With one crash after another between Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2022, despite the media’s efforts to protect Biden and his party – it’s worth looking back at how it unfolded exactly a year ago.
On March 18, 2021, CBS proposed a tragic spin for the growing crisis at the border. This morning Co-host Tony Dokupil subtly differentiates between the Trump administration’s border policy (“clear, if morally controversial”) and the Biden administration’s effort (“a little more subtle”).
Speaking to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorcas, the charity suggested the opposite:
The previous administration was very clear, if morally controversial, about the families who want to come to the border and the message for the children. Didn’t come. Your message is a little bit more subtle. For families heard this morning, what would you say to them about where they are making the decision to come to the U.S. border where it is dangerous?
But if you can believe it, this kind of hack-y, biased spin is actually the old days when it came to covering disasters at the border. Because at least this border is reported. As we reported through the Newsbuster Study, the networks have finally left the frontier completely.
In January, ABC, CBS and NBC had 0 minutes and 0 seconds on the evening newscast during the crisis. In December, they did only slightly better: 297 seconds. ABC and CBS gave a total of less than a minute, just 17 seconds on World News Tonight and 20 seconds on CBS Evening News.
Also this week a year ago: on March 15, 2021, the networks finally bothered to ask Biden about the sexual harassment scandal of the then Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and how it was spiraling out of control.
Here is the sum total of the President’s remarks on March 15: “I think the investigation is ongoing, and we should see what it brings us.” Rather than calling it a thin non-answer, Good morning America Journalists allowed Biden just eight seconds into their 43-second story in Cuomo. Reporter Stephanie Ramos sounded like a Democratic operative: “President Biden asked over the weekend whether Kuomo should resign and he agreed that we should wait to see the results of the investigation.”
Spoiler alert: Cuomo will resign, further damaging the National Democratic Party.
We’ll keep charting week after week, how badly 2021 went for Biden and the Democrats – and how the media tried to cover it. For more examples from our Flashback series, which we call Newsbuster Time Machine, Get here.