Gotta remember both sides, everyone!
Democrats have called for a bipartisan solution to COVID-19 while President Donald Trump and his advisers have repeatedly claimed that the Democrats’ frustration with his messy response to the disease is a “new hoax” designed to take him down.
Will they ever fing learn?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No.
“…shall we say.”
That’s press-speak for “I’m making shit up.”
I’ve defended these people in general but when this particular guy literally says “both sides” where it’s obviously one side, the charge of bothsiderism seems to apply. 
This is the mistake the media made in 2016, and why they amped up Clinton’s emails…it was the only scandal on her side compared to a ton of things on the Republican side, and they “had to be fair” and report both sides. It’s still making that mistake now, as each Trump press conference is a disaster but appears reasonable when the media reports on it and takes out the few statements that actually say something.
There will be more of this, and it will hurt whichever Democrat runs; the only unbiased view of both candidates that the American people will get will be the debates (presuming Trump shows up), even there the media will have a lot to say about it afterwards (and again try to balance their criticisms). We’re well past the point where the media should report the facts, and then let the chips fall where they may after those facts are reported…if we don’t get that then Trump and the Republicans will, once again, receive an unfair advantage during the election.
John King is just symptomatic. Reporting the facts, which are damning, is seen as taking a side.
… while Trump delivered his rambling, nonsensical comments about the deadly topic, I often wonder why, among the throngs of reporters who surround Trump to record his quotes and ostensibly to ask him questions, not one has ever snapped after listening to the relentless lies, and blurted out something like, ‘What f**k are you talking about?!’ Let’s be honest, that would be the normal, human response after absorbing Trump’s confused answers to a very important coronavirus questions.
Hiding behind the need to be ‘neutral,’ and content to cling to access while simultaneously afraid of getting banned from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. by an administration that advertises its authoritarian ways, reporters have settled into a numbing routine of not seriously questioning Trump to his face, and certainly never risking entrée in order to declare the emperor has no clothes. Permanently stuck in reactive mode as they chronicle Trump’s bizarre and untrue pronouncements, White House journalists have largely become spectators.
Now I’m defending. You would be fired. I’ve heard plenty of them push back hard. I heard Acosta doing it in India. I’m certainly of two minds about whether there’s any value at all in asking Trump questions. But to say they haven’t pushed back is not accurate.
When, as I said above, reporting the facts about Trump’s nonsensical utterance and policy, because the facts themselves are damning, is too often seen as “taking a side.”
The only way he wouldn’t say it is “both sides” is if no Dem ever said anything critical about the administration’s response, regardless of truth. “Fact” seem to be the distinguishing characteristic that he doesn’t acknowledge.
Damn right both sides are politicizing it. Democrats are politicizing it to show the country the extreme danger it has put itself in by electing an idiotic incompetent buffoon who has undermined the safety of this country through his actions and has no idea how to respond to a legitimate crises beyond the response that he thinks helps him personally.
Republicans are politicizing it by lying and claiming that anyone who points out their incompetence is politicizing it.
Let’s simplify this: Any time a Republican claims Democrats are politicizing something, that means they want to make sure no one points out all of the bad things they did to cause the damage that just happened.
Especially so. Back in 2008-2009 when I was still watching CNN regularly, he always…ALWAYS…bent over backwards to help the GOP with bothsiderism and whataboutisms. He’s a smarmy little shit. I’d rather watch Wolf Blitzer watching paint dry for 3 hours than watch King pontificate about why everything’s so magically equal between the parties and how they’re just the same as each other, except with different ideas. He’s one of the worst, IMHO, and is an exemplar of the Zombie Fourth Estate’s contribution to us landing in all this mess. He’s one of the reasons I stopped watching CNN.
Just plain stupid in my opinion. Acknowledge your biases, report honestly and objectively and move on.
The part he links is deadly important. It almost qualifies as the Zombie Fourth Estate Credo.
Of course. It’s indefensible to say it’s a “controversy” because Mary said X and Johnny said Y when you know that one side is lying and the other telling the truth. To say he “baselessly” said a thing is closer but pretty weak sauce. Another indefensible thing, as has often been pointed out here, is the outcome. As a society we’ve accommodated ourselves to this administration and the GOP. A society with a healthy, positive understanding of political discourse and objective reality would have thrown them all out years ago. And a media environment that fails to help bring that about is not defensible. I’ve said that no institution has defended us from this, obviously, but that doesn’t mean the individual institutions are less guilty. I hope to Christ we’re seeing that the voters themselves are waking up because of the sheer weight of evidence and disharmony with how we see ourselves. I do hope that.
Exactly. Inherently, this is a political problem. F*ck John King and all the rest of national press corps who have decided to re-embrace their lazy both-sides-do-it approach to reporting on critical problems facing the nation. They are enablers of this dangerously incompetent and corrupt regime.
To hear CNN’s “Inside Politics” host John King tell it, both parties are acting exactly the same.
“There are some very fine deadly micropathogens on both sides – BOTH SIDES!!!”
Yes… they learned long ago.
They learned that false equivalency keeps Republicans in business and Republicans in turn heap tax cuts on the corporate ownership.
Turns out Democrats and Republicans are susceptible to Coronavirus so they are both to blame for the response…
The US has about 80,000 ICU beds, most not even negative-pressure isolated, to deal with an emerging epidemic. Josh is right, we also are in a pretty bad flu season, with B strains dominating, and the usual H1N1 and H3N2 A strains also out there. But no, Josh, it could be worse than a bad flu season if the system is pushed to capacity. Severe cases of the coronavirus last several weeks. And we have yet to calculate the case fatality ratio, but it seems to be about 20 times as bad as flu.