Once again in 2024, journalists need to justify treating Trump as a deadly bubonic plague, an impending Hitler. Treating him as one side of an election is dangerous when he is the End of Democracy. Then they claim they only have a bias in favor of Truth. Yes, they're totally not favoring the Democrats with this foam-flecked Evil Trump coverage.
On April 1, the New York Times podcast The Daily tackled the "Trump Problem," which they defined as this: Why must we deal with business executives who want us to treat Trump and his voters like they are normal citizens and not a Death Star for Democracy? Host Michael Barbaro asked Times political reporter Jim Rutenberg about the impression Republicans have that the media are wearing a "jersey" for Team Biden in all of their hostility to Trump.
Rutenberg's reply was simply awful: “No one wants to be wearing a jersey on our business. But maybe what they really have to accept is that we’re just sticking to the true facts, and that may look like we’re wearing a jersey, but we’re not. And that may, at times, look like it’s lining up more with the Democrats, but we’re not. If Trump is lying about a stolen election, that’s not siding against him. That’s siding for the truth, and that’s what we’re doing."
This podcast airs on more than 300 "public" radio stations, which underlines how NPR is one big liberal sandbox. It wasn't even the only NPR talk program making this preposterous argument.
Over on 1A [for First Amendment, get it?] from northwest D.C. at WAMU-FM, co-host Todd Zwillich offered a similar awful spin: “I think that you're seeing increasingly, luckily, journalists who cover politics realize they're not in the old game anymore, that neutrality doesn't only not serve them anymore, but doesn't serve the public anymore. It doesn't mean being partisan. It doesn't mean you're for one side. It means you're for truth.”
Meanwhile, Joy Reid is comparing Trump and his followers to apocalyptic cults from David Koresh, Jim Jones, and Charles Manson. Is that what they mean as being "for truth"?
Both shows never touched on the Hunter Biden laptop or any other issue where the media suppressed and disparaged true stories. When they couldn't suppress it, they lied about it, claiming it had "all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation." Then, in 2022, the New York Times and other leftist outlets admitted the laptop was a real thing. This apparently isn't supposed to dent their "we're not for Democrats, we're for truth" spins.
Right before the election, NPR executive Terence Samuel infamously dismissed the Hunter scandal: “We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” It was a “pure distraction.” It was, he said, a "politically driven event." As if all of their wild caricatures and speculations about Trump aren't "politically driven"?
Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
