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Marlene Lerner-Bigley (CA)'s avatar

Twas a wonderful day today when Biden went to Wisconsin to visit real hard frontline workers in Wisconsin. He brought the handy dandy pamphlet Rick Scott and Ron Johnson wrote about sunsetting all federal programs which includes Social Security and Medicare. Those workers were none too happy with the Repubs. Bottom line: Biden did the "rope-a-dope" (thank Howard Cosell) around the party of NO, last night and today. Clever clever man, our president!

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Alexandra R.'s avatar

I'm still celebrating Biden's speech last night and happily read the comments of so many other readers who agree. I'm also grateful for everyone who shared their sources for good, honest and thoughtful news coverage -- all of those I go to regularly were mentioned and I learned some new ones.

We need them. I agree with Sheila from MI who said: "The mass media overall has changed and demonstrably so." I'll add -- and much the worse for the change. I too have stopped subscribing to NYT and WaPo - enough of the negativity, false equivalencies, misleading headlines etc etc. The latest example the headlines right before Biden's speech with polls showing 70% (or whatever) folks dissatisfied. Those polls from the same folks who predicted the "red wave", and the media fell for it again (that would be putting it charitably).

Louis Menand has an excellent article/review (Making the News) in the Feb 6 New Yorker. There’s good history, going back to the ‘50s, but most interesting to me are his comments on recent patterns covered in Margaret Sullivan’s new book, “News Room Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink–Stained Life” (2022).

Here’s and example Menand and Sullivan offer of the press misunderstanding its role: "when, just 11 days before the 2016 election, the FBI Director James Comey announced that some of the emails Clinton wrote when she was Secretary of State had been found on the laptop of Anthony Wiener, the disgraced former New York City mayoral candidate, the Times went into overdrive. In six days, the paper ran as many cover stories about Clinton's emails as it had about all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election. This coverage set the tone for the rest of the mainstream media, which proceeded to pile on."

"Sullivan’s position is an appeal to the original rationale of the First Amendment. We have a free press in order to protect democracy. When democracy is threatened, reporters and editors and publishers should have an agenda. They should be pro–democracy. Reporters should 'stop asking who the winners and losers are,' Sullivan says; they should 'start asking who is serving democracy and who is undermining it.' The press is in the game. It has a stake."

We must find, support, create -- whatever it takes -- a way back to a truly "free press".

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