Joe Concha slams the media for 'soft' questions delivered to president-elect Joe Biden
Biden takes single question about his foot condition; reaction from Fox News contributor Joe Concha.
President-elect Joe Biden has received “overtly flattering” treatment from the mainstream media, especially on his selection of Cabinet members, but critics worry that liberal journalists are going overboard when sucking up to Amtrak Joe.
Americans seem to be aware that the media is fawning over Biden’s every move, which was evident when New York Times associate managing editor Cliff Levy was lampooned on Monday for claiming the paper will cover Biden’s administration “just as thoroughly” as it covered President Trump during his four years in the White House. Levy’s message was quickly mocked, with the satirical publication Babylon Bee even offering him a gig.
DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall feels the traditional media “seem determined to frame Biden's various appointments in contrast to the Trump administration's appointees” and the result is glowing coverage of the president-elect.
“Given that most mainstream news outlets maintained an adversarial approach to Trumpism, this necessarily means that the Biden staff picks must be cast in a positive light. This sort of overly flattering assessment of Biden's appointments avoids any opportunity for careful scrutiny of the picks, which is quite unhelpful to the nation's news consumers who deserve a fair audit of Biden's picks and not simplistic cheerleading,” McCall told Fox News.
The mainstream media celebrated Biden for selecting only women to be part of his senior communications team, rarely mentioning the fact that Trump has employed multiple females in high-profile communications positions, too. CNN even praised Biden's “transparency” over his recent foot injury, a take that was too much for even the far-left MSNBC to agree with.
USA Today even published a so-called “fact check” about an unflattering viral photograph of Biden’s press secretary pick, former CNN pundit Jen Psaki, wearing a fur hat with the communist hammer-and-sickle logo for a photo op. The newspaper admitted the image was real but claimed it was “missing context” and attempted to clean up the controversy on her behalf.
“After four years of unrelenting criticism of the Trump administration, cable hosts and correspondents have greeted each Biden cabinet announcement with cheers as they uncritically welcome each selection as a ‘sharp rebuke’ to that dastardly Donald Trump’s administration,” Media Research Center deputy research director Geoffrey Dickens wrote.
Dickens then highlighted a plethora of examples that have occurred over the past few days.
“Talk about diplomacy being back, to talk about Joe Biden’s empathy and humanity, to talk about diplomacy being back, it is all about implicit rebuke of Donald Trump's foreign policy stewardship,” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace said on Nov. 24, which prompted PBS’ Yamiche Alcindor, who was a panelist, to say a fellow Democrat compared Biden’s selections to superheroes.
“I was talking to a Democrat who just said this also felt like the Avengers, it felt like we are being rescued from this, this craziness we’ve all lived through these past four years and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all,” Alcindor said.
Trump rarely received any praise for putting women such as Sarah Sanders, Hope Hicks, Alyssa Farah, Kellyanne Conway and Kayleigh McEnany in high-powered positions, but that didn’t stop the media from gushing over Biden’s communications team.
BIDEN'S STREAK OF RECEIVING SOFTBALL QUESTIONS FROM JOURNALISTS CONTINUES
Dickens noted that CNN’s Alisyn Camerota called Washington, D.C., the “ultimate old boy’s club” when praising Biden’s selections before expressing concern that being women might overshadow their accomplishments.
“It’s an historic headline and a very important historic headline, but I think that sometimes eclipses their qualifications for the job. These women will be familiar to lots of our viewers. They’ve been around Washington. They’ve been in and out of the White House. They know what they’re doing,” Camerota said.
ABC News chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz oddly declared that Biden's team is "not political.”
"This is about the least flashy team you could possibly get," Raddatz told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. "They are deeply experienced. They are humble and they are lifelong public servants. When I look at that group up there ... they are not political. They are just career people. They have worked together for many years.”
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar even praised Biden's team as "serious qualified individuals" that "even a Republican-controlled Senate should have some difficulty dismissing or blocking," while "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt complimented the lineup as a "very experienced" and "very diverse" group.
McCall feels it would “behoove the mainstream media to carefully consider what its role should be in watchdogging the Biden administration” before Inauguration Day.
“The media fawned over the Obama administration even though it surveilled journalists, and then developed an antagonistic approach to the Trump administration. It is little wonder that news consumers have so little confidence in the news media to be measured and fair,” McCall said. “This would be a good time for the media to fairly dissect the forthcoming Biden administration and begin to reestablish some credibility with the American public.”
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New York Magazine correspondent Olivia Nuzzi has taken notice of the media’s behavior and predicted many reporters will continue to treat Biden with kid gloves so they continue to get invited to cocktail parties and events hosted by powerful liberals.
“I think there is just a reluctance to make one's social life uncomfortable, that it was easier in the Trump Era and it's going to be harder in the Biden Era for reporters to not feel uncomfortable. And I'm nervous about that," Nuzzi said on Steve Krakauer’s "The Fourth Watch" podcast.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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