Bad Press

Members of presidential administrations taking roles with news networks isn’t a particularly new phenomenon. Former Bush administration press secretary Dana Perino has fostered a successful career on Fox News. Former Clinton advisor and White House communications direction George Stephanopoulos took on a prominent role as the face of ABC News. When it comes to the Biden presidency, however, several lines have been blurred between official presidential messaging coming from the briefing room and networks who are hiring former Biden officials for prominent roles as he gears up for a re-election campaign. Networks are staffing up their ranks of former Biden communications officials at a furious pace.

Back in February 2021, I wrote a piece here at The Spectator headlined “Are you ready for the climate lockdowns?” It concerned the predictability of where the climate alarmist movement was heading, and their eagerness to explore using the model for Covid lockdowns in Europe and the United States to address environmental issues. The movement has been inching its way toward the idea ever since. Now as heatwaves roll across the globe in the prime months of the summer season, news outlets aren’t being so subtle about the idea anymore — and neither is the Biden administration.

A small studio-produced film managed to best a big-budget iconic action hero franchise from Disney on the July 4 box office. You would think that would make for the media an interesting story, both with the success of that small film and the failure of the iconic Indiana Jones franchise. But that is not the tale being told about Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom, an action-thriller dramatization of the life and career of Tim Ballard, the former DHS agent who founded the OUR (Operation Underground Railroad), an organization dedicated to fighting child trafficking globally. Sound of Freedom has largely been a crowdsourced word-of-mouth success.

YouTube is back up to its pandemic-era tricks with a sketchy and unexplained censorship policy — this time as it pertains to the 2024 election. By all appearances, it once again looks as though Big Tech is going to attempt to play information arbiter as it relates to our national elections. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time radical environmentalist and conspiracy theorist, just also happens to be challenging President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary — and RFK is making enough noise that people are at least paying some attention to him. Kennedy’s profile has risen in the media lately as he’s espoused skepticism in the Covid-19 vaccine. It’s nothing new for him, as he was welcomed on media platforms such as The Daily Show, MSNBC and CNN in the mid-2000s.

Since George Floyd’s death in May 2020, the media has had almost a singular focus on portraying the American justice system as institutionally racist. The political left and their big-name donors have worked to install social progressives as attorneys general and prosecutors and have worked on bail reform to minimize criminal offenses, largely by African Americans. Racial conflict has driven much of the political and media conversation, leading to the widespread concept of DEI in boardrooms and newsrooms — and the Democratic Party employing a vague concept of racial “equity” in place of equality.   Yet suddenly all of that has gone out the window when it comes to Hunter Biden, the affluent and powerful white son of the sitting president of the United States.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s rise through the early Democratic primary polls, and the alternative media’s embrace of him, are remarkable. If it feels as if RFK Jr. is everywhere these days, it’s because he is. Kennedy is being buoyed by a minority of Democratic voters eager to listen, at least, to options other than Joe Biden, mostly a part-time president who only engages in softball media allowed by his handlers.Which brings us to the indignation between Joe Rogan, RFK Jr. and Dr. Peter Hotez. Hotez, the co-director for the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, has made a name for himself by appearing on cable news networks as a professor in pediatrics and molecular virology.

It appears that Chris Licht is a victim of the Deep State of the Union at CNN. Licht is out at CNN, lasting just over a year, during which time he was unable to drain the swamp Jeff Zucker had left for him. Licht faced down several internal mutinies, reportedly some being led by former Media Matters imi-tater Brian Stelter, whom Licht released last August.After a much-hyped profile by Tim Alberta in the Atlantic, several other hit pieces followed at progressive outlets. They all smelled blood in the water and were proven right. Licht’s stated focus was to rein in CNN’s WrestleMania-style coverage of the Trump years.

Chuck Todd’s departure from Meet the Press this weekend was not a victorious send-off as much as it was a mercy killing. When Kristen Welker was handed a debate in 2020, it felt like only a matter of time before NBC escorted Chuck into the car and drove him out the woods. The most striking thing about Todd’s time as Meet the Press host, following the ouster of David Gregory, is just how un-striking it was. The most significant thing to happen on the show came courtesy of a guest, with Kellyanne Conway coining the phrase "alternative facts" during an appearance. Yet Meet the Press was almost Sunday morning appointment viewing under Tim Russert, who died suddenly in 2008, and it had steadily declined since then.

Ron DeSantis is scheduled to formally announce his entrance into the 2024 presidential race this evening. He’s doing so in a unique and somewhat risky way — on Twitter Spaces with the owner of Twitter itself, Elon Musk. Musk isn’t a journalist or a commentator (unless you count shitposting political memes, which some do). The move is a forward-thinking announcement that is also designed to rile up legacy media — two of their favorite targets, together in one space, demoting them to listeners. This is not a position highly-strung journalists like being in — and that has got to be a factor in why Musk and DeSantis are doing it.

Elon Musk’s hire of Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, says a lot about where Musk plans to take the news-dependent, micro-blogging website that has become the center of the media universe. Notable conservative Twitter accounts raised alarms that Yaccarino is a social justice warrior who pushed DEI and mask and vaccine mandates and wants to return Twitter to a "woke" paradise that sees accounts banned for thought crimes. Meanwhile, progressive media accounts highlighted her Catholic background and Republican connections. Right-wing accounts declared it the death of Twitter, even as it was revealed that Tucker Carlson will be bringing streaming programming similar to his former show on Fox News to the platform.

Employees and contributors woke up Thursday morning very upset to learn that they work at CNN, the network that helped in the great cause of giving candidate Donald Trump billions of dollars in unearned media on his way to steamrolling the 2016 GOP primaries and eventually capturing the presidency.Media-at-large, and by that I mean CNN, then spent the better part of four years atoning for their failed attempt to engineer an election into a coronation for Hillary Clinton. Now, in a morning hangover rage fest over Donald Trump’s appearance at a CNN town hall (which was really more of a corporate promo for new 9 p.m. host Kaitlan Collins than it was anything to do with Trump or Republican voters), an entire new crop of contributors is very upset to learn who signs their paycheck.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a spate of media stories and dumped opposition against conservative justices on the Supreme Court, intended to paint a picture of vaguely illicit and unethical behavior while proving no illegality. ProPublica has released a number of articles regarding Clarence Thomas’s relationship with billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow. Politico trumpeted Neil Gorsuch’s sale of a Colorado property to the head of a top law firm whose lawyers regularly argue in front of the court. The purpose of these stories is not to start a conversation among Democrats in Congress about ethical reform on the Court. Nor is it simply about “court packing” (expanding the Supreme Court to a thirteen-justice progressive majority).