FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In coverage of Democratic positions on healthcare and climate change, the overwhelming emphasis was on electoral strategy, and not on the problems these policy proposals were designed to solve.
These stories, with their palpable fear of coming across as disrespectful or condescending, only make things worse, by creating an uncritical echo chamber for racist and xenophobic perspectives.
Blaming the left has been the practice of elite Democrats and their media abettors for decades.
“We’ve seen the most explosive and energetic worker organizing on the ground that has ever been present in the gig community.”
Joe Biden hadn’t even been declared the victor of the 2020 election before establishment Democrats, in the face of poorer-than-expected results in House and Senate races, began pointing fingers at the left—with corporate media giving them a major assist.
“The number of ballots that they might be able to throw out…[is] really small, and it’s not likely to jeopardize or change the outcomes in these elections.”
The bottom line, obscured by demographic gee-whiz stories, is that Trump had a 15-point advantage among whites and a 46-point deficit with people of color.
Even after election 2020, corporate media fail to highlight the break between those who believe in the democratic project and those who do not.
In the face of this assault on democracy, corporate media appear content to offer factual corrections of the sort that Trump and his base will simply ignore, as they have done for the past four years regarding countless other lies he has told.
Corporate media approached election night with circuitous, often tepid reporting, scattered with euphemisms that obscured GOP voter suppression efforts and the clear possibility that Trump will try to steal the election.
Despite the increase of young people planning to vote, corporate media have largely forgotten about them in the weeks leading up to the election.
Corporate media seemed to take every opportunity to vilify the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement by spinning the protesters—rather than the racist and authoritarian US regime they are protesting against—as the primary instigators of violence and theft, in addition to preemptively blaming them for Trump’s reelection.
Newsrooms have an obligation to report that the most powerful person in the country is trying to subvert the election and retain power illegitimately, and a failure to blow the whistle on a clear threat to democracy is journalistic malpractice.
Most of the national reporting on protests of the latest police killing in Philadelphia was deliberately inflammatory and even frightening.
“In addition to all of the environmental problems, and the public health issues, the climate issues that we just mentioned, the business model that fracking is built upon is essentially almost a Ponzi scheme.”
Whatever happens on and after November 3, one thing seems pretty clear: We can count on 60 Minutes to cover it in a way that props up the status quo.
Corporate media—whose owners are overwhelmingly from the class that would be paying a wealth tax—are returning to throw cold water on the idea.
Whenever there are discussions about enacting a national fracking ban, corporate media seem to prioritize the supposed short-term potential “risks” to Democrats’ electoral prospects, or potential economic downturns, over the long-term prospects for human civilization’s survival.
As the 2020 election nears, Trump’s tolerance for democratic checks on his power has eroded dramatically, and he has openly pressured his cabinet members to use the levers of state power to target his opponents and aid his re-election.
When you’ve got one side whose strategy derives from reality TV and depends primarily upon falsehoods, personal attacks and breaking all the rules, no amount of rule-changing will solve the problem.
