Now that Joe Biden is president, leftists on Twitter have transformed from cheering reporters to jeering at reporters.
Washington Post congressional reporter Seung Min Kim was subjected to online abuse after she asked Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) about a negative tweet from budget director-designate Neera Tanden. Murkowski was unfamiliar with the tweet, so Kim showed it to her. The lefties saw this as an attempt to sway Murkowski to vote against Tanden. Others that the media identify as swing votes -- Senators Joe Manchin and Susan Collins -- have already stated their opposition to her nomination.
Joseph Choi at The Hill reported the criticism of Kim began after HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic tweeted an image:
.@seungminkim showing Murkowski an old Tanden tweet targeting her
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) February 24, 2021
“High on my own supply? That’s interesting” pic.twitter.com/gdhaYpQuvf
In the 2017 tweet, Tanden sneered that Murkowski was "high on your own supply," writing, "You know, we know, and everyone knows this is all garbage." She quote-tweeted Murkowski arguing for a lower corporate tax rate.
“High on my own supply, that’s interesting. Should I ask her? My own supply of what? See that goes to show how much homework I still have to do on her if I didn’t even know that she had sent out a tweet about me," Murkowski replied after being shown the tweet. (The phrase is best-known from the movie Scarface, where Al Pacino deals cocaine.)
Kim later posted some of the abuse that she had received via email due to the photo. One email she shared told her to “Go back to China bitch.” Kim is Korean-American. One person labeled Kim a “snitch” for supposedly messing up “another POC nomination on behalf of whites.”
Washington Post national editor Steven Ginsberg issued a statement coming to Kim's defense. “What she did was basic journalism,” he said. “No one should have to deal with the hate that has been directed at Seung Min. She did her job and she did it well, like she always does. We could not be prouder that she is our colleague and a reporter for The Washington Post.”
Latest statement from Washington Post National Editor @stevenjay on the harassment of reporter Seung Min Kim pic.twitter.com/2mXpshvYlZ
— Kristine Coratti Kelly (@kriscoratti) February 25, 2021
Sen. Rob Portman reminded Tanden at one confirmation hearing You wrote that Susan Collins is ‘the worst’, that Tom Cotton is a fraud, that vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz, you called Leader McConnell ‘Moscow Mitch’ and Voldemort.”
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a column for Sunday's paper that began: "I’ve been waiting for this moment. The moment when some on the left would react indignantly to journalists doing their job." Dowd claimed liberals need to "relearn the lesson that reporters don’t — or shouldn’t — suit up for the blue team." She said "They loathe Fox News but assume that the mainstream media are basically on their side." Imagine that!
Some Washington reporters have been worried about this for some time, that the left would “work the refs,” as one put it, and turn on the media and attack if they dared to report something that could endanger the Republic (a.k.a. hurt a Democrat).
But the role of the press in a functioning democracy is as watchdog, not partisan attack dog. Politicians have plenty of people spinning for them. They don’t need the press doing that, too.
Believe me, you want us on that wall.
That's a beautiful thought, Maureen. But anyone paying attention to the press can see they're mostly acting as Biden's publicists, happily quoting him and explaining him and making him look good. The "refs" don't need to be worked hard. They aren't really "refs."
