Democrat donors and elected officials aren't the only rats scrambling to get off a sinking ship. 

Reporters are on the same ship and have lived there for quite a while. They know they better jump while they still can. 

But they've got a problem: they have participated in the coverup just as much as the president's team. 

Could WH reporters have covered Biden’s acuity more aggressively before the debate? I spoke to several WH reporters - and it’s complicated. https://t.co/phi11H3jjN

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) July 2, 2024

Last month, when the Wall Street Journal published the least surprising story in American history--that Joe Biden appears to have slowed down a teeny tiny, almost unnoticeable bit--the rest of the mainstream media jumped all over them and accused them of spreading propaganda. 

Last Thursday's debate exposed the hoax. What to do?

The "modified limited hangout" is their current answer: admit to a small offense to hide the fact that they committed a much larger one. 

In June, when the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy piece on President Joe Biden’s mental state, the newspaper got slammed. The White House, its allies, and some in the media – including CNN’s Reliable Sources – criticized the Journal for quoting mostly Republican political foes on the record, who had a clear political motive to damage Biden’s image. No Democrats were quoted on the record making those allegations, and several Democrats complained their on-the-record quotes praising Biden’s sharpness were not included. The Journal defended its reporting at the time.

Last week’s debate on CNN laid bare many of the concerns the Journal’s reporting had raised – that the president has good days and bad days but can sometimes seem to slip up. A New York Times report on Tuesday raised similar concerns by those who have recently been in the room with Biden. The Times reported Biden has more frequent “lapses,” although at other times he appears sharp.

After Biden’s lackluster performance last week, some are questioning whether the White House press corps dropped the ball on fully covering Biden’s limitations.

Ya think? 

The media has faced accusations that it has not covered Biden’s mental fitness more aggressively because it wants to prop up the campaign in some way – an accusation the White House reporters CNN spoke to denied.

Several White House reporters told CNN that the coverage of Biden’s age and his mental stamina should have pushed harder. They cited several difficulties in doing so before the debate – from the obvious political motivations of sources who either want to protect Biden’s image or project a certain image, to the blowback from pursuing such reports, especially from the White House and Democrats.

Read between the lines, and you get: if we cover this story, we help Republicans and piss off the Democrats, and we really really hate the idea of helping Republicans and can't afford to piss off our buddies in the Democrat Party, especially those in the White House. 

It's the same argument made for why schools needed to be closed during the pandemic--Trump wanted them reopened, and we couldn't have that. 

I don't think you can put it any better than this. But remember that every time this stuff happens you have reporters on here going about their business with a straight face. https://t.co/cLEFAvCKjo

— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) July 3, 2024

How far we have fallen from the argument that the press is the vital "fourth estate" that needs to "hold politicians accountable." Now we are told that journalists have a duty to harm Republicans and to help Democrats, and more importantly that even those imperatives is not to piss off the Democrats. 

The failure of the media, one White House reporter said, was not pushing more aggressively into Biden’s abilities after the release of the Robert Hurr report in February, which called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Biden’s age was also a right-wing talking point for years, something the White House was quick to point out to reporters, which may have inadvertently turned off any serious investigation.

For example, deceptively edited clips of Biden from the G7 spread widely by right-wing media figures were made to seem as though he was aimlessly “wandering off” from fellow world leaders when really, he was speaking to parachutists who had just landed during a demonstration.

“The right-wing media was calling him senile from day one, and that wasn’t true,” the reporter said. “Then whenever you report on the age you were in some ways solidifying, giving credence to some people that were actually of bad faith.”

The reason why this is a modified limited hangout and now a full-blown admission of fault is simple: the audience for this piece is not the public but those same Democrats they have been trying to please all along. 

"We were trying to help you! That's why we kept quiet." 

Sure, Democrats might have been better served by earlier warnings from the media (they wouldn't have been anyway, since Biden wouldn't have dropped out before his humiliation, and he is unlikely to after it), but the media was just following the lead of their masters. 

Alex Thompson, a White House reporter for Axios, said on CNN the day after the debate that “the White House’s response every single time it has come up for three-and-a-half years has been to deflect, to gaslight, to not tell the truth – not just to reporters, not just to other Democrats, but even at times to themselves about the president’s limitations at his age.”

Still, this White House’s recent conduct with reporters pales in comparison to Trump’s team, which has done everything from revoking press access to reporters they disagree with, to calling reporters the “enemy of the people.”

But TRUMP! Orange man is still bad, folks, so what we did was justifiable!

No, I am not joking. "But Trump" is literally the excuse many reporters are going with. 

“It makes sense to reflect on this now and ask whether we missed or, really, under-reported the story of Biden’s age and decline. But it’s complicated,” one of the reporters said. “The fact that the political alternative to Biden is an authoritarian who sparked an insurrection and is a convicted felon does not mean that the press is failing American democracy to focus on Biden’s obvious frailty.”

One of the reporters said the media can, and do, report on both. Biden’s allies, however, say too much attention is placed on Biden’s age and not on the threat Trump could pose to American democracy.

It's an odd defense from journalists: we were just trying to help Democrats by doing what the White House wanted. 

Don't blame us. Blame Biden and his advisors.