BROADCAST BIAS: How networks buried a bombshell Senate hearing on Biden's mental fitness
The legacy media cover congressional hearings based on their usual standard of newsworthiness. This is it: If they are run by Democrats and are meant to propel them to political power, they are presented as the most urgent, sober, and nonpartisan news of the day. But hearings run by Republicans to drive home a Republican argument? They often won't see the light of a TV studio.
On June 18, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to investigate former President Joe Biden's ability to serve in office toward the end of his presidency. After his disastrous debate performance, the Democrats forced him out of the presidential race, but left him in office despite his seeming incapacity. This, somehow, was purely partisan, and not something most Americans viewed with grave concern. The Democrats mostly boycotted Wednesday's hearing.
At the top, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, proclaimed, "I will note that few of my Democratic colleagues are here today. Thank you to Senator Welch from Vermont for being here, leaving us with no other option than to take the boycotting of this hearing as an admission of guilt for their role in this crisis."
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., showed up only briefly to dismiss the hearing as a "political adventure." The broadcast networks all skipped it. Their "news judgment" is clearly closely aligned with Democrat objectives.
Democrats boycotted in the hopes that people would conclude that if this isn't a bipartisan hearing, how can it be newsworthy? Consider the House Special Committee on the January 6 attack, or in short, the Pelosi-Picked Panel. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shredded the usual procedure by not allowing the Republicans to put their own choices on the committee. Instead, she selected Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger to be Potemkin Republicans. They never strayed from Pelosi's narrative over several years of wildly over-publicized hearings that were uniformly granted live coverage, in daytime and prime time.
On Wednesday, the media certainly didn't want to hear what the Republican witnesses said about their pathetic performance. Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer called out the media for their remarkable lack of curiosity about Biden's failures: "The left and their friends in the media love to throw around terms like threats to democracy, and constitutional crisis... If we don't have confidence in the leader of the free world making decisions, that truly is the definition of a constitutional crisis."
On the night of the hearing, "NBC Nightly News" led with a not-guilty verdict for Karen Read, on retrial in Massachusetts for allegedly killing her police officer boyfriend. That report went on for five minutes. ABC's "World News Tonight" also gave it nearly five minutes after leading with Trump and Iran. Both networks also obsessed for two hours over Karen Read on "20/20" and "Dateline NBC" in prime time. "True crime" sells.
The taxpayer-funded "PBS News Hour" offered eight sorrowful minutes on the Supreme Court allowing Tennessee's ban on so-called "gender-affirming care" for children.
On "CBS Evening News Plus," they turned to reporter Manuel Bojorquez to question Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' decision to appoint Marva Johnson, as the new president of Florida A&M University, the state's only HBCU. He touted "a groundswell of students and alumni of the historically black college opposed to her selection." Groundswell? The CBS station in Tallahassee reported "at least 10" protesters.
National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" doesn't consider Republicans much, except to condemn them. They offered a five-minute story on the sad state of corporate race-hustling. Co-host Mary Louise Kelly announced: "Chief diversity officer was once corporate America's hottest job. Now DEI is under attack, leaving the people with careers in diversity, equity and inclusion out in the cold."
Several of these broadcast networks addressed the reality of Biden's cognitive decline during the book-promotion tour of CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson. For his part, Tapper didn't address this on his show "The Lead" on Wednesday, where you would naturally tune in to check on what he did. But he did ask a neutral question about the hearing with Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt in the 2pm hour on Wednesday as CNN focused intently on Israel and Iran.
The legacy media skipping over Republican-led hearings and whatever news they uncover underscores why Americans look to conservative media for covering what liberals want to bury. As Sean Spicer said at the hearing, "We've seen what the legacy media did, but that's why the growth of independent media is so healthy for our democracy."
Democrats and their broadcast-news allies frame scandal hearings they like as another Watergate, Iran-Contra, January 6 – marking "history" as tilting against those unethical Republicans. They prefer that the American people never remember Republicans held a hearing on anything.
So when journalists boast they offer "the first draft of history," everyone should know they're being served a partisan pupu platter.
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