The Double Standard in Trump-Biden Coverage

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/07/the-double-standard-in-trump-biden-coverage/678943/?gift=tsy95zCkAst2zG_yntlnGGtf6ZSBiIHcPATGz1TeI1A

37 comments

  1. What double standard? Trump is still terrible, but the new news is, Biden is selfish. We’ve been talking about how bad Trump is for a decade. This is new

  2. The media loves that they can help Trump get elected again for the ratings, but they have already put out they will be throwing Trump’s enemies in the media in prison alot of them won’t find it amusing when it’s their turn.

  3. The media has spent the past two weeks demanding one of the candidates drop out of the race and somehow it’s not the one convicted of rape and felony fraud.

  4. The media was reporting negatively about Trump almost daily for years, and treated voter’s concerns about Biden’s age and fitness unseriously. Now that Biden has been put under the microscope for the past 2 weeks (something that should be 24/7 for every president) – his supporters want to gaslight us into thinking the media never reports critically on Trump and its the media’s fault that voters aren’t falling head over heels with Biden’s campaign for another term.

  5. Trump is unhinged with many scandles ranging from election interference, hush money and pedophilia.

    Biden had one concern to alleviate which was his age and he failed. It is an easy target for the media. Especially when he doubles and triples down.

  6. >But critics of recent media coverage of Biden are dead right about one thing: Many outlets have for years been employing a significant double standard in covering Biden and his opponent, Donald Trump. When Biden stumbles over words, we question his state of mind; when Trump acts like a deranged street preacher, it’s … well, Tuesday. If Biden had suggested setting up migrants in a fight club, he’d be out of the race already; Trump does it, and the country (as well as many in the media) shrugs. Recognizing this inequity is the easy part, but here’s the harder realization: The double standard is a structural problem, it won’t change, and everyone in the prodemocracy coalition needs to grit their teeth and accept that reality.

    This isn’t what “double standard” means. A double standard is applying the same rule in two different ways to different targets. In this case, the targets are just actually very different. If your concern is that someone isn’t with it enough cognitively to carry on a conversation, it’s just obviously true that this isn’t a problem for the guy that speaks for an hour at a time off the top of his head.

  7. Reminds me of the 2016 South Park season where Mr Garrison (Trump analog) is running for president.

    He does an interview and the host says, “You said you would fuck every immigrant to death.”

    And Mr Garrison says, “I did not say that.” Very confidently.

    And the interviews points him to the TV where they play a compilation of him saying he’s going to “fuck every immigrant to death”.

    And he calmly asks how he plans to do that as if it’s a serious question.

    That’s what it feels like when the media sometimes interview or talks to Trump.

  8. It’s like the media needs some feed for the next 4 years of trump nonsense

  9. All major media is owned by oligarchs in favor of a fascist government.   Nuff said

  11. What I see is that there is a higher standard for the democratic candidate. They see a fault in the candidate and are willing to replace him for the better of the country. The republicans on the other hand, don’t give a shit what their candidate has done or what faults he has. They will support him no matter what, just to feel they “own the libs.” Party first and fuck the country.

  12. donald trump is graded on a curve. The law does not apply to donald trump. Basic standards of human decency do not apply to him. Applying these principles to him would be offensive to his supporters, and we just cant have that. Just replaying clips of the things donald trump says is “biased” and “defamatory”. Everything he does is bad so you cant talk about him without defaming him.

    Mind you, his supporters who’s feelings we are so careful not to hurt are the same people that hang signs that say “fuck your feelings liberals!”. Because they are graded on a curve too.

  13. It’s clear as day who owns the media. They just have not talked one way or another about Donald Trump’s debate performance or anything else about that piece of crap.

  14. The media is made up of for-profit companies. No one is surprised by, or even interested in, news about a Trumpocolipse. We’ve heard it before and are not shocked by anything that comes out of his (or his minion’s) mouth. His bad behavior, no matter how repugnant, does NOT make for a profitable news program. Right wing media on the other hand get great numbers whenever he says anything controversial as it gets transformed into LIB-ownership.

    The historic possibility of an incumbent withdrawing this late in the race after completely blowing the earliest presidential debate on the other hand…

  15. The “ media” is largely owned by Republican Billionaires that back Trump so….

  16. After four paragraphs, I got the concept of this article.

    It’s “of course the journalists are doing the bad thing, why don’t you just live with it, Joe?”

    Keep the blame on the right place. The media distortion.

  17. Media wants Trump because it makes for crazy news every day. They don’t understand (or care?) that they are marching us right into a fascist dictatorship.

  18. Trump is already a well established lying, narcissistic, and corrupt lunatic. It’s barely even news at this point, many people have sadly become numb to it. His standard is so low he can basically do or say anything now. 

  19. Imagine hearing there was someone who could stop Hitler, but half of Germany didn’t think he spoke well enough so they let Hitler seize control.

  20. Stop depending on corporate media for your info. It’s not the sole thing out there but we put too much stock on all of it for so long, they know they have a grip and can write their own narrative.

  23. The media including the left wing media wants Trump to win. It’s good for their news cycle .

  24. Bumbling, incoherent politician vs bumbling, incoherent rapist/felon. And the media spends the last two weeks demanding only Biden step down. I’ll be the first to agree the debate was alarming, but the spin on this should be concerning everyone. The media should not be the kingmaker.

  25. Because the media of the world in 2024 either sell propaganda or chaos.

  26. The deflection is embarrassing. Trump lying his ass off, saying wild shit, being backed by the worst human beings has to offer is priced in. 

    We aren’t a handful of articles about Trump from persuading everyone he’s a bad guy. That job has been done for 10 years, every Trump scandal gets coverage, I’ve read about all of them from all kinds of sources. 

    The presidential candidate needs to go do the fucking job of presidential candidate and inspire, motivate and move voters asses to the polls! 

     The media isn’t fucking going to do that for you!

    Everyone is trying to wage the wrong war, it’s not Trump vs Biden.

    It’s Biden vs. *The apathetic independent voter*. That’s why we are all in a fucking panic, the apathetic independent voter actually hates Trump, the problem is they also don’t like Biden so they might just stay home. 

  28. I’ll vote for an 81-year old who’s showing his age over a 78 year-old convicted felon who rapes little girls and wears a diaper because he’s constantly shitting his pants.

  29. I also like how they are upset about Biden not wanting to work past 8pm meanwhile when Trump was president he regularly didn’t start “working”until noon or went golfing. How is the media in hysterics about Biden stopping work past 8 barring something extremely important.

  30. And this is coming from one of the worst perpetuators of that double standard. I literally have not seen a single Atlantic article with Biden’s name in the title that wasn’t calling for him to step down since the debate. I’ve seen none about Trump’s lies. Fuck off Atlantic.

  31. God this is giving me trump and Hilary flashbacks.

    So much of the media was focused on Hillary’s “buttery males” they didn’t hear trump saying all the corrupt shit he was going to do if elected president

    Now the media is focused on the one negative thing about Biden (his age, which he can’t control) instead of trump being the first former president to be convicted of a felony

  32. Shareholder value again always first and foremost. Americans will get reamed in the ass harder than ever because of this and won’t even know why their lives have gotten harder.

  33. Corporations and the rich want those sweet tax breaks, really bad apparently. They’re willing to throw the entire country under the bus to get what they want. The majority of us are basically fucked and nobody will know who to blame .

  34. It’s almost as if corporate news doesn’t want a wealth tax.

  36. The way the media handles elections, in general, is pretty terrible if you ask me.

  37. CNN ABC CBS MSNBC are all Trump donors that’s why

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