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Amid Debates Over Fitness for Office, 63% of Voters Find Biden and Trump Embarrassing
Nearly 9 in 10 respondents to the Pew Research Center survey also said the 2024 election campaign "does not make them feel proud of the country."
Jul 11, 2024
A majority of U.S. voters view both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, as "embarrassing" choices, according to a Pew Research Center survey published Thursday.
Not only do 63% of voters see both men as embarrassing, 37% of Biden supporters and 33% of Trump backers also said the same thing about their own preferred candidates. Nearly 9 in 10 respondents said the 2024 campaign "does not make them feel proud of the country."
The survey found that 44% of respondents support or "lean toward" Trump, while 40% back or lean toward Biden. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who switched from a Democratic to an Independent candidate, came in a distant—but significant—third with 15% of respondents supporting or leaning toward him.
The new poll comes as several of Biden's closest allies toldNBC News that "they now see his chances of winning as zero."
Furthermore, these people—including three who are "directly involved" in Biden's reelection effort—believe his candidacy will harm down-ticket Democratic candidates.
"He needs to drop out," one Biden campaign staffer told the outlet. Referring to the president's disastrous debate performance last month, the official added that "he will never recover from this."
Politicoreported that a Thursday meeting between top Biden advisers and Democratic senators meant to reassure nervous lawmakers "didn't work."
Speaking about Biden's campaign staff, Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.)—who on Wednesday became the first Democratic member of the upper chamber to call on Biden to step aside—said: "I have great respect for their team. It doesn't change my point of view."
Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), and Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) on Thursday
urged Biden to stand down, bringing the total number of U.S. lawmakers who have done so to 14.
"President Biden has served his country well, but for the sake of our democracy, he must pass the torch to a new candidate for the 2024 election," Scholten said on social media.
Politicoreported that other lawmakers are preparing to publicly call on Biden to drop out of the race. In a Thursday CNN interview, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a former Biden staffer from his Senate days, said that "hard, cold decisions" must be made about the president's candidacy, stopping just short of urging him to step down.
"I'm very concerned that Biden could lose," said Connolly. "Polling data is not encouraging right now, and I hope the White House takes that into account as well."
Rep. Gerry Connolly, a long-time Biden ally and former staffer, goes right up to the line in calling on Biden to drop out.
Says “hard, cold decisions” need to be made and that Biden needs to listen to outside voices that aren’t just his family’s.
“I’m very concerned that Biden… pic.twitter.com/S3FgSS4r3f
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 11, 2024
Some observers have criticized the U.S. corporate media for its heightened focus on Biden's age and mental fitness at the expense of Trump's recent felony conviction in a New York hush money case, his three pending federal and state criminal trials—two of them related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election—and his apparent lies about a far-right plot to ensure the federal government is stacked with Trump loyalists.
Guardian columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote this week that the "bigger story" is Trump's "appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks."
"As just one example, he claimed that he doesn't know anything about Project 2025, the radical right-wing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term," she continued.
"All of these disturbing elements—the Democrats' dilemma, the media's failures, and the cult-like, unquestioning support of Trump—could add up to one likelihood in November," Sullivan added. "A win for Trump, and a terrible loss for democracy."
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote that Biden's debate performance "raised concerns about whether he can win in November, and prompted calls from prominent Democrats, columnists, and others for him to step aside."
"It's up to the Democratic Party to sort this out," the board said. "But it's time to refocus attention on the only candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office—any office—and an imminent threat to democracy: Donald Trump."
The editors continued:
It's unbelievable that the nation is spending so much time on the question of Biden's verbal acuity, when the greatest concern ought to be that his challenger is a self-aggrandizing felon and twice-impeached election-denier. Trump fomented the January 6 insurrection, shows contempt for the rule of law, and shamelessly lies in pursuit of more power. He's an authoritarian who admires murderous despots, wants to jail his political enemies, and has publicly flirted with declaring himself a dictator on his first day back in office.
"Leaders of the Democratic Party have to stop the self-defeating discussion about Biden's fitness and decide whether to replace him or unify behind him," the editors conclude. "And Americans must start hearing more about how the records, positions, and character of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and any of the prominent Democrats being floated as possible replacements make them all unquestionably superior to Trump."
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Media Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain
Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza.
Mar 07, 2024
America’s corporate media serves as a key cog in the machinery of genocide.
Rather than providing the kind of objective, fact-based reporting integral to an informed citizenry, our mainstream press bombards us with explicit and implicit biases, false narratives, dehumanization, and misdirection, serving to stifle public dissent and justify, rationalize, and conceal the systematic oppression and extermination of the people of Gaza.
As dependable propaganda tools for Israel’s aggression, our news censors truth not only by what they choose to cover and how they spin it—but what they deliberately omit. This orchestrated disinformation campaign helps ensure the ongoing and unconditional support of the U.S. government and its continued role as Israel’s dutiful genocidal benefactor.
This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.
How does a Palestinian-American with family in the region reconcile the disconnect between “reality” and the “story” our press is “telling”?
Consider a day in the life in Gaza: Palestinian schools, hospitals, universities, places of worship, and heritage sites are being systematically destroyed. Civilians, nearly half children, are being murdered on a mass scale (over 30,000 dead, nearly half children). The calculated deprivation of food and water is literally starving families to death. Babies are being born into a living hell, with screams of terror, the ear-piercing explosions of limb-searing U.S.-made bombs, and the painful moans of their parents among the first sounds they hear. The electricity powering the oxygen machines keeping sick patients alive cut off, leaving them to struggle to gulp each of their final breaths. Amputations of children’s limbs without anesthesia with barbed wire have become obscenely routine. Broken, but alive, Palestinian bodies riddled with shrapnel require each piece to be pulled from their flesh. Hungry children are found dead with single Israeli sniper shots to the head because they made the mistake of seeking out food from an aid truck. The deliberate decimation of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure has left families unable to communicate with one another, or with the world, allowing daily atrocities to become increasingly invisible and unreported.
For those fighting for survival in Gaza, there is nowhere left to run, nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to. This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.
American Media’s Israel Bias and Censoring Journalists
Quantitative analyses conducted by The Intercept, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and an independent collective of U.S. journalists, writers, and media makers of coverage inThe York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times lay bare our news media’s dramatic pro-Israel bias. The litany of press failings are disturbing in their sheer scope and intention. Findings included the systematic undermining of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim perspectives and the invocation of inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. Misinformation spread by Israeli officials is commonly printed along with consistent failures to scrutinize Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza. Israeli deaths are disproportionately emphasized, and more humanizing language is used to describe them than Palestinians. This is to name just a few.
Case-in-point: In what’s now being called the Flour Massacre, at least 112 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and hundreds more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians while waiting for food from desperately needed aid trucks. Leading news media descriptions referred to the slaughter as “food aid deaths,” “food aid-related deaths,” “chaotic incident,” and “reported killed in crowd near Gaza aid convoy.”
Do these headlines properly convey the massacre of starving civilians?
The New York Times: “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll”
The Washington Post: “Chaotic Aid Delivery Turns Deadly as Israeli, Gazan Officials Trade Blame”
The Guardian: “Biden Says Gaza Food Aid-Related Deaths Complicate Cease-Fire Talks”
BBC: “More Than 100 Killed as Crowd Waits for Aid, Hamas-Run Health Ministry Says”
Sadly, censored journalists who speak out are paying the price. The Los Angeles Times recently banned 38 journalists from covering Gaza for at least three months after they signed an open letter criticizing Western newsrooms for their biased reporting on Israel and their role in dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
But it’s not just print that is to blame. The Guardian reported the accounts of six CNN staffers from multiple newsrooms, including more than a dozen internal memos and emails, finding that daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict pro-Israel guidelines on coverage. Every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau—which has close ties with Israel’s military—before broadcast or publication.
In light of these exposes, it’s no wonder then, that after four months of some of the most indiscriminate and brutal attacks on civilians in human history, a global public outcry, and overwhelming support for a cease-fire in the United Nations, the U.S. continues to fund the slaughter and block international efforts to end it.
Holding Media Accountable, Supporting Journalists, and Promoting Independent News
There is no shortage of ways people can help bring this nightmare to an end. Among them should include pressure campaigns on the corporate media to commit to journalistic integrity and truth. Outlets like CNN and The New York Times have a unique opportunity to educate millions by providing rigorous, evidence-based reporting that could serve to end the ongoing genocide—rather than enable it.
Petitions to hold CNN and The New York Times accountable deserve support. But petitions aren’t enough. Direct actions (including protests, boycotts, and sit-ins) and strategies that target these institutions’ advertisers, revenues, and reputational interests are also required.
Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow.
Over 122 journalists, more than any war in history, have been killed in Gaza. Journalists seeking to put their own lives at risk to report the truth must be protected. And journalists who have stories to tell about the censorship they have endured must be encouraged to tell them, anonymously if necessary.
Finally, independent, non-corporate news serves as dependable sources of fact-based information and a powerful check on the official narratives of their corporate counterparts. Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza. Thankfully, these alternatives exist, and need our support, from Pacifica radio to a long list of independent news sites.
Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow. “Never again” is not meant to be a phrase of remembrance, but a call to action. Let’s not let the corporate media forget it.
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Why the Market—Not to Mention the Billionaires—Cannot Save Journalism
This isn’t just a journalism crisis: it’s a democracy crisis. And it’s a problem that we must collectively confront as a society.
Feb 02, 2024
It’s been a particularly brutal stretch for American journalism. Even for an industry that’s become synonymous with precarity and crisis, the recent job losses have been jolting.
On Wednesday, The Messenger, a digital news startup that lost $50 million in less than a year, announced suddenly that it was closing, letting go nearly 300 employees, reportedly without warning or severance pay. The Los Angeles Times announced last week that it’s cutting 115 jobs, more than 20% of its newsroom. In December, the Washington Post, once hailed as a promising new model for sustaining journalism in the digital age, eliminated 240 positions through volunteer buyouts, nearly 10% of its employees.
Most reform initiatives thus far amount to placing Band-Aids on gaping wounds.
This recent spate of downsizing is part of a longer trend: the U.S. has lost almost one-third of its newspapers and nearly two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005. The shocking decimation of the journalism industry has led to the proliferation of ever-expanding news deserts in which more than one half of American counties have little or no access to local news. And it will only get worse.
There’s never a good time for mass layoffs in the journalism sector, but it’s especially dire as we head into a pivotal election year and the world suffers from brutal wars and climate catastrophes. This isn’t just a journalism crisis: it’s a democracy crisis. And it’s a problem that we must collectively confront as a society.
Billionaires Won’t Save Us
One lesson is crystal clear from the recent bloodletting: the “benevolent billionaire” model for saving journalism—the belief that through their noblesse oblige to democracy, wealthy saviors would transcend the merciless political economy of capitalism to singlehandedly rescue the fourth estate—was always founded on false hope. The likes of Jeff Bezos (owner of the Washington Post) and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong (owner of the Los Angeles Times) lost tens of millions of dollars last year despite sustained attempts to generate new revenue streams. Operating a newspaper is an expensive undertaking, and even billionaires can suffer from sticker shock.
Meanwhile, not all media oligarchs are as “benevolent” as Bezos and Soon-Shiong. Take, for instance, the once-formidable Baltimore Sun, which was acquired earlier this month by David D. Smith, the executive chairman of the right-wing Sinclair network of television stations that’s notorious for driving media to the right, reducing coverage of local politics, and parroting Trump talking points. Other distressed papers are being scooped up by vulture capitalists like Alden Global Capital, now the second-largest newspaper publisher in the U.S.
These downturns, even if predictable, should bring further clarity to the fact that we need systemic alternatives to commercial media, especially nonprofit and public-ownership models. Working towards a structural fix to the failing commercial model for local news means going beyond small-bore reforms. We must clearly articulate a bolder, longer-term vision for reimagining what journalism should be.
Non-Reformist Media Reforms
Unfortunately, most reform initiatives thus far amount to placing Band-Aids on gaping wounds. Whether forcing platforms like Google and Meta to pay publishers and broadcasters more for their content or erecting paywalls that force readers to shell out money, the ongoing reliance on advertising and other monetization schemes are dead ends. Even most policies that call for various kinds of media subsidies—long overdue baby steps in the right direction—ultimately aim to prop up the commercial sector without making major structural changes and leaving the same ownership model intact.
The current crisis calls for “non-reformist reforms” that aim to transform journalism by mitigating or even eliminating the commercial pressures that prevent our news media from serving democratic needs. Such a project should rely on a two-pronged approach of de-commercializing and democratizing media outlets, with the end goal of building entirely new institutions committed to participatory democracy.
Ultimately, our strategies must be informed by the reality that no long-term commercial future exists for most journalism. Tweaking market mechanisms and scrambling for new business models is futile when the market itself is a core part of the problem. Our democracy requires that we disentangle news and information from capitalism—we need a horizon for journalism beyond the market.
A major impediment to this kind of radical project is our inability to imagine alternatives to the commercial media system. However, the burgeoning nonprofit news sector—though often overly-reliant on private capital—demonstrates what journalists can do when unyoked from commercial imperatives. Nonprofit exemplars such as City Bureau, Outlier Media, ProPublica, and the Texas Tribune all conduct top-notch journalism and, compared to their commercial counterparts, are often more responsive to their respective communities and to larger social missions. An infusion of philanthropic money into local news by Press Forward—more than $500 million over five years—suggests this sector will continue to expand. But it’s still woefully insufficient given the scope and severity of the crisis.
Our North Star should remain fixed, even if it takes decades to realize: all members of society should have access to news and information from local media institutions that look like and are operated by the communities they serve.
Ultimately, only a robust public media sector can commit to a universal service ideal that guarantees media access for everyone. We can leverage public infrastructures such as post offices, libraries, public access media, public broadcasting stations, and universities as initial building blocks for a new public media system. But much greater public investments are still necessary, especially with the U.S. being a global outlier for how little it funds public media.
Toward this aim, non-reformist reforms have strategic value by guiding policy interventions in the present juncture that seek to expand future opportunities—interventions that can mobilize and diversify coalitions, shift commonsense, build power from below, and broaden the terrain of struggle for structural reform. Therefore, any initiative that erodes the commercial and anti-democratic design of existing media institutions—by transitioning them into nonprofit outlets, facilitating public media partnerships, unionizing newsrooms, and establishing media cooperatives—can help radicalize news workers and engage communities while laying the groundwork for more transformative change in the future.
Ambitious plans for these kinds of nonmarket-based models are beginning to proliferate. Elsewhere, I’ve called for a practical utopianism embodied by the Public Media Center, a new anchor institution established in every community that’s federally guaranteed but locally owned and controlled. A complementary approach is the Local Journalism Initiative, which enables people to vote on allocating funds to local news organizations of their choice, thereby guaranteeing competition between multiple newsrooms in every county.
Regardless of the precise model, our North Star should remain fixed, even if it takes decades to realize: all members of society should have access to news and information from local media institutions that look like and are operated by the communities they serve. And everyone should be empowered to tell their own stories through their own media. None of this can happen, however, until we take journalism out of the market.
This article first appeared at The Law and Political Economy Project and this slightly updated version appears here with permission.
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