Democrats demand their own slice of anti-media action

Conservatives have been complaining for years they don't get a fair shake out of the news media. Now, Democrats are griping too.

Joe Biden's "you ain't black" comment divided Democrats, but it also caused fissures between the party and the press, a dynamic President Trump has repeatedly manipulated for political gain.

After Biden's off-handed remark last week suggesting African Americans would vote for him based purely on their skin color and his subsequent apology, some Democrats became criticized of the coverage of the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee's first general election gaffe.

"It's notable that there has been exponentially more discussion in the media about the effect of Biden's comment on 2020 African-American turnout than the effect of Trump falsely accusing Barack Obama of the 'biggest political crime in American history,'" tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, former White House communications director for then-President Barack Obama.

Democratic Lawyers Council co-chair Andrew Weinstein added: "Donald Trump is busy retweeting accounts calling Hillary a skank, saying Stacey Abrams is fat, and suggesting Nancy Pelosi’s mouth should be duct taped shut, but an unfortunate comment Joe Biden already apologized for will end up getting 100 times the media coverage. Guaranteed."

Biden was overwhelmingly popular with black Democrats, particularly older African Americans, during this cycle's primaries. And early polling indicates he's on track to trounce Trump with the same bloc in November's general election.

But despite the "whataboutism" complaints, reporters' interest in Biden's stumble precedes a fall fight that hinges on black voter margins in five battleground states, namely Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Onlookers are especially curious as to whether younger African Americans who stayed home in 2016 or consider themselves independent will support the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator this time around.

The Trump campaign's orchestrated reaction to Biden's blunder and his team's insistence he was joking underscored the importance of black voters to a winning Democratic coalition. The White House incumbent's surrogates ripped Biden's statement as "racist and dehumanizing" while his camp quickly produced "You ain't black" T-shirts.

In a twist, Republicans skewered the press too, this time for downplaying the story.

Chris DeRose, a GOP author and attorney, defended the tactic, asserting it was "objectively wrong" to imply "that anyone owes a candidate their vote for anything."

"It's especially appalling for a white candidate to claim he's the arbiter of who gets to be in the black community, conveniently, whether they are voting for him for president," he told the Washington Examiner.

Historically, the media have been a punching bag for both Democrats and Republicans, according to David Pietrusza. Pietrusza cited tensions between Democrats, publisher William Randolph Hearst, and the Chicago Tribune's Robert McCormick in the 1930s. Democrats believed the press weren't tough enough on Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his anti-communist crusade in the 1950s, too, he said.

"In 1936, there was much grousing by the Democrats that 80% of the publishers were opposed to FDR," Pietrusza continued. "In the 1960s, JFK famously canceled his subscription to the Wall Street Journal, and Harry Truman threatened to literally punch out Washington Post music critic Paul Humes, who, in 1950, had dared to give a poor review to Truman's budding songstress daughter Margaret."

But Trump has pioneered the art of undermining the media as an institution.

Trump started using the press as a foil during his 2016 campaign, perfecting the strategy throughout his first term as president. Democrats, uncomfortable with his posture against a constitutionally protected Fourth Estate, have condemned his attacks on reporters and news organizations. Biden last week rebuked Trump's racially tinged exchange with Asian American CBS reporter Weijia Jiang over his administration's coronavirus response.

Simultaneously, Democrats seem to have acquired a taste for tearing into media coverage as they brace for the onslaught of the general election, though only a few, such as Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, have dismissed unflattering press as "fake news." For instance, a senior Biden campaign aide caught flak on social media this month for slamming an investigative correspondent for reporting a story.

"SCOOP: Catherine Herridge is a partisan, rightwing hack who is a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation ploys because she agrees to publicize things before contacting the target to ask for comment," spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

For Fordham University's Paul Levinson, Democrats weren't "media haters" but were operating in a post-2016 political environment where Trump routinely flouts norms, desensitizing some pundits and voters.

"Many observers believe that the media over-reported on Hillary Clinton's email server misuse, which never even resulted in any charges brought her, although the FBI inquiry was reopened, and that reporting on essentially a nonissue was a contributing factor in her losing the election," he said of the false equivalency argument.

Levinson similarly thought the Biden camp's handling of their candidate's "inapt statement" was to ensure it was "not made to seem more than it was."

"The media were right to report Biden's 'you ain't black' comment in the first place. But he's apologized, and Democrats are right to object if the media keep reporting that story," he said.