Today, 'Washington Free Beacon' Editor, Peter J. Hasson, took readers for a walk down memory lane in terms of Joe Biden coverage. Interestingly, he found reports in corporate media all the way back to 2019 detailing Biden's worsening mental condition. It all came to a screeching halt, however, when Biden became the official Democratic nominee.
The key to understanding the narrative collapse we all witnessed in real time over the last 9 days: before Biden had the Dem nomination locked down in 2019, the media were far more willing to discuss his apparent fragility. But only until he locked down the nomination.
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 6, 2024
🧵🧵🧵 pic.twitter.com/7lrhKGAF4c
Back then, at first, the media was doing its best to make sure Biden did not become the nominee. The DNC had different ideas and when they failed, they quickly fell in line.
In 2019/2020, Biden was relatively more capable than he is now, but he still showed enough glimpses of the coming deterioration to give the media plenty of space to delicately tackle the issue. It was only after it was clear that it was Biden or Trump that the media closed ranks…
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 6, 2024
After that point, coverage of Biden’s mental fitness — with some laudatory exceptions — largely consisted of cherry-picking examples of alleged Republican overreach and saying “look how wrong these guys are” without ever addressing what they were right about. pic.twitter.com/eXh3a7uzhd
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 6, 2024
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As a result, the media narrative didn’t keep pace with the facts on the ground — the president’s decline was continuing (maybe even accelerating) but the media coverage was stuck in 2020 general election mode (again, with a handful of notable exceptions). The reason so many… pic.twitter.com/3kMsYz8N84
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 6, 2024
Any person paying attention with eyes knows he has continued to decline at a rapid pace.
In short, for the most part, media scrutiny of this glaring issue has occurred only when such scrutiny aligned with journalists’ perceptions of their partisan tribe’s broader political interests — very much including right now. https://t.co/UGqbXysmfH
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 6, 2024
Their curiosity is to the extent they are directed by the DNC.
This is true. They also happily discussed all his other flaws, and quite regularly implied he was a racist. But then he won South Carolina and it stopped overnight. https://t.co/naEHbptbim
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 6, 2024
No matter how much you hate the media, it’s not enough. https://t.co/YSpaMAAQol
— Nacho Lover (@BMP_1972) July 7, 2024
Your contempt is never enough. This is why it's important to support conservative media.
That's also when the NYT stopped reporting on the Bidens and Burisma.
— J (@ARaised_Eyebrow) July 6, 2024
It's the Hillary thing. Trump beating her in 2016 led them to say they can't ever ever ever say something bad about their nominee, lest it drives those last few votes to the other side and costs the election.
— Dan (@TractorLaw) July 7, 2024
Corporate Media was adamant they could never let Trump win again, and part of that effort was speaking no ill of Joe Biden.
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