The press and Biden: ‘the other team gets to play, too’

President Biden on Wednesday asked the question his audience of professional journalists hadn’t gotten around to over the past year: “What’s Mitch for?”

The question about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s policy views came during the president’s press conference marking the end of his first year in office, an anniversary that also has prompted the expected avalanche of year-one report cards — many of them scathing.

In a case of rough justice, a number of media analysts have been dishing out equally bad grades for the performance of those journalists.

Biden’s critics in the press seem sure he’s getting it all wrong, but frequently contradict each other on what exactly he’s getting wrong: He’s either not fighting hard enough for Democratic priorities — put another way, he’s ignoring the left — or he’s not governing from the center — that is, he’s too far left.

“Moderates in both parties who once cheered Biden’s centrist approach worry that he’s moved too far left,” according to an Associated Press analysis, which also suggests he hasn’t moved far enough left: “Biden is failing us,” says a member of the Sunrise Movement, a climate group whose idea of effective political action is to occupy Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

I worked in congressional campaigns and spent years on Capitol Hill. That’s not the kind of analysis policy professionals find particularly useful.

Baseball managers are familiar with this phenomenon. And — while we’re speaking of baseball — Biden might have made his point by quoting the sage wisdom of Red Sox great Pedro Martinez, who, after a rare subpar pitching performance one year, pointed out that “the other team gets to play, too.”

A separate AP analysis barely mentions the other team, beyond quoting a GOP member of Congress — who, you’ll be surprised to hear, criticized the president — and pointing to Biden’s “inability to attract Republicans” on voting rights legislation.

Another commonality of the one-year evaluations is their perplexing harshness. Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post calls Biden impotent. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, in her trademark fashion, calls out Republicans for intransigence while calling Biden incompetent. The AP analysis refers to “the president who has promised a future without fossil fuels to make a record-setting release from the U.S. petroleum reserve to help tamp down the cost of gasoline,” as if the former says something about the latter.

The scorched-earth analysis contrasts sharply with the gentle treatment given to opposition to the highly popular elements of Biden’s agenda. Again, the AP: “And Friday marked the first time in half a year that families are going without a monthly deposit from the child tax credit, which had been seen as a legacy-making program for Biden but has emerged instead as a flash point over who is worthy of government support.” By “flash point,” one assumes opposition to the popular program to help families with children. Who, may we ask, are these flash pointers, and what is their thinking?

Not all the coverage adopted the same harsh tone. Dan Balz of the Washington Post wrote a nuanced analysis contrasting the challenges Biden faced last year with those of the coming year. And the AP, oddly enough, despite opining that “Biden is unlikely to get much sympathy from the public for his predicament,” published a reasonably balanced and, yes, nuanced collection of public opinions about the president’s performance.

The harsh tone toward the president and the curious lack of interest in the broader political context has prompted a sharp rebuke that journalists largely dismiss as partisan. It’s not their job to help the administration, they say; they just report the facts.

But what facts?

Why is Biden treated as a sap for suggesting he could work with Republicans, and then held solely responsible when the GOP all but refuses to participate in the legislative process? Why isn’t that intransigence a theme of congressional coverage? And why is the GOP campaign to limit voting opportunities — and in some cases to change who controls the vote count — in states across the country so often reported as a political problem for Democrats, rather than a threat to democracy?

Those questions — and a lot more — are being raised not just by partisans, but by other journalists and media analysts.

Dan Froomkin of Press Watch, Margaret Sullivan and Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, and Jon Allsop of the Columbia Journalism Review all have sounded alarms over what they see as a democracy at risk and an indifferent press.

Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, has long criticized what he sees as journalists’ commitment to a “savvy” style of reporting:

“In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere, thoughtful or humane. Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.)”

These analyses are read by and are often produced in newsrooms. But inexplicably, they don’t seem to penetrate the news-gathering process.

This isn’t a defense of President Biden. Rather, it’s a question of intent: his critics don’t organize the news out of Washington according to the needs of the nation and the daily lives of its people. They treat it as theater — a theater whose seats they must fill every day — and weigh Biden’s “performance” on a scale of their choosing.

Journalists are quick to lament the decline of the news business and its critical role in a democracy — which is hard to dispute. But faced with criticism, they insist the outcome of this battle is not their business.

In a sense, they have it right: They are not in the democracy-support business. Whatever else they do, they must get you to look at them, read them, or watch them — that’s the business they’re in. Their trickle-down support for democracy may give journalists a warm feeling and a nice story to tell themselves, but at the end of the day, helping to save it is not their business.

This originally appeared as the column One Dog Barking in Citizencartwright.com.