Assuming the Trump campaign’s remaining legal challenges ultimately prove to be unsuccessful, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will be sworn in as our nation’s 46th president in January.
Along with that will come a drastically different approach to government, which is expected when the White House changes hands from one political party to another.
Something else we’ll see dramatic changes in next year will be how the national press covers Congress and the White House.
In contrast to how many Beltway political reporters fancied themselves as loyal “resistance” allies during the Trump administration, media coverage of the Biden-Harris administration will be nothing short of fawning. We’ll see them push the type of favorable “stories” that sound like they came straight out of a state-run media playbook.
We’ve already seen numerous examples of this play out over the last several weeks.
For example, barely a week after Election Day, CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter talked to Biden’s national campaign press secretary T.J. Ducklo about Biden’s supposed view of the “role of the fourth estate.” In a tweet promoting the interview, Stelter gushed about the possibility of “a restoration of normal relations between the president and the press corps.”
“A reset is about to begin,” he predicted rather predictably.
For Republicans, “normal relations between the president and the press corps” equates to the media routinely giving the left a pass and framing issues much differently under Democratic leaders than they do with Republican leaders.
For instance, during the Obama-Biden administration, the media frequently portrayed House and Senate Republicans as “obstructionists” to “ambitious legislation” pushed by Obama. They were “impediments to progress,” some in the media would say in so many words.
In contrast, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders have been portrayed as saviors of the Republic, as the only thing protecting a free society from the alleged tyrannical impulses of President Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
These days, when they’re not playing metaphorical chess games with Trump over the results of the election, political reporters are filing “breaking news” reports on the stories that really matter, such as how Biden and his wife Jill are planning on adding a cat to their stable of house pets.
Political reporters are filing “breaking news” reports on the stories that really matter, such as how Biden and his wife Jill are planning on adding a cat to their stable of house pets.
CBS Sunday Morning literally had the words “breaking news” in their tweet about the cat. The NY Times’ headline on the story read, “A Cat Is Said to Be Joining the Bidens in the White House.”
Other hard-hitting reports we’ve received about Biden in recent weeks include fashion updates on the socks he wears.
Tweeting out close-up shots of Biden’s socks during a public appearance, Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Epstein wrote that “George H.W. Bush was known for his socks, maybe Biden will be too? Today he wore dark blue socks adorned with lighter blue dogs.”
She then added a note about how “there are plenty of more substantive things to tweet about but we can have some fun sometimes, too.” This didn’t impress her critics, especially after she later joked with Biden senior advisor Symone Sanders about how the socks were “not quite Gucci but they are good.”
Washington Post reporter Matt Viser tweeted about how Biden’s secretary of State pick, Antony Blinken, might “resume” John Kerry’s “practice” of taking a guitar with him on overseas trips.
“John Kerry, as secretary of state, would take his guitar on some overseas trips. It appears Tony Blinken could resume that practice,” Viser observed.
In a sense, Stelter was right about one thing. “Normal relations” will indeed be restored between the media and the president under a Biden administration. Unfortunately, they are the type of “normal relations” that only serve the interests of Democrats in power, not average Americans who look to the press to hold public figures accountable.
Media analyst Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
