Media
Mainstream media crushes Biden for ‘flat-footed,’ ‘humiliating’ betrayal of Afghans as Taliban takes control – Fox News
Media top headlines August 16
In media news today, CNN gets accused of ‘fear porn’ for hyping story about Florida teachers who died from COVID without context, MSNBC’s Joy Reid compares America’s religious right to the Taliban, and Snopes catches its co-founder plagiarizing
Embattled President Biden has been hammered by political opponents over the botched troop exit from Afghanistan that allowed the Taliban to seize control but something more concerning for the Democratic administration happened along the way: it lost the mainstream media.
Mainstream, corporate media outlets have long earned their reputation of leaning left, often overlooking potential damning headlines aimed at Biden while criticizing conservatives at every turn. But some of the media industry’s most outspoken liberal pundits and progressive news organizations have taken Biden to task over scenes of chaos and desperation as the Islamist terrorist group takes power.
CNN’s Jake Tapper opened Sunday’s edition of “State of the Union” by calling the situation a “tragic foreign policy disaster” that caught the Biden White House “flat-footed.”
TALIBAN ENTER KABUL; AFGHAN PRESIDENT FLEES COUNTRY: LIVE UPDATES
“That is, of course, a sharp turn-around from six weeks ago when President Biden called it highly unlikely that the Taliban would overrun the country, an assessment that even at the time struck many experts in Biden’s own administration as unrealistic,” Tapper said. “Now, as American diplomats rush to shred embassy documents and escape, it seems shocking that President Biden could have been so wrong.”
Mainstream news outlets played footage of Biden’s July 8 poorly aged claim that helicopters wouldn’t be needed to save anyone from the U.S. embassy, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken was roasted for a series of Sunday morning interviews in which he dodged questions and played defense.
NBC’s Chuck Todd even told Blinken that previous comments about Afghanistan didn’t age well.
The Atlantic published a story headlined, “Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy,” which declared the burden of shame for the debacle falls on Biden.
JEN PSAKI ‘OUT OF THE OFFICE’ AS BIDEN REMAINS SILENT ON TALIBAN TAKEOVER OF AFGHANISTAN
CNN’s presidential historian Tim Naftali was one of many observers to compare the situation to the infamous fall of Saigon.
“This is the Saigon moment for President Biden and this will be an albatross around his neck for the rest of time,” Naftali said.
The New York Times senior writer David E. Sanger wrote that Biden “came to office with more foreign policy experience than any president in recent memory” but still managed to put a stain on his legacy with poor execution.
TRUMP BARRED FROM TWITTER WHILE TALIBAN SPOKESPERSON TWEETS AWAY
“Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a long-brewing, humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan,” Sanger wrote. “Even many of Mr. Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win and that was no longer in its national interest concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal.”
As devastating images from Afghanistan dominated the news cycle, Biden began taking heat for remaining silent on the situation. Biden has faced criticism for remaining on vacation and White House press secretary Jen Psaki has also been unreachable. No White House briefing is scheduled fro Monday.
NBC reporter Richard Engel told viewers the Taliban takeover shouldn’t surprise anyone who was paying attention.
“I’m not shocked at all,” Engel said on Sunday from Kabul.
“I thought Kabul was going to fall right around now. That was just a gut instinct. I think lots of people that I spoke to believe that,” he continued. “It was well-known that the security services were collapsing a month, two months ago, three months ago. So this feigned surprise that, maybe it’s genuine surprise, but if it is, I don’t understand what it’s based on. It was quite clear that it was going to come to this, when you started to see the Taliban take territory without having to fight months ago.”
Meanwhile, the White House has only broken its silence to share a picture of the president being briefed on the situation by senior officials. Biden did not address the nation Sunday night, instead opting to take up the issue in the “next few days” as he remains at Camp David.
TOP BIDEN OFFICIAL ADMITS FALL OF AFGHANISTAN ‘UNFOLDED AT UNEXPECTED SPEED’
By Monday morning, reliably liberal CNN’s on-screen chyron said, “STILL NO REMARKS BY BIDEN AS AFGSNISTAN FALLS TO TALIBAN” and MSNBC’s website featured a headline, “Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan charade.”
CNN’s John Berman scolded the Biden administration for everything it botched regarding Afghanistan.
“Whether or not one agrees with the president’s decision to withdraw all U.S. Troops, there’s no question the White House was wrong about the length of time they had. Wrong about the strength of the Afghan military. Wrong about the reach of the Taliban,” Berman said.
CBS reporter Kathryn Watson tweeted the transcript of a July 8 press conference when Biden told reporters the Afghan government and its leadership “clearly” had the capacity to sustain the government in place.
Longtime CBC News White House correspondent Mark Knoller added to the criticism.
“Though Camp David fully equipped as a presidential command center, Biden seems out of touch there in response to Afghanistan,” Knoller tweeted. “Bad optics.”
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Fox News’ Michael Lee contributed to this report.
For a bunch of people who supposedly hate social media, we sure do spend a lot of time on it.
Just 33 percent of U.S. adults have “some or a lot” of trust in social media, according to a late 2022 report from the Pew Research Center(opens in a new tab), and people who spend time on social media are more likely to experience mental health problems(opens in a new tab), including depression. According to BroadbandSearch, an independent research site that compares internet providers, the average American spends a little more than two hours a day on (opens in a new tab)the very same hurtful platforms they purport not to trust. And it seems like new social media platforms — any sort of online space in which people are publicly chatting with each other, including Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and, yes, LinkedIn — are popping up every day.
There aren’t loads of social media platforms that are brand new in 2023, but there are dozens that we spend our time on every day that have had some pretty radically nightmarish moments in 2023. Unfortunately, as it is the middle of the year, it’s time to rank these nightmares.
While evaluating these social media platforms, I’ve considered five questions:
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How widely-used is the app?
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How grumpy does the app make me because of the content?
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How grumpy does the app make me because of the interface?
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How likely is the app to disrupt democracy?
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How annoying are the influencers on that app?
There are many apps that launched recently that didn’t make the list — Geneva, Diem, Melon, Pineapple, Somewhere Good — because they just aren’t widely-used enough to asses just how awful they are. I’m omitting far-right social media apps like Parler and Gab — they are all worse than the apps I’m writing about here, and their content is too vile for me to make fun of in a listicle.
Here are the social media platforms that have stolen our brains so far in 2023, from least bad to worst. This list is just my opinion, but it is also correct.
Mastodon
A very nice escape from Twitter for the 20 minutes it was relevant.
BeReal
Fine, but no one uses it anymore so it is now therefore boring. Boring, to be clear, is not necessarily an insult when it comes to social media (see: Facebook further down the list, which I wish was more boring).
Artifact
Boring but alright.
BlueSky
This app seems fine but I don’t have access to it. Send me an invite and I will do my best to accurately review it.
Lemon8
A new app that is annoying to me, but others find it lovely.
There are LinkedInfluencers(opens in a new tab), which is annoying but not actively harmful.
Substack
Stay with me, but the newsletter platform is kind of killing it this year. It launched chats and a Notes feature to rival Twitter and some of the more popular Substack writers make a pretty good living from their newsletters. It’s this far down, though, because Substack isn’t without its problems: The platform allows some pretty hateful speech, like the transphobic newsletter from Graham Linehan.
Snapchat
This would be higher if it didn’t force Snapchat AI onto every single user.
TikTok
Can be vile, but can also feed you a pretty consistent number of frog videos. It’s lower down because entire nations are banning it for — you guessed it — potential threats to democracy.
I swear to God if I get fed one more video about dieting I’m going to scream.
Unfortunately for Facebook, most of us simply refuse to forget 2016(opens in a new tab) and the Facebook Papers. There’s an old saying in Tennessee(opens in a new tab) — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, ruin democracy once, shame on — shame on you. Ruin democracy twice — you can’t get democracy ruined again.
Elon Musk 🥴
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VIENNA, June 2 (Reuters) – OPEC has denied media access to reporters from Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal to report on oil policy meetings in Vienna this weekend, reporters, Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The three media organizations are among the world’s leading suppliers of financial news and information. They report on the outcome of policy meetings between OPEC and its allies, where ministers make decisions that impact the price of the world’s most traded commodity.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies is a group known as OPEC+ and includes top oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia. Ministers from the group, which pumps more than 40% of the world’s oil supply, are scheduled to gather on Saturday and Sunday for regular biannual meetings.
OPEC staff declined on Friday to give media accreditation to Reuters journalists to cover the event. The staff handling media accreditation at one of Vienna’s luxury hotels said they could not issue accreditation without an invite. They did not comment when asked why Reuters reporters received no invites.
OPEC has not responded to requests for comment from Reuters this week on why it has not invited or accredited Reuters reporters for the meet.
“We believe that transparency and a free press serve both readers and markets, and we object to this restriction on coverage,” a spokesperson for Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters Corp (TRI.TO), said on Friday.
“Reuters will continue to cover OPEC in an independent, impartial and reliable way in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.”
A reporter from Bloomberg was also denied accreditation on Friday, a person familiar with the matter said.
A Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed on Friday the company has not been given accreditation to cover the OPEC meeting.
The Wall Street Journal did not respond to a request for comment.
Reporters from the three outlets, many of whom have been covering OPEC meetings for years, did not receive invitations from OPEC ahead of the meeting.
Without accreditation, journalists cannot enter the OPEC Secretariat where the ministers meet, or attend press conferences during the event.
Reporters at other media outlets including trade publications Argus and Platts received accreditation on Friday. Argus confirmed its reporters have been accredited and will attend. Platts did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Media
OPEC denies media access to Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ for weekend policy meets – Yahoo Canada Finance
VIENNA (Reuters) – OPEC has denied media access to reporters from Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal to report on oil policy meetings in Vienna this weekend, reporters, Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The three media organizations are among the world’s leading suppliers of financial news and information. They report on the outcome of policy meetings between OPEC and its allies, where ministers make decisions that impact the price of the world’s most traded commodity.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies is a group known as OPEC+ and includes top oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia. Ministers from the group, which pumps more than 40% of the world’s oil supply, are scheduled to gather on Saturday and Sunday for regular biannual meetings.
OPEC staff declined on Friday to give media accreditation to Reuters journalists to cover the event. The staff handling media accreditation at one of Vienna’s luxury hotels said they could not issue accreditation without an invite. They did not comment when asked why Reuters reporters received no invites.
OPEC has not responded to requests for comment from Reuters this week on why it has not invited or accredited Reuters reporters for the meet.
“We believe that transparency and a free press serve both readers and markets, and we object to this restriction on coverage,” a spokesperson for Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters Corp, said on Friday.
“Reuters will continue to cover OPEC in an independent, impartial and reliable way in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.”
A reporter from Bloomberg was also denied accreditation on Friday, a person familiar with the matter said.
A Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed on Friday the company has not been given accreditation to cover the OPEC meeting.
The Wall Street Journal did not respond to a request for comment.
Reporters from the three outlets, many of whom have been covering OPEC meetings for years, did not receive invitations from OPEC ahead of the meeting.
Without accreditation, journalists cannot enter the OPEC Secretariat where the ministers meet, or attend press conferences during the event.
Reporters at other media outlets including trade publications Argus and Platts received accreditation on Friday. Argus confirmed its reporters have been accredited and will attend. Platts did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Alex Lawler, Dmitry Zhdannikov, Ahmad Ghaddar, Julia Payne, Maha El Dahan; writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
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