Tags
2022 election, 2024 election, Brazil, Donald Trump, game pairings, Joe Biden, Wall Street Journal
Earlier this week The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial titled Hunter Biden and News Suppression (almost certainly paywalled). The gist is that the release of Twitter files is exposing information that went unreported by the media as it was newsworthy. Whether that lack of reporting was deliberate suppression or a lack of probity; either way it is an indictment of the American media and its ability to fulfill its expected civic role going forward. Further, the author (regular contributor Holman Jenkins, Jr.) notes that the current round of information release presents an opportunity for our media to either (partially) redeem or further condemn themselves. Honest reporting on the Twitter files is difficult when such would contradict the strident assurances, printed up until this point, that this was all crazy conspiracy theory. So far, the most common reaction is to downplay the new information and, perhaps, try to avoid the embarrassment of self-examination.
The front page of the Journal, this week, contained reports of the violence in Brazil. From what I’ve read, the situation in Brazil has been in fact pretty bad. A recent article counts forty dead and there was significant damage and destruction. There also seems to be a hidden motive force that created the protests and the call for a military intervention. That is, this is not just regular people “standing up,” even if the pictures of the crowds suggest that this was all there was to it. What happened would be difficult to justify in any circumstances and seemingly-impossible relative the situation in Brazil.
Nonetheless, the new articles read to me like pure, political propaganda. The reporting appears to be entirely one-sided; there is no attempt to explain the grievances of the protesters so as to help us understand why (at least in their minds) extreme, anti-constitutional measures seemed necessary to them. Furthermore, the stories I read (at least the early ones) seemed to go out of their way to draw a perfect parallel between Donald Trump’s electoral college certification in January 2021 and Brazil’s violence now. Reading between the lines I see a further attempt to taint America’s now 2-year-old situation by establishing a equivalency with what is, by most measures, a very different situation to our south. If nothing else the press wants to, at all costs, avoid giving ammunition to Trump supporters by denying any legitimacy to protest against election fraud.
Election fraud? It’s never mentioned in any of the articles I’ve read. What happened in Brazil, according to the press, is a free and fair* election (perhaps the cleanest in history!) that caused the losing candidate to attempt a coup d’état rather than accept the results. Ignored is that the “victory” was by the slimmest of margins. While cheating may be impossible to prove, it almost certainly happened (it nearly always does – admit it, we all know that) and probably at a level that COULD have reversed the outcome. One thing that was reported (surprisingly enough) is that allies of the conservative-leaning Liberal Party of Brazil accuses the “deep state” in that country of being pro-socialist and meddling in elections to support favored candidates and defeat their opponents.
I wonder if Twitter has any files on that?
There is also an interesting contrast here. One of Jenkins’ points is that American media’s refusal to examine our own government in a way that would reflect negatively on their favored party is not shared internationally. This means that even if the U.S. press tries to suppress a story, the international press might report on it anyway. He tells us that what we are doing unwittingly gives ammunition to our opponents on the world stage. Vladimir Putin, for example, could trumpet the corruption of the United States pointing out how the U.S. establishment conspired to implicate Russia merely to shelter the Biden family from personal embarrassment. It wouldn’t take much to turn that into an attack on America’s support of Ukraine or other legitimate diplomatic pursuits.
For the Brazil story, I’ve yet to see any break from the “party line” even in the international (albeit English-speaking) press. For understanding, perhaps we need to look at the international diplomatic stage. Embarrassing the United States can be very valuable, whether you’re an ally or a rival. Embarrassing Brazil, at the price of creating a muddled message – it isn’t worth that much.
For anyone who has read this far and may feel smoke coming out of their ears, let me be clear. I am not saying that I believe the Brazil election was stolen. Even if it was, that cannot justify violence, destruction, and calls for military removal of a constitutionally-elected president. What I’m criticizing is a media that prioritizes staying on message well above informing the readership about the details behind world events.
Jump ahead a couple days and let us apply what we’ve learned to the newest of news! We may be about to get a master class in double standards, making everything I read a day or two ago seem obsolete.
From what I can tell (and events here are moving faster than I can read about them), the initial reaction of the media to our sitting president having squirreled away classified documents was to downplay or even deny it. Apparently, at least one talking head suggested that the highly-classified documents found in an unused Biden office were “planted” to try to help Donald Trump. “And even if they weren’t…” there was a big difference – Biden’s secret documents were in a secured office location where Trump’s were accessible to just about anybody who visited his private residence. That message worked until more documents were found in Biden’s own residence and garage.
Once again, the “narrative” seems to be driving events more than the other way around. U.S Attorney General Garland has appointed another special prosecutor to investigate Biden, presumably because not to do so would have appeared to be blatantly partisan. Is the established precedent now to be based upon the fact that everyone who has positively announced that they are a 2024 presidential candidate falls under Federal investigation? How healthy will THAT be for America’s ongoing civic dysfunction?
How much of the media will struggle to focus on why Trump is guilty and Biden is innocent because… well, that’s the narrative that we need to maintain? Will the media take this as an opportunity redeem or further condemn themselves?
Game pairing: Tropico 6.
*For the record, I’ve never read any of the usual superlatives, the ones applied to the 2020 vote in the U.S., in descriptions of what happened in Brazil. Perhaps I was distracted with my own Christmastime stuff but I was almost entirely unaware of Lula’s reelection and certainly of any difficulties surrounding it. That is, I was until things went out of control this week. I hate to say it, but maybe this is part of what drives people into these kinds of protest. If nothing else, the world is now watching.