I get about 100 fundraising emails a day. Today I noticed the subject line on one, which read: “The media is not on our side”. It was from a group called No Dem Left Behind and the text went on to acknowledge that the subject line was no news to anyone. The argument put forward was that the media likes Republicans, particularly Trump and the Trumpists, because their outrageous behavior makes for good ratings. There’s more than a bit of truth to all that.
But there’s another reason the media feels licensed to beat up on Democrats. For years the Republicans worked the refs, constantly complaining about a pretty much non-existent “liberal bias”. The predictable result was that the media has often bent over backwards to be “fair” to Republicans, and a good argument can be made that the “both sides” narrative was one of the end results of the Republicans’ constant complaints. It’s a strategy that worked, and it would quite likely work for the Democrats if they would only employ it.
Every once it a while there’s a feeble Democratic attempt to go after the media. Lately, for instance, there’s been some whimpers about the fact that the media hasn’t covered the contents of the bills the Democrats have been working on, including the one that Joe and Krysten actually let them pass. If anyone has complained about the fact that the media has made out the recent election to be an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats, while ignoring positive news for the Democrats, such as their success in Georgia, those complaints have been similarly muted
Also, only Democrats are ever in disarray, and, according to the media, they are in disarray pretty much always. Somehow, despite all in plain sight evidence to the contrary, Republicans are never in disarray, nor do Democrats try to portray them that way.
What it takes is what the Democrats have always failed to do: they need to mount a coordinated campaign calling out the media’s biased coverage. It’s not that hard, all they have to do is review a little recent history and refashion the Republican “liberal media” campaign. Of course we’re unlikely to get a propaganda network of our own, like Fox, but it would be nice if CNN, et. al., could be pushed at least to the point where they identify the center where it actually exists, populated by supporters of the Democratic agenda, many of whom are unaware of that agenda because the media fails to inform them. Instead, the media approved definition of “center” has had an ever rightwards trajectory, while polling suggests that it has, if anything, moved a trifle to the left.Indeed, the definition of “center” now carries with it a political requirement: those politicians fighting for what Americans want, like the Build Back Better Act, must “compromise” (read “surrender”) to Republican extremists in order to satisfy the press that they have reasonably accomodated the “centrists”.
By the way, I know I’ve said all this before, but some things need repeating.
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