Discerning readers might assume the carnival that is the American press would deliver one of two options: current news, or information of interest to the audience. A rational observer would likely think President Joe Biden's one-year anniversary in the White House fulfilled both those criteria, and yet it seems the legacy media is still locked in a love affair with none other than President Trump … and no matter how hard they try, they just can't quit.
President Biden has been in the Oval Office for one entire year – or rather, three-quarters of a year, with the remaining time spent resting in Delaware. The 46th president is overseeing a global pandemic, historic inflation levels, a massive spike in crime, and is back fighting with a Cold War enemy. One would think that any of these crises were worthy of serious attention. But apparently not.
In fact, taking a tally of the leading stories in some of the nation's most prominent news sources, an alien anthropologist may be forgiven for thinking that Donald Trump is still the top dog.
Crunching Some Numbers
Liberty Nation asked its authors for a selection of news websites and papers that they considered to be more on the left side of the political divide. With 12 responses, we took screenshots of the "above the fold" content on Thursday, January 20, and then tallied how many stories were directly about President Joe Biden and how many were about President Trump.
The results may surprise you.
There were a total of 41 articles, of which more than half (22) were about Trump, while just 19 focused on Biden. Here's a fun breakdown:
Eight outlets had more stories about Trump than Biden.
Only one outlet had no reports about Trump.
One site had a story for each.
Two outlets had more stories about Joe Biden than Trump.
Most interesting is that of the two outlets that had more about the current president than the former, over 50% of the Biden-based content was attempting to explain why he didn't mean what he meant when he said what he did.
That 66% of news outlets decided on the anniversary of Joe Biden's first year as president of the United States to give so much attention to another man, whom they have previously described as a blip, or an aberration, certainly makes one wonder what the editorial motivation might be for the left-leaning Fourth Estate.
Just Can't Quit the Habit
President Donald Trump was the best thing to happen to a failing news media struggling to deal with the advent of the internet. He did not keep regular hours, he was unpredictable, and his Twitter feed could burst into life with a groundbreaking story at any moment. Most importantly, he was engaged with the press.
Trump may have harried the media, even mocked them, but he was always open to questions and ready to defend his position in lively back and forths. Contrast this with Joe Biden, who takes only pre-scripted questions and has done precisely one major Q&A in recent times – which resulted in the aforementioned content trying to explain what he truly meant – and it's not difficult to see who floats the legacy media boat. Add the press' seeming need to defend the current president lest Trump return resurgent, and you have content that is dull, flat, and, frankly, only a couple of short steps removed from state propaganda.
When faced with such dry and uninspiring output, wouldn't you turn to the one man who has consistently provided you with journalistic excitement? For all the protestations, the legacy media do not truly fear the return of Donald Trump; professionally, they yearn for it.
~Read more from Mark Angelides.
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