Back in 1976, Paddy Chayevsky, the screenwriter of “Network,” was asked whether his movie was “a cautionary tale” about the future of the media. He replied, “No, I was writing about today.”
46 years later, the movie has lost none of its scabrous punch. If anything, the situation is even worse than it was portrayed back in those more-innocent days.
When he was criticized in 2016 for giving free airtime to Donald Trump, Cretin News Network honcho Jeff Zucker defended his decision to cover the campaign’s clownish rallies as “news” with wall-to-wall live coverage because “Trump is good for ratings.” With that, he confirmed the reputation he had in Hollywood from the years before his time at CNN as a “fucking moron” among “the suits” - one of the most disliked of the the Hollywood studio executives people here disliked. There’s a very good argument to be made that Zucker’s decision to cover Trump’s clown show “for the ratings” handed the greatest traitor in American history his victory that year.
Last Friday, the monthly jobs report was another blockbuster. Not as big as the reports for December, January and February, but far higher than anyone expected to see in the post-COVID recovery. The U.S. economy under President Joe Biden added another 400,000-plus new jobs in March.
Usually, presidents get rave reviews for good reports like this. Currently, President Biden is on pace to oversee the creation of 10 million new jobs and an unemployment rate tumbling all the way down to 3 percent by January 20, 2023, his second anniversary in office. It’s an unprecedented accomplishment in U.S. history. Jut for context: In four years in office, Trump lost three million jobs, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
“Rave reviews” was not the response of the Washington Press Corpse. Politico declared Friday afternoon that “The reality is that one strong jobs report does not snap the administration out of its current circumstances.”
Hey, you collection of over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable morons - how about 11 straight strong job reports? Would that do the trick?
I ask because the U.S. economy under Biden has been adding more than 400,000 jobs per month for 11 straight months. Yet 37 percent of Americans, when polled, believe the country has lost jobs and is in a recession, if not a depression. How can they believe such an obvious lie?
They watch the Mainstream Media, that’s how.
The glaring disconnect between reality and how the Press Corpse depicts the administration’s accomplishments poses a key question:
Why are they rooting against Biden? Do they want a return to the heady days of two years ago when the country was glued to cable news to learn the Disaster Du Jour? Do they want a Trump return to the White House “for the ratings,” as Zucker put it?
Since they can only conceive of politics as a “horse race,” are they committed to keeping Biden down so the 2024 rematch will be close and “entertaining”?
Is that why the Ginni Thomas insurrection story has been marched off the national stage after just a few days of coverage last week?
Is that why “ABC This Week” included 19 references to the Hunter Biden non-story yesterday?
On Friday, the day the amazing jobs report was released, “inflation” was mentioned on cable news nearly as often as “jobs,” according to TVeyes.com.
The jeanieusses at “Axios” contorted themselves to claim Biden’s promise to add “millions” of new jobs was threatened because there aren’t enough workers, or because so few people are out of work - or something.
Here are the headlines after the report was released:
“America’s Job Market Is On Fire. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Feel Like It” (CNN)
“Booming Job Growth Is a Double-Edged Sword For Joe Biden” (CNN)
“Why a Great Jobs Report Can’t Save Joe Biden” (CNN)
“Unemployment Hits Pandemic Low in March, But Uncertainty Looms Ahead” (Washington Post)
“Biden Gets a Strong Jobs Report, But a Sour Mood Still Prevails” (Washington Post)
At the Washington Post, afternoon readers of the daily’s homepage had to scroll down 87 headlines before they saw the first one that mentioned the great economic news.
What was more important? Among the headlines that were higher were "What’s The Best Way to Share My Old Home Videos?" and "The Duke-North Carolina Rivalry, By the Numbers."
Dean Baker, senior economist for Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted:“CNN’s coverage of the report quickly turned to inflation. In its more general coverage of the economy, the jobs report — which tells us about the employment and earnings situation for more than 160 million people — was barely a blip.”
The Sunday morning Chucktodd Fakakte “Meet the Press” assembled two segments of pundits. The first focused on how immigration might be a problem for Democrats in the midterms; the second on how Trump might be a problem for Democrats in the midterms. The jobs report was completely ignored. (Proving once again that a “chucktodd” is indeed an internationally-recognized unit of measure of political incompetence and illiteracy.)
This is why only 28 percent of people polled know jobs are up and the economy is ahead of predictions.
All this is on top of the announcement last week by CBS that they were hiring Professional Trumpscum Mick Mulvaney as a political pundit, with the president of the company justifying it on the “fact” that the Republicans will take power in Washington this November and they need to prepare for that by “gaining access.” Surprise surprise, Mulvaney was one of those the former “Tiffany Network” - once home to Edward R. Murrow - the man who took down McCarthy - and Walter Cronkite - called on to comment about the jobs report. I don’t need to tell you what his take was.
The “common widsom” among the over-educated otherwise-unemployables is that Biden’s approval rating is taking a hit because Americans are freaked out by inflation.
But maybe it’s taking a hit because Americans are told every day by Duh Mee-dee-ya that jobs are still disappearing.
Voters don’t know what they don’t know because the media - the people who claim “Democracy dies in darkness” - isn’t telling them about record job success and an economy that’s years ahead of where experts thought it would be coming out of a global pandemic.
Last week, the otherwise-unemployables asked 14 separate questions about the “gaffe” Biden made when he expressed over what Russian President Vladimir Putn has unleashed in Ukraine.
There wasn’t one single question about the actual state of the Ukraine war.
Remember when COVID and the pandemic was the most important “crisis” Biden faced?
Today, the topic is $6 a gallon gas prices.
The over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployables of the Press Corpse needs to take its thumb off the scale. These morons don’t even qualify as “ink-stained wretches.”
If you like the material you get here at That’s Another Fine Mess, please consider upgrading your subscription. This project survives on the support of the Paid Subscribers.
Comments are for the Paid Subscribers.
I am increasingly frustrated with the “Yes, but …” coverage in the news, where any Biden positive news is followed by a may-or-may-not-be actually related negative, which is given at least twice as much coverage.
Yes, inflation sucks, but I remember gas lines in the 70s (at least gas is readily available) and house hunting while pregnant in 1983, when prime mortgage rates were 13%. Since our younger generations don’t seem to be learning much about history, they lack perspective, and everything is presented by the media as catastrophic. I’ll be more sympathetic about gas prices when I stop walking past several cars sitting in a parking lot with their engines running on a beautiful day, or the 10 or 15 car long line in the drive through.
This is 100% spot on. When President Biden was elected, I started keeping a tally of the "headlines" that showed up on my browser each day. The ratio of "Trump" in the headlines to "Biden" in the headlines was about 99/1. That a con artist masquerading as a president continued to dominate the "news" while the duly elected and wildly popular incumbent received NO attention at all was breathtaking and so very obvious. When CBS did its dastardly thing, I sent them a message and removed them from my browser feed. Faux noise hasn't been on it for so long, I can't even recall the last misinformation piece of garbage that showed up there. I no longer pay attention to anything that comes via ABC or CNN. And if MSNBC crosses over the line, they get personalized blasts from me (some of them follow me, so I hope they care.) I have a gripe with NPR for its all things are equal, even if they aren't "reporting" so I don't give a fig for anything that comes from them. In my opinion, they DO have their entire organizations on the scale with regards to Biden and the midterms. This is a misuse of their power and I think they should be monitored and called out for it. BTW, I tweeted the link to this article to WaPo with a comment that I agreed with it 100%. It will be interesting to see what comes back from other followers.