D. Earl Stephens
June 22, 2024
Photo by Mark König on Unsplash
I am seeing the same dangerous narrative from the political, horse-race, corporate media as you are, folks, and it would be entertaining and laughable if it wasn’t so damn dangerous.
If you perused only the headlines of two of the most influential newspapers in this nation, The Washington Post and The New York Times, you might come around to believing that President Joe Biden is in deep trouble, and the felon and serial liar, who does nothing but attack America 24/7, Donald Trump, is somehow in front as we crash toward the most important election of our lives.
All of it defies belief, of course, but that’s exactly how these two baloney-and-cheese dealers like it. They want you, the suckers (er, readers) who are slopping through their endless menu of tasteless political treats to believe they are seeing things through the thick walls of their offices that you somehow aren’t in your communities where the voting actually takes place.
They lean on polls that may or may not be right, and that they themselves don’t trust, and the opinions of political experts and “insiders” who have made handsome livings being wrong approximately half the time to spin their tales that are heavily disguised as news stories.
These papers occasionally pull themselves away from the safety of their cocoons inside the Washington Beltway to visit suburban diners, where they have decided all the undecided, disillusioned voters go to eat in the seven battleground states they tell us 27 times a day will decide the election.
They do literally everything they can to avoid doing what they absolutely should be doing as alleged robust news operations, and newspapers of record: reporting facts and educating the voters who they haughtily seem to think they understand so well.
Rather than relentlessly reporting about what is at stake in this election, so that our electorate can be informed, they trumpet how little these people know, or in many cases even care.
It’s like they get off on belittling voters, rather than educating them, which is the most important thing any good newspaper can do.
Rather than reporting on the enormous consequences of this election and major issues at stake such as democracy, healthcare, social security, women's rights, our vote, environment and Supreme Court, just to name a few … they’d rather tell us what voters are thinking, as if they really have a single clue.
Lately, and mostly, they are telling us that Joe Biden is in deep, deep trouble with these people, which is akin to starting fires all over town, and then reporting how poorly the fire department is at extinguishing them all.
They seem to get off on watching people react to a narrative they have helped set. It’s morbid, it really is, but apparently not beneath them.
Before typing farther and citing a couple of deliciously appalling examples of their journalistic malfeasance, I’ll break any suspense you might be harboring and tell you why they are doing all this: There is HUGE money in it.
Fear and suspense sells, baby. Only Trump loves the low-information voters more.
So now I’ll quickly bring you just two examples of this terrifying nonsense I came across on Monday — one from The Washington Post, and the other from The New York Times that is so obviously over the top it’s a marvel it didn’t bleed out all over the newsroom floor before publication. The thing needed bandages not editors.
Apparently, some reporters and editors at The Post had a get-out-of-the-office day, went out on an exciting adventure, and returned to dedicate about 100 column inches to people they have called “The Deciders.”
Ooooooo … “The Deciders” ... It sounds like some bad TV series from the ‘80s.
Tucked under their headline: “Who are the deciders and what makes them tick” they made sure to quickly make clear what doesn’t make a Decider tick: voting.
According to the endless piece, this powerful non-voting bloc comprises people who “voted in only one of the last two presidential elections; are between ages 18 and 25; registered to vote since 2022; did not definitely plan to vote for either Biden or Trump this year; or switched their support between 2016 and 2020.”
The piece is replete with comments that these “Deciders” may or may not take back two days from now. They literally could do anything, but for now they are plenty undecided about everything, except for the fact they think they are mostly leaning toward Trump, unless and until a stiff wind blows in and they change their minds.
These are the people The Post has decided will be deciding who the next President of the United States will be.
What The Post is obviously hoping is that they never learn a single thing about what is at stake in this election, and will do everything they can to make sure they don’t. It is much more entertaining to watch “The Deciders” twist in the wind armed only with heavy doubt about what they may or may not do with their vote in November — and if they decide to bother voting at all.
At any rate, the suspense should be killing the rest of us, because The Deciders have the fate of the free world in their slippery hands. What will they be thinking a month from now … two months from now?
I bet even they haven’t decided yet.
Not to be outdone Monday, The New York Times Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy tried to keep up with his own run-away story headlined “Why the election is slipping away from Joe Biden right now”
Whoa. Talk about having the pulse of the election.
I was literally holding my breath because I was about to learn why everything was slipping away from Biden RIGHT NOW in the middle of June.
My heart was beating inside my head before I got to the part where Healy boldly put his entire reputation on the line by typing this:
“When this spring began, on March 19, Trump had a polling average lead of 2 percentage points over Biden nationally, according to Real Clear Politics. As spring ends, Trump leads by about 1 percent. I think a successful spring for Biden would have had him ahead.
I think that paragraph needs a moment of silence …
Go ahead, read it again. I’ll wait.
The writer thinks that because Joe Biden is gaining ground the election is slipping away from him. This would make sense in a flat world that was round, where no means yes, up means down, undecided voters are called deciders, and Healy is to be taken at all seriously ever again.
Sorry, but how in the hell isn’t the headline on Healy’s fable, “Biden making up ground in new polling”
And it gets even worse with this sad and pathetic story where worse means better, because he somehow waded into the looming Presidential Debate to buttress his narrative that the sky is falling on Biden, while he gains ground he allegedly lost to Trump.
Read this whopper:
“Trump isn’t doing much campaigning prep, according to my colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein, but the expectations for him are lower than for Biden. Many voters expect Trump to be the same unhinged guy he was in the 2020 debates, ranting and talking over Biden. Trump can afford to spend time in must-win Pennsylvania while Biden tries to ensure his summer is better than his spring.
Now read THAT slop again. I’ll wait.
Healy and his newsroom buddies, who presumably lunch together and tell each other knock-knock jokes when they’re not busy filling the NYT news hole, have decided that the debates will be worthless because Trump will just be the same unhinged guy he was in the 2020 debates which then is a tremendous advantage to him because it frees him up to do some unhinged campaigning in Pennsylvania, while Biden continues to take his job as president very seriously by preparing for a debate he should win, because he’s not an unhinged guy, but is nonetheless watching an election he is gaining in slip away in June …
How much more of this are we supposed to take?
I haven’t mustered the guts to read either paper yet this morning, because I thought it was important to think straight while I rattled off this column. I am prepared to predict, however, that they are busy spinning new narratives rather than educating the American voters who they so clearly hold in such contempt.
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.
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