The latest NewsBusters study found 573 minutes of Trump-trial coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC, but less than eight minutes for the trial of Sen. Bob "Gold Bars" Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey. It's funny how GOP scandals always "overshadow" the Democrats when the networks create the "news."
On Tuesday, CNN.com posted a Gregory Krieg article headlined "Trump circus overshadows Menendez trial." Krieg explained "Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial, which began eight days ago in the nearby U.S. District Court, has been an afterthought to just about everyone." Menendez "is likely pleased to have his legal drama playing out in relative obscurity. It’s a similar dynamic for his Democratic colleagues as they navigate the final months of his term."
"Relative obscurity" is something the media can create, and curate. In the same way, they can create "relative notoriety" for their enemies.
Meanwhile, the media are already dreading the Hunter Biden trial, which only one half of the media will find interesting. Inside the liberal bubble on PBS's Washington Week with The Atlantic, host Jeffrey Goldberg asked NPR Morning Edition anchor Steve Inskeep: "Hunter Biden is not running for president, there's a big difference. But the question is, how is this going to affect the mood and happiness and effectiveness of Joe Biden?"
Inskeep replied: "For Democrats, this is going to be noise. I presume, without knowing their programming choices, that it's going to be all over Fox News, that it's going to be all over right wing media, and there's going to be a lot of focus and a lot of attention and a lot of energy directed at that." NPR infamously proclaimed in 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop was "not a story," but a "pure distraction."
Meanwhile, over the weekend the president kept bragging about how his son Beau died from cancer after he spent “a year in Iraq as a major – he won the Bronze Star —living next to a burn pit.” In a different speech, his son served "in Iraq for a year in those burn pits.” Biden exaggerates about his own record, and the record of his family. No one expects pro-Biden networks and newspapers to fact-check the braggodocio.
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