buildings. That day would go on to be known as the January 6th attack.
Obviously, former president, Joe Biden, had a lot of work trying to fix the broken carnage that was left behind by his predecessor. There was the mess left behind by COVID-19, an economy that was in shambles, and a country further divided by the divisive and violent rhetoric of far right politicians and supporters.
While you can’t necessarily say the presidency was perfect, given the attempts to destroy Section 230 to name one example, there were other areas that were getting worked on. By the end of Biden’s term, inflation was going down, COVID-19 is under much better control, there were efforts to tackle student debt, and the border was more secure. The natural expectation was to basically describe Biden’s presidency as one of recovery and restoration.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media had other plans.
In the last few years, trust in the mainstream media has continued to hit rock bottom. The media often publishes reports spreading disinformation and misinformation such as the nature of the Online News Act and the Online Streaming Act. As we pointed out last year, while knowingly lying about digital policy is certainly a source that brings about distrust, it is far from the only one these days.
As that erosion of trust continued on to this year, it was as if the mainstream media looked at the data and concluded that they don’t need no stinking trust to carry on. They can report however they damned well please. At least in Canada, who could blame them? After all, it’s the government (and, ultimately, taxpayers) who are paying their bills. So, so what if no one wants to watch them any more.
This, of course, manifested in obvious biased reporting. If they don’t happen to like a particular politician, they could run endless hit pieces until they get what they want. Counter-intuitively, despite what you’d think when the right wing is in a constant war with the media, the mainstream media seemingly decided that the far right is exactly who they should cozy up to. For months, they were all but calling for Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to resign. However, they saw an even bigger target: President Biden.
Biden and Trump, earlier, had a presidential debate. CNN hosted that debate and promised that they would heavily moderate the proceedings. This included muting their microphones and live fact checking. It all seemed pretty reasonable given the bluster coming from Trump. However, when the debate happened, CNN let Trump say whatever he wanted and didn’t even bother with that whole fact-checking thing.
Meanwhile, Biden was unknowingly coming down with COVID-19. As a result, his debate performance wasn’t quite as good as he normally expected. He stuttered from time to time and lost his train of thought a time or two. It was an unexpected outcome to say the least.
The mainstream media took that opportunity to pounce. Broadcast media and other outlets pushed out reports relentlessly attacking the US president. They pushed out a barrage of hit pieces pushing the narrative that Biden was old and that he wasn’t mentally fit to run. The bluster that came from Trump, however, went completely unchallenged. Ordinarily, you’d think the media would finally let up after a few days, but that didn’t happen.
As the days of non-stop attack pieces continued against Biden, Democrat lawmakers and big name donators hit the panic button. A couple of them called for Biden to step aside, but Biden, understandably, persisted. In his next appearance, he gave a speech at NATO. For the media, they would be waiting for even the slightest stutter in his speech. Unfortunately for the media, he delivered a pretty solid performance. If the media were unbiased, the reports afterwards would say that Biden did better with that speech and that the debate might have really been a one off.
The problem is, of course, the mainstream media was biased. What followed was an even more relentless stream of attacks against Biden. A leaked letter of one lawmaker calling on Biden to step down was paraded around as headline news.
As all of this was happening, there were growing real concerns about what Trump and the Republican’s were up to. This, of course, came in the form of the Heritage Foundations Project 2025. As criticisms grew within the American public, the mainstream media chose to ignore all of that and continued to attack Biden because he stuttered and that he is old. So, American’s grew frustrated and turned to Google to get better informed about the issues that mattered to them. Understandably, what they learned horrified them.
In recent days, people have been trying desperately to alert the mainstream media about Project 2025. While some outlets begrudgingly did some reporting, most outlets simply chose to ignore the fascist plot to turn America into a dictatorship. Last week, I personally witnessed a guest appearing on the CBC trying to warn the CBC about these scary issues that have been going unaddressed. Without prompting, the guest brought up Project 2025 and listed a host of reasons why he is concerned about what it represented. The reporter reacted with a deer in headlights look before ending the interview. The CBC, in the broadcasts that I’ve seen, never brought it up again.
Then there was the attempted assassination on Trump. Understandably, that took a number of headlines. I personally thought that the media would finally get off the subject few want to hear about and focus on literally anything else. While the attack pieces against Biden temporarily subsided, they didn’t go away entirely. Even worse, the mainstream media took the opportunity to showcase how everything is fine and dandy with the Republican’s. They regularly talked about how wonderful and united the party was and even contrasted that to Democrats as the media continued one of their favourite memes of “Democrats in Disarray”.
It was all so very frustrating to witness and more and more people grew increasingly frustrated with the situation with the media. I, personally, started turning off the TV in protest of the terrible reporting. While I knew I was sparing myself the torture of terrible reporting, others were taking it all in and assuming that the media was right.
While many American’s were hoping that Biden would stick around, today, we learned that Biden has chosen to step down. On X/Twitter, Biden issued a statement that reads as follows:
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.
The mainstream media, in response, popped the champagne and all but declared victory. Broadcast mainstream media took a victory lap and paraded around their talking points of Biden being old bringing him down. Ordinary citizens, however, were shocked at the development and were furious at what the media had done. In one discussion forum, people had no problem expressing their anger and fears of what this all means:
I feel physically ill.
Son of a biatch.
This is farked.
Hope you’re happy now Fourth Estate
Farking assholes
We’re boned.
shiat’s about to get real.
Goddammit Joe.
It’s the media and Republicans that wanted you to drop out.
Okay so now im officially having an anxiety attack
I hope the people that pushed him out know what they’re doing. I really hope this doesn’t go down as the worst own goal in history.
So, definitely a number of people who are angry at the mainstream media, angry at the situation, and very worried at what this will mean later on down the road.
One of the ironic parts about all of this is that if this does pave the way to a fascist Trump presidency, there is the very real risk that he will be pushing an agenda that involves getting revenge on the media for not being supportive enough of him. As he’s said in the past, he wants to open up liable laws and make it easier to sue the media. There were other things he wanted to do to directly attack the media as well. Yes, this is the same guy the mainstream media has decided to nicely cozy up to in the last few months. So, there’s a very real chance this situation bites them in the rear.
Of course, while vice president Kamala Harris seems to be a natural choice, it’s difficult to see how she (or anyone else for that matter) can make up so much lost ground at this point. So, the fears of a far right takeover is very real and it all came courtesy, in part, to the short sighted mainstream media who have long since abandoned basic journalistic principles. While the media will no doubt take another hit for what they have done, it is also leaving the future of America’s future in question.
