Andrew Stiles is the Washington Free Beacon’s humorist. He writes a weekly newsletter called The Stiles Section that the Beacon also posts on its daily home page today. Please see the whole thing here. Among the subjects Mr. Stiles takes up today is one that will remain sore with us for a long time to come. He writes (all but one link omitted) below the break:
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Not guilty by reason of credulity: Journalists were very agitated this week after one of their own, Alex Thompson of Axios, suggested the media were at fault for failing to expose the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, which didn’t really need covering up because it was blatantly obvious to everyone except Democrats and journalists. Chuck Todd, the former NBC host, was shaking with rage. “This is not a media failure, this is a Democratic Party failure,” Todd fumed during a conversation with fellow journalist Chris Cillizza, formerly of CNN. “The virtue signaling that some people have done to try to say that the media missed this story. They didn’t miss this story.” (Yes, they did.)
Cillizza offered a more reasonable take. Democrats missed the story of Biden’s decline, he said, but not because they were willfully covering it up. They were simply too gullible and too blinded by partisanship to even consider that widespread concerns about Biden’s age, based on bountiful evidence, could be anything other than a nefarious right-wing conspiracy theory. Most journalists are Democrats, he noted, which means they have an “inherent and sort of unconscious bias” that made them “too willing to take the Biden team’s word for it” when the White House and other Democrats insisted the president was sharp as a tack or running circles around his younger aides. All that bullshit. “They were too credulous,” Cillizza said.
That’s the most charitable explanation, but it’s not even that charitable. Journalists aren’t the enemy of the people, see? They’re just a bunch of well-meaning and intellectually unserious hacks who are predisposed to serve as obedient mouthpieces for Democratic propaganda. They didn’t conceal the truth on purpose. They’re just incapable of distinguishing the truth from professional spin. It might be their best argument, but to believe it is to accept the fact that our cherished journalists are even dumber and more oblivious than we could’ve ever imagined.
A few of many, many examples that stand out:
Factcheck.org (July 2022): Denounced the Washington Free Beacon and other conservative outlets for sharing a video clip that showed Biden mindlessly reading the words “end of quote, repeat the line” off a teleprompter. Why? Because the clip was “misleading” and gave viewers the “false” impression that Biden “is becoming senile.” The fact-checking experts rendered their verdict based on a White House transcript, which claimed Biden had said, “Let me repeat the line,” even though he clearly hadn’t. The experts assessed that it was “not clear” if the transcript was accurate, even though it clearly wasn’t. They also cited a White House spokeswoman who said Biden’s phrasing was “intentional.” Two months later, Biden called out to congresswoman Jackie Walorski during a White House event, wondering where she was. Walorski had died in a car crash weeks earlier. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied that Biden had gaffed, suggesting that the dead congresswoman was “on his mind” and he wanted to acknowledge her “incredible work.”
Associated Press (June 2024): The AP fact-checked a video clip of Biden freezing up at a Hollywood fundraiser and looking bewildered as Barack Obama gently guided him offstage. The outlet spoke to Biden aides who claimed the president hadn’t frozen, he had simply “stopped to take in cheers and applause.” The AP agreed, concluding that Biden hadn’t frozen, he had simply “paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage.” The fact-check, published 10 days before the now infamous debate on CNN, was “part of the AP’s efforts to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulation online.” Less than a month later, Democratic activist George Clooney confirmed that the Joe Biden he met at that Hollywood fundraiser “was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” The doddering geezer who bragged about beating Medicare.
RIP, Meta Fact-Checkers. Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out.
