Yet another "why does the DC press suck so much" blog post
Well, the political press got what it wanted: a Joe Biden press conference.
Actually, no, it didn't get what it wanted.
What it wanted was to make their bones by tripping up Pres. Biden. By forcing him into an error. By making him contradict himself. Hell, those miscreants were probably secretly salivating at the thought of him having a slip and stuttering.
Instead, it got what it didn't want: a chief executive in command of facts so much that he gives former president Barack Obama—"Mr. Spock"—a run for his money in the wonk department.
This is the fact of the matter: the political press hates wonks. It hates policy discussions which are more than skin deep. "Policy" is fine as long as it's dumbed down to generate outrage and content. But Pres. Biden giving a twelve minute answer to the first question asked? Oh God, no, another Democrat who actually knows what he's talking about! We can't condense that into a 10 second sound byte!
They honestly don't care about substance. It's been decades since they have, certainly not since the advent of Fox News. (And, coincidentally, Pres. Biden didn't call on Fox's Peter Doocy. Too bad so sad. And I don't care if I misspelled his name.)
Joe Biden has an advantage which the previous three Democratic presidents didn't: he's an old political hand in Washington. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama—all brilliant people—were relative newcomers to the DC cauldron when they were elected to the White House. That colored their interactions with the press. Pres. Biden has been in this hothouse for more than half his life—or maybe 120 years. He's taken their measure, knows who they are, and treats them with the firmness required, not countenancing their silly mishegas. He knows how to put them in their place. We all gnashed our teeth at the disrespect and false narratives which the press meted out to Pres. Obama. They'll do the same with Pres. Biden, or try to, but he's been there and seen it all. That's one of the great advantages of age.
Most of the press conference centered on the so-called "border crisis". No questions on the pandemic. No questions on the economy. No questions on gun violence. Only questions on a manufactured emergency which depends entirely on right-wing framing, rather than on a sober assessment about what's actually going on at the southern border.
The political press we have is unserious, and not fit for purpose. This country faces numerous challenges—some as a result of the former guy, some long-festering and finally rupturing. We have a government proposing solutions to those problems. Instead of "objectively" examining those proposals, and analyzing their possible efficacy or lack thereof, they instead go with what they think will bring eyeballs to their screens or their websites. The political press is where journalists who don't really want to do much work go. They're certainly not doing the real investigative work of their colleagues who are examining the situation at the border, or any of the other dilemmas facing this country. Inside baseball and gossip are much easier to write to make deadline.
Now, I'm just a guy with a blog. But I'm also a long-time consumer of news. And for many years, I've not even bothered to tune into cable news. If I want to subject myself to yelling, I'll attend a family gathering. And the political print press is hardly any better. Their purpose is to tear down, to diminish, not to clarify or expose. I read much more insightful analysis in the comments on this blog than I do in the pages of the New York Times. This is a major problem for legacy media, as they throw everything into getting clicks to stay afloat. (The ad dominance of Facebook and Google make this even worse, removing a prime revenue source for legacy media.) We the great unwashed have as much access to primary sources as any newsroom scribe, and can draw our own conclusions. The legacy media have lost their gatekeeper role, precisely because they have thrown it away. It's reflected in the precipitous drop in ratings and website traffic since the former guy was exiled to Florida and his vermin-infested mansion. Rather than learning the lesson that news consumers don't want spectacle, but instead information, they're going to go all in with their usual games, and become even more irrelevant. What the media landscape will be in five or ten years is hard to predict. Much good work will be destroyed. And this is not an outcome I relish.