"Laugh of the weekend," said our Brent Baker about the clip on CNN's Reliable Sources where CNN.com columnist and former Cosmopolitan bomb-thrower Jill Filipovic argued this with a straight face:
Republican presidents have an "entire right-wing media apparatus that supports them," but the so-called "mainstream media" just "interrogate whoever is in power."
The subject was Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim being abused by the left on Twitter for asking questions of a Republican senator that they perceived as damaging Biden's budget-director nominee Neera Tanden:
STELTER: Jill, this idea that liberals are getting angry at the press for the basic job of reporting, this is not brand-new, but this is going to be an issue going forward, I think.
FILIPOVIC: It is. And, of course, it's been incredibly frustrating and disheartening to see self-identified liberals attacking the press generally and then attacking a female reporter in such racist and sexist terms. I think what it reflects is this real frustration with the asymmetries that any Democratic president is going to have to contend with when it comes to press coverage.
Republican presidents have an entire right wing media apparatus that supports them. When a Democrat is in charge, that apparatus is on the attack. And then the mainstream media, places like CNN, places like The Washington Post and The New York Times, they interrogate whoever is in power. So they're also going to be holding a Democratic president to a higher level of accountability and transparency.
And so, I think for a lot of folks on the left, that feels like it is unfair.
She added "You can't then ask the mainstream press to go easier on the Biden administration even if the Biden administration is more transparent, more honest and more competent than the administration before it."
Trump was treated daily as a dangerous racist threat to democracy, while Biden is being covered as....the honest and competent guy fixing everything Trump messed up. He can't be "interrogated," since he hasn't submitted himself to a press conference, opting instead for soft-focus puffballs from People magazine.
Stelter was so impressed with Filipovic that he greeted an earlier point by saying "Brilliant!" He began the show by raging that Fox News and Fox Business had talked about the gender controversy over Mr. Potato Head 35 times, and fussed about the Disney-Plus streaming service putting a content warning on old episodes of The Muppet Show.
FILIPOVIC: When you hear Republicans talk about Mr. Potato Head and the Muppets and cancel culture as this kind of pretext, we're talking about left wing attacks on the traditional family, I think what we really is that Democrats and progressives are the ones out there proposing actual legislative solutions that would help to solve the problems that families, traditional or not, in the U.S. are facing.
STELTER: Brilliant. Very well said, and I wish I had said it that way in the very beginning of the show.
Media analysis on CNN. @JillFilipovic: Repubs “talk abt Mr. Potato head and Muppets” as pretext for left wing attacks on traditional family, we miss how “Dems and progressives are...out there proposing actual legislative solutions.” @BrianStelter: “Brilliant. Very well said.” pic.twitter.com/rm8tQokkBS
— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) February 28, 2021
