Enough with these false narratives!
All too often, media outlets feel like they’ll be pegged as partisan to the Democratic Party if they run with the unvarnished truth, so they try a “both sides” approach as often as possible, to show that there’s equally problematic issues or members within both parties, even if it couldn’t be further from the case. It’s an approach that pleases very few people – and in the worst cases, pundits invite Republicans on their shows to lie and spread propaganda with free rein, while sometimes making Democrats field “gotcha” questions that take critical statements out of context.
A prime example has been the overall coverage of the Build Back Better plan. Generally, policy talk and explaining it is boring to cable audiences – considerably more boring than talking about the latest embarrassing scandal of Jim Jordan – or the latest bit of infighting among Democrats. That’s why the drama of passing infrastructure is getting more coverage than what’s actually in the bill.
Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan, interviewed by MSNBC on Monday, has gotten a bit tired of this pattern and answered back in a direction that hopefully other Democrats in Congress will follow – declaring: “I would like to say I’m sick and tired of everybody in the media saying we haven’t gotten stuff done on global climate when I stood with the president and he made a historic announcement in August that reduces emissions from automobiles by 60% by 2030.”
Dingell came armed with facts and a plan – pointing out that pundits clearly need to be educating their viewers further on the significant impact that will come as a result of this bill being passed, as House Republicans are already fully prepared to lie and take credit for benefits of the bill despite not even remotely helping to make it happen.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making