With the 2024 Presidential Election looming, the U.S. media is accountable for Joe Biden's dip in the polls and giving Donald Trump another shot at the Oval Office, writes Ross Jones.
*Also listen to the audio version of this article on Spotify HERE.
THE RUN-UP to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election is confounding. How can a convicted sexual abuser and overseer of corporate fraud on a grand scale be taken seriously?
Look on the bright side — you are living through history.
Right now, the American narcissist is having the time of his life. News entourages everywhere he goes, cameras, limos, prime spots in the courtrooms. He is the man.
Everyone is talking about him. Perfect.
It looks like it’s going to be a contest with President Joe Biden. Joe is old. It doesn’t matter that you wear aviators and have a Corvette in the garage — if you are no longer sprightly, that’s it.
The narcissist, too, is old, decrepit.
It is an unsightly election. Two old men fighting it out.
Biden does bring government experience at the highest level. He brings wisdom, calm and compassion.
His opponent also brings government experience at the highest level, but he is a traitor. A venal shell who sold out to the Russians and leaked top-secret government documents.
It should be no contest. But apparently, it is, with some polls showing Biden trailing the traitor. And the American media has a lot to do with this.
Fox, of course.
According to CNN in 2021, Lachlan Murdoch addressed the Morgan Stanley conference:
'Speaking at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference on Thursday, he said, “The main beneficiary of the Trump Administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC. That’s because they were the loyal opposition.” And, “That’s what our job is now with the Biden Administration. You’ll see our ratings really improve,” he predicted.’
Then there is Newsmax, Breitbart, One America and the rest of the American Right, all adding their cry for Far-Right relief from their boring middle-class lives.
But where it’s at is in the ‘burbs, where Sinclair Media reigns supreme.
According to the Tampa Bay Times:
Sinclair Broadcast Group is not as well-known a name in television as Fox News' News Corp or CNN's Turner Broadcasting System, but its reach may rival that of a cable juggernaut.
The company is the largest owner of local television stations in the country, with 173 stations in 81 broadcast markets that stretch from coast to coast and just about everywhere in between, at a time when local news outpaces national news outlets both in overall viewership and trust. Some 85 per cent of Americans trust local news outlets, higher than the 77 per cent for family or friends, according to the Pew Research Center.
In 2017, The Guardian reported:
‘“Sinclair’s probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of,” said Michael Copps, the George W Bush-appointed former chairman of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the top U.S. broadcast regulator.’
A 2023 report in Common Dreams added:
That conglomerate, Sinclair Broadcast Group, recently announced plans to eliminate entire local newsrooms at local television stations in five broadcast areas. Sinclair is also drastically cutting newsroom staff at an additional five local stations, pushing all of these stations to fill the resulting news hole with National Desk boilerplate. That means zero local coverage — and lots of the cookie-cutter conservatism that Sinclair has pumped out via the public airwaves for decades.
Unless you pay the subscription bucks, you cannot find any traces of Sinclair Media programming or shows out here in the boonies. Probably a good thing.
While parts of the U.S. media are doing their best to paint Biden’s opponent as someone who definitely should rule the United States, they are getting plenty of assistance from a swathe of the legal fraternity – from those joyous folk at the Federalist Society who argue there is simply no room for any contemporary interpretation of a 1787 document to all those lawyers in all the narcissist’s court cases who are seemingly happy to mislead courts on his behalf.
Every court appearance acts as an advertisement for the MAGA fruit loops.
All this has caused Biden to trail in four of six swing-state polls.
But all is not lost.
On 8 November 2023, The Financial Times reported:
Joe Biden’s Democratic Party has secured victories in a series of U.S. state and local elections, providing a boost for the President as he confronts declining approval ratings ahead of a fight for re-election next year. Voter support for abortion rights, a crucial issue for Democrats, helped the President’s party to success in several electoral races on Tuesday, 12 months ahead of a presidential election in which Biden is set to seek a second four-year term.
A glimmer of hope in a darkening environment.
*This article is also available on audio here:
Ross Jones is IA's investigations editor and the author of 'Ashbygate: The Plot to Destroy Australia's Speaker'. You can follow Ross on Twitter @rpzjones_fin.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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