Covering a Pandemic, Election-Style
Election Focus 2020: Trump’s rally remarks were a remarkably brazen admission that he would rather cover up the growing pandemic than actually work to address it, at the cost of an untold number of lives.
‘Efforts to Make Voting More Difficult Are Magnified in a Pandemic’
Election Focus 2020: “The Wisconsin opinion seemed to signal that Republicans can do whatever they want to make voting more difficult, even in a pandemic, and the Supreme Court’s going to say, ‘That’s OK.’”
Ari Berman on Voter Suppression and Coronavirus
Election Focus 2020: No amount of ponderous, prize-winning books written in the aftermath will substitute for tough reporting done now to protect the integrity of the vote going into one of the most monumental presidential elections in the country’s history.
New York State Tries to Suspend Democracy; NYT and WaPo Shrug
Giving a two-person unelected board the discretion to cancel an election when candidates have not terminated their campaigns is something you would think newspapers would take a bit more seriously.
Newspapers Won’t Connect the Dots on Postal Service Threats
Election Focus 2020: Gutting the Postal Service now has the potential to undermine the integrity of the November election. Yet establishment media seem remarkably uninterested in connecting the dots.
Love Letters to Andrew Cuomo Failed to Check His Record
Election Focus 2020: Particularly in times of crisis, when executive power tends to expand dramatically, media should be holding the powerful to account, not settling for “better than Trump.” And there is plenty to hold Andrew Cuomo to account for.
NYT’s Post-Mortems for Sanders’ Campaign Helped Pull the Plug
Election Focus 2020: With only about half the states having cast their votes in the Democratic primaries, the Covid-19 pandemic has frozen the majority of campaign activity, but the New York Times has already chosen its winner.
Corporate Media Deny Their Own Existence, Despite Driving Biden’s Primary Victory
Election Focus 2020:Looking at corporate media’s coverage of corporate media, one gets the sense that anyone who dares to suggest that media corporations like Comcast-owned MSNBC, AT&T-owned CNN or News Corp–owned Fox News have their own commercial interests—which incentivize them to push pro-corporate politics—are kooky “conspiracy theorists.”
Media Fail to Identify Xenophobia as Biden Says Trump ‘Rolled Over for Chinese’
Election Focus 2020: Rather than respond by focusing blame for the crisis squarely where it belongs—on Trump’s incompetent, reckless and self-centered management—and working to beat back the dangerously rising anti-Asian sentiment in this country, Biden and some of his supporting super PACs are choosing to adopt rather than challenge the anti-China premise of the attacks.
There’s No Reason to Turn Airtime Over to Trump’s Deceptive Coronavirus Campaign Rallies
Election Focus 2020: The journalistic principle is clear: If the powerful are spreading life-threatening lies, do not freely give them a huge platform to reach more people with those lies.
Thank you, Bernie. Screw You, New York Times.
Election Focus 2020: In the New York Times’ world, it’s apparently OK to bemoan a society and an economy that privileges the rich over the poor, but it’s unacceptable to run for the presidency on a promise to reverse those priorities.
NYT Writes Post-Mortems for a Sanders Campaign It Did Its Best to Kill
Election Focus 2020: With only about half the states having cast their votes in the Democratic primaries, the Covid-19 pandemic has frozen the majority of campaign activity, but the New York Times has already chosen its winner.
To Stop Bernie Sanders, WaPo Willing to Risk Americans’ Lives
Election Focus 2020: Seeing its chance to thwart Sanders’ second bid for the presidency, the Washington Post risked voters’ health by staying silent about the dangers of in-person voting, even encouraging it.
Democracy Dies in Blah Blah Blah
Election Focus 2020: Reporters may think this is tactful, grown-up language, when it’s actually misleading, milquetoast language that does the opposite of what journalism is meant to do
NPR’s Targeted Disinformation on Bernie Sanders
Election Focus 2020: a piece by two of NPR’s leading political reporters, which aired just before the Iowa caucuses, provides a view of how journalists speak with authority on issues they seem to know very little about.
Media Need to Scrutinize Andrew Cuomo’s Record, Not Crush on His Words
Election Focus 2020: Particularly in times of crisis, when executive power tends to expand dramatically, media should be holding the powerful to account, not settling for “better than Trump.” And there is plenty to hold Andrew Cuomo to account for.
Media Silent as Poll Workers Contract Covid-19 at Primaries That DNC, Biden Campaign Claimed Were Safe
Election Focus 2020: After the CDC on March 15 advised the public to cancel all gatherings of more than 50 people, a senior adviser to Joe Biden went on CNN and claimed the CDC had deemed in-person voting safe. And not a single major media outlet reported on it.
How Corporate Media ‘Factchecked’ Biden’s Calls for Social Security Cuts Into Oblivion
Election Focus 2020: At the start of the Democratic primaries, the Sanders campaign utilized Biden’s long history of supporting cuts to popular entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security to devastating effect, so it’s no surprise that corporate media worked overtime to nullify one of the Sanders campaign’s strongest arguments.
Can the US Pull Off a November Election? Journalists Play a Critical Role
Election Focus 2020: With projections that the COVID-19 crisis isn’t going away any time soon, what will this mean for voters’ access to the polls, and the very legitimacy of the November 3 election?
Who Wants a Revolution? No One Who Owns a Major Media Outlet
Election Focus 2020: With a sudden turnaround in the race after Super Tuesday that finds Joe Biden in the lead both in polls and delegates, corporate media have been quick to spin the reversal as a rejection of progressive politics.
