David Kurtz writes about the media’s supercharged response to President Biden’s comment about the comedian who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.” He said that the people at the Madison Square Garden event were garbage, but he meant that calling Puerto Rico a garbage island was garbage.

The media and the Republican Party leapt on the story because it diminished attention to Kamala’s excellent speech in Washington, D.C.

Kurtz writes:

Here We Go Again

Like sharks with blood in the water, leading national political reporters went into a feeding frenzy last night after Republicans faked outrage at remarks from President Biden that they construed as calling Trump supporters “garbage.”

This dance is so predictable, rehearsed, and tired that everyone has their roles to play and feels compelled to play them despite how intellectually and journalistically bereft the whole exercise has become.

Among the tells in the coverage:

  • Top-tier political reporters quickly jumpedon the perceived gaffe;
  • The parsing of what Biden said quickly gave way to “meta” analyses that it didn’t matter because it was a gaffe anyway;
  • Republican professional fake outrage was treated like a genuine groundswell of umbrage.

On that last point, “firestorm” was the word of choice:

  • Axios: Biden sets off election firestorm with “garbage” comment
  • Politico: Biden sparks a firestorm on the right over ‘garbage’
  • NBC News: Biden sets off a firestorm with his response to Trump rally comedian’s Puerto Rico comments

Among the bigs, the WaPo managed to come closest to capturing the actual dynamic: White House, Trump campaign clash over whether Biden called Trump supporters ‘garbage.’

I’ve grown weary of explaining how these kinds of journalistic set pieces require suspending good, independent news judgment; rely on old, hackneyed journalistic tropes; and traffic in erroneous assumptions about Republicans (and journalists themselves) representing the “real America.”

This kind of coverage has been deeply problematic for a long time, as TPM has pointed out relentlessly for two decades. It has become more egregious and even less defensible when gaffe-based, double-standard coverage is deployed in covering an election with democracy on the ballot.

The coverage lacks intellectual rigor in too many ways to list here, but here’s one example to illustrate the point. When Biden – who isn’t even on the ballot any longer – says something imprecise or wrong-headed, he and the White House scramble to correct the record, say that’s not what he means and not what he thinks, and emphasize what he does actually mean and think. It’s an elaborate self-disavowal. When Trump says something truly outrageous, on purpose, he usually doubles down in the face of withering criticism and confirms that’s exactly what he meant. It’s the former and not the latter that is prone to getting the “firestorm” coverage.

The fact that this manufactured outrage and the race to cover it comes five days after Trump called America a “garbage can for the world” makes the whole thing beyond absurd.