Many people from all over the world, including South Africans, are prepared to pay $1m up-front to get into the USA via its innovative EB-5 investment visa scheme. You have to wonder why these enthusiastic emigrees are so determined to relocate there. Especially now, because the more I read about the 2020 presidential election, the more complex the issues facing that divided nation. And the less willing influential Americans seem to be about addressing them. This opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal by one of its most senior staffers, editorial board member and former chief editorial writer William McGurn, does nothing to alter that perception. – Alec Hogg
THE WALL STREET JOURNALÂ
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Saving Private BidenÂ
By William McGurn, The Wall Street Journal
The press standard for 2020: No tough questions for the former vice president.
In the thick of the 2016 presidential campaign, the front page of the New York Times handed down the word from on high: In the era of Donald Trump, press objectivity was a luxury America could not afford.
It turned out that biased press coverage wasnât enough to keep Mr. Trump from winning. So for 2020 the press introduced a new corollary: Joe Biden must never be asked a tough question.
In the past the mediaâs competitive juices, plus a presidential candidateâs interactions with the American people along the campaign trail, would have rendered this impossible. But Covid-19 gave Mr. Biden the excuse to stay in his basement, and the press corps has run interference for Mr. Biden rather than tackle the story.
At the moment, the hard questions Mr. Biden is avoiding are about the lucrative deals his son made with politically connected Chinese and Ukrainian businesses, sometimes while riding alongside his father in Air Force 2.
This past week, one of Hunter Bidenâs former business partners, Anthony Bobulinski, accused the former vice president of lying when he said he never discussed his sonâs overseas business dealingsâand the Hunter Biden story became a Joe Biden story.
The elder Mr. Biden dismisses it all as Russian disinformation, though both the director of National Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation say thereâs no evidence for that. Specifically, Mr. Biden has yet to say that the emails are phony and the laptop isnât his sonâs. Then again, he has never had to say that because the media wonât press him on it.
And not only the press. When the New York Post published texts and emails from the laptop, along with an explanation of how they came into the Postâs possession, Twitter and Facebook ran interference by suppressing the storyâand the Postâon their platforms. The rationale appears to be that Mr. Biden canât handle the questions and the American people canât be trusted to handle the answers.
This see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach to Mr. Biden started with Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who accused the candidate of having sexually harassed her in 1993, when sheâd worked for him. When Julie Swetnick asserted in 2018âwithout any corroborationâthat she witnessed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh participating in gang rapes at high-school parties, the Times ran the story the same day. But when Ms. Reade accused Mr. Biden of sexual assault, the previous believe-the-woman standard was given the heave-ho, and the Times waited 19 days to report it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bidenâs press conferences sometimes become a contest between reporters and the candidate to see who can hate Mr. Trump most. In August, after an anonymously sourced story in the Atlantic accused Mr. Trump of disparaging dead American soldiers from a World War I cemetery, the magazineâs Edward-Isaac Dovere asked Mr. Biden, âWhen you hear these remarksââsuckers,â âlosers,â ârecoiling from amputees,â what does that tell you about President Trumpâs soul and the life he leads?â
Ed OâKeefe of CBS News noted Mr. Biden had said he was trying to restrain himself about Mr. Trump and then served up this hardball: âArenât there a lot of people out there who are supporting you or inclined to not vote for the president who would say, âWhy isnât Joe Biden angrier about all of this?â â
Or what about the Associated Press? In September it revised its stylebook to say reporters should use the term âunrestâ instead of âriotsâ to describe the criminal violence in cities from Portland, Ore., to Kenosha, Wis. The AP now frowns on âlootingâ as well, urging greater sensitivity because President Trump has used the term.
Itâs the job of the press to ask the hard questions and insist on answers, even at the risk of looking obnoxious. It isnât biased, for example, to ask President Trump why, with polls showing more than half of the American people saying they are better off today than before he was elected, so many will still vote against him because they donât like his personality and temperament.
But the toughness should apply equally. And no honest observer could say that, for example, of the recent and dueling town halls, where on ABC Mr. Biden had a leisurely chat with George Stephanopoulos while on NBC Savannah Guthrie savaged Mr. Trump. Not to mention the constant calls from reporters for the president to denounce white supremacists while studiously avoiding asking Mr. Biden about his condescending remark that anyone who doesnât support him canât be black.
The best summary of the new standard in election coverage was given by Mark Hemingway of RealClearInvestigations. After a particularly fawning news conference, he relayed the assessment of a friend: Watching the press handle Joe Biden is âlike watching someone make sure a 3-year old wins Candyland.â
* William McGurn is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and writes the weekly “Main Street” column for the journal each Tuesday. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W Bush. Mr McGurn has served as chief editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal in New York.Â
Write to [email protected].Â
Appeared in the October 27, 2020, print edition.
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