Opinion: The real scandal is that any journalist ever believed Joe Biden in the first place
Opinion by Becket Adams, Opinion Contributor • 2h
The Hill
Sometimes, a plea of “not guilty” is worse than a simple admission of guilt. The latest round of defenses and explanations for the press’s abject failure to cover Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline represents such an instance.
Former CNN analyst Chris Cillizza volunteered some very thin gruel last week, suggesting the political press’s subconscious partisan biases primed it to be too trusting of the Biden White House.
This is hardly a satisfying or comforting defense for why the media didn’t report sooner on Biden’s struggles, and in some cases actively harangued and shouted down those who raised the issue.
For one thing, any reporter who takes the world’s most powerful office at its word is hardly doing his job. Second, anyone who genuinely trusts that Biden is telling the truth is too incompetent to be left alone around sharp objects, let alone cover the White House.
“Any study that you ever see about who reporters vote for, they vote for Democrats much more than Republicans,” said Cillizza, who has been hard on his colleagues for the industry-wide failure to account for the former president’s deterioration. “And I think what was going on here is, I think it was an inherent and sort of unconscious bias more than a conscious bias. But I think the reporters covering this White House were too willing to take the Biden team’s word for it. Anytime you asked about Joe Biden they would say ‘I mean, he’s 80, moves a little bit more stiffly than he did before, but man he is totally with it, he outworks our 20-something staffers.’ And I think reporters were too willing to just say ‘Okay that makes sense.’ They were too credulous.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/opinion-the-real-scandal-is-that-any-journalist-ever-believed-joe-biden-in-the-first-place/ar-AA1EbyD4?ocid=widgetonlockscreen&cvid=7124ebf300154d4fabc0cbb164eb0de5&ei=72
