Much like in the days following the 2016 election, we are really seeing the press corps of this country tipping their hand on how the ensuing years of media coverage will play out. Back then we saw news agencies announcing how they were hiring numerous staffers in order to deal with the Trump administration.
Now they seem a bit at a loss when facing a Biden presidency. Over at The Atlantic they indicate some of their discord.
What will the “opposition party” do come January 21? @mckaycoppins looks at the post-Trump media: https://t.co/fuEA8R5taT
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) December 29, 2020
Writer McKay Coppins lets slip the reality the press face today — Trump Derangement was so good for them, what will they do now?!
But the Trump era has been especially rewarding to a certain class of Washington reporter. As the White House beat became the biggest story in the world, once-obscure correspondents were recast in the popular imagination as resistance heroes fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. They were showered with book deals, speaking gigs, and hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. They got glow-ups to accompany their new cable-news contracts, and those glow-ups were covered in glossy magazines.
Yes they did. The press spent the last 4 years declaring themselves heroes, firefighters, an on par with the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy. They also managed to become media stars with ever-widening popularity — all while claiming they were being attacked and prevented from working.
You begin to wonder just how oblivious reporters have to be when they repeat how they were being silenced during interview after interview, while selling the copious amounts of books which were written. For people who claimed they were being silenced they sure seemed incapable of shutting up.
And speaking of Jim Acosta…
He was interviewed in this article as well. Jim manages to make a rather curious admission in his comments.
The drama has made him famous, but Acosta said he doesn’t expect to bring the same crusading style to his coverage of the next administration. “I don’t think the press should be trying to whip up the Biden presidency and turn it into must-see TV in a contrived way,” he said.
Thanks for clarifying your bias, Jimmy. Biden has yet to be sworn in, yet here you are already declaring how you will be covering him differently. That clears it up.
Likewise, CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale reveals how he sees changees in his vocation in the coming years.
Daniel Dale…says his beat will necessarily expand come January. “It will not be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to fact-check Biden,” he told me. Though he stressed that the same “intensity and rigor” should be applied to the incoming president, the simple reality is that Biden doesn’t lie nearly as often as Trump does.
Rather telling how he just knows that Biden is not going to lie. Of course, this is the same ”fact checker” who watched the presidential debates and came away declaring Biden barely told any untruths, while overlooking the laundry list of lies he spewed.
CNN and MSNBC are going to miss him.
— isabella (@isabell25901848) December 29, 2020
Now, now — there will be far more than those two outlets who will become forelorn in the coming years. The press corps in general are going to see big challenges ahead. Or, as they seem to have indicated, it will simply be a 4 year vacation.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member