Looking for the gotchas…
Cecilia Vega of ABC News asked President Biden in his first press conference, “Do you find this acceptable?” in reference to the miserable conditions of unaccompanied children at the southern border. (Sorry, Joe, this is a crisis!) Another reporter—maybe from Bloomberg?—asks id the president will draw a red line in reference to Afghanistan troop withdrawal. Many of them ask why the president hasn’t done this or that (hmm, seems to me he’s done a lot in sixty-plus days, but I guess the reporters don’t think so).
These and many other questions reporters ask amount to media looking for the gotchas. Biden in the short time he’s been in office can’t fix what Trump broke during the four years of his administration. When Mr. Biden laughs and says to put Ms. Vega in her place, “Really? Is that a question?”, he’s implying it’s a stupid question because she’s looking for the gotcha, She counters with another stupid question (naturally!) that turns everything upside-down, asking if his plan to contact the relatives of those kids, using the phone numbers they have carried from Central America, doesn’t encourage even more to make the long trek to the border. Sorry, Cecilia, you can’t have it both ways!
Ms. Vega is only one among many ambitious reporters (she just received a promotion to White House correspondent, so she has to increase the number of her gotchas), but she was particularly irritating that day. ABC News did us no favors by replacing one SOB (Jonathan Karl) with another (Cecilia Vega). Karl’s book provides her with a guide on how to be maximally annoying (and maximize her number of gotchas!).
Trump drew the May 1, 2021 line in the sand for Afghanistan, but it never could have been maintained without leaving a bloodbath behind and our allies in a bind (they have more troops there now!). Mr. Biden flubbed a bit here, saying that he could imagine all US troops out of Afghanistan by sometime in 2022—a fuzzy line to be sure. But such questions only serve the media’s and their reporters’ purpose: create the gotchas! From the gotchas, the media creates their beloved scandals, and those sell (see my previous post)—of course, where they really make their money selling is expensive advertising space, those ads made possible by the scandals.
And thus we have the media, publishers, and reporters doing exactly what democracy does not need, yellow journalism, plain and simple. They’re all out to be like the British tabloids. Of course, those adversely affected can always sue. Meghan and Harry just won a big lawsuit. But not even the threat of litigation seems to stop them from looking for the gotchas. And when they can’t find them, media creates its own by quoting people out of context.
For now, looking for the gotchas is largely apolitical in the sense that the media only wants to create something scandalous because scandal sells. The media is not the enemy of the people, but it sure is the enemy of logical and reasonable discourse in the twenty-first century. When I see that NY Times motto, “All the news that’s fit to print,” I just laugh. It should be “We find the gotchas and get you the scandals.” Honest journalism is rare these days. And there are no honest reporters because they are all looking for the gotchas.
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Comments are always welcome.
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