Readers needed to know that, when you visit Arlington, you might not know exactly what you’re supposed to do when confronted by those rows of headstones, but you damn sure know what you’re not supposed to do. But the coverage this week left many readers with the impression that the whole thing might have been a bureaucratic mix-up, or some tedious violation of protocol. It focused on bland horse-race coverage so common during election season, rather than clearly stating what really took place: an egregious and willful violation of long-standing norms. What was missing from the coverage was a willingness to quickly and decisively state what a grievous insult the whole debacle was to the dignity of Arlington. The sacred had been profaned.
Well fucking said.
I disagree that the media is pro-trump. I feel depending on our media consumption outlets, it’s easy to feel the “larger” media is for the opposing side, view, etc, but in reality it’s easy to see the media as the scapegoat for opposing information. I feel the reporting on this event has been appropriate. Yes he broke the law, yes it was egregious, but there are more important things about the candidates and election that are more important to focus on
This event is no one-off, Trump has consistently broken the law, it is a defining characteristic of what he is. As such, he is unfit for office, that is very important, an honest media would say so.
The media have been far too lenient on him ever since he first got into politics. There has never been a person less suitable for any public office and yet they’ve been normalising him since day one. If you refuse to see a pattern here you’re either in denial or arguing in bad faith.
There are more important things to focus on: he is an insurrectionist rapist who stole top secret documents to sell to foreign adversaries. He extorted a foreign country asking them to smear political opponents. He appointed corrupt theocrats to SCOTUS who declared women are incubators and that presidents can break whatever laws without consequence.
They aren’t focusing on that, either, they’re busy asking Harris what she thinks about hearing she “suddenly turned black.”
LMFAO… Yes the presidential candidate who is already a felon just committed more crimes on live TV, but there are more important things in the election than choosing the best person to represent us instead of a criminal. Oh… Wait… No… There isn’t… That’s what an election is, choosing the best representative and not criminals.
The media chose to show Trump’s empty rallies in 2016 over Bernie Sanders’s absolutely packed rallies. There were leaked conversations from high up that specifically told pundits not to cover Bernie.
More recently, the media chose to not take any of Trump’s many, many criminal acts seriously (attempting to overthrow the 2020 election, multiple cases of rape, stealing classified documents to sell to foreign governments, not paying his workers throughout his whole life, no fact checking his many defamatory claims), nor have the media chosen to cover Project 2025 nonstop, as they should be doing.
You can tell more about the media based on what they choose not to cover more than what they choose to cover.
You can disagree all you want, but you’re fundamentally incorrect. Even when the media is ‘attacking’ trump, they’re giving him ratings and attention over every little thing, even shit that’s fairly normal (not this case, obv). Or did you forget all of the free media time he got with the media breathlessly reporting his every move, including his empty podiums before speeches?
They’re still pulling this shit, though to a somewhat lesser extent, but the media didn’t learn a damned thing from the mistakes they made in 2020.
They keep doing it so often that I don’t think they are mistakes. It’s either built into the system (seeking eyeballs and clicks leading to the demons among us exploiting that to have “journalism” favor them.) or the inherent conservative bias of news outlets that are part of gigantic MNCs is going to come into conflict with with legitimate journalism and they consciously make choices to favor the cons. It’s probably a bit of both.