DAN GAINOR: Journalism's original spin. 7 ways the Tapper/Thompson Biden book attempts to absolve media

DAN GAINOR: Journalism's original spin. 7 ways the Tapper/Thompson Biden book attempts to absolve media

Journalism is the first draft of history, to paraphrase a famous quote. If that's true, journalism books are the CYA of history. Such is the case with the new book by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios National Political Correspondent Alex Thompson, who try to shift the blame for coverage of PresidentJoe Biden'shealth entirely onto the White House and away from the biased news media – like CNN. The duo is about to release their book titled, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run." The book would be better titled, "Original Spin." Based on early release to various news outlets, it is a whitewash of journalism's many failures to properly cover Biden's very public slide into incoherence. If Helen of Troy was The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships, this book launched 1,000 takes onTwitter/X, some of them so good they should win awards. (Stephen L. Miller, aka @redsteeze, outdid them all.) Journalism's 'Original Spin': How Tapper's Biden Book Attempts To Absolve Media But it wasn't just Tapper, it was an entire media enterprise that hid Biden's decline. Here are my seven favorite moments from then and now: The Amazon description reads like it's promoting "All the President's Men," not a book-long rationalization. "From two of America's most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden's run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration." And it then includes this quote from the equally culpable folks at Politico: "The book Biden allies fear the most." Read On The Fox News App Biden allies don't fear the book. There aren't many left who admit they supported him. It's the media who fear it. Because this book reminds Americans the legacy press is untrustworthy either covering the news or admitting their role in covering it up. We're not letting Tapper off that easy. Here's his ego-infused PR quote in a CNN story, "Toni Morrison once said 'If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it,'" Jake Tapper said in a statement. "That's what inspired this book: we wanted to know more about what we all just lived through. More than 200 interviews later, Alex and I have a much better idea. And soon you all will too." Axios Reporter Pushes Back On Biden's Denial Of Mental Decline, Saying White House Insiders Disagree To hear Tapper and tell it, they are hard-working truth tellers in a world beset by dishonest politicians. This is the same CNN anchor who repeatedly both covered for and covered up Biden's mental failings. And he wants a get-out-of-jail-free-card for admitting Biden isn't mentally fit to run a hotdog stand. Or eat at one. On February 8, 2024, Biden held a press conference to counter special counsel Robert Hur's claim Biden was, "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." The presser was epic, with the president pretending his memory was "fine." Then he called Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi the"president of Mexico"during a presser where he spoke slowly and seemed to lose his train of thought. (Days before, he claimed he had spoken with adead French leader.) The media coverage was laughable. The New York Times ran with, "'My Memory Is Fine,' a Defiant Biden Declares After Special Counsel Report." The Post chose, "Biden responds angrily to special counsel report questioning his memory." Legacy media outlets skipped the embarrassing memory lapse in headlines. Tapper wasn't alone running cover for Biden. There was "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, who delivered the most-embarrassing quote of the entire 2024 election: "I've said it for years now, he's cogent. But I undersold it when I said he was cogent, he's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been, intellectually, analytically, because he's been around for fifty-years," Scarborough said. "Start your tape right now because I'm about to tell you the truth. And f--- you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever." That was March 6, 2024. Biden's campaign ended slightly more than four months later. There was no medical event. No rapid decline. And this came after the disastrous press conference. When journalists didn't like what people were saying about the president, they pretended it was based on phony videos. CNN's Brian Stelter ran with the White House's argument. "The White House used the phrase 'cheap fakes," adding, "let me explain what that is." Now, we have Tapper saying that Biden didn't even recognize actor George Clooney. In June 2024, NBC News' Gabe Gutierrez did a 'well ackually' segment that argued Biden hadn't wandered away from foreign leaders. "In reality, another camera angle showed the president was actually trying to greet skydivers." He also said the right was "falsely claiming the president was meandering." Just like the right falsely claimed a White Housestaffer in an Easter Bunny outfitpulled the president away from press questions. As part of the book's PR blitz, Tapper and Thompson co-authored a piece in The New Yorker, titled, "How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump." Four paragraphs in, they quote Democrats who agree with their narrative. "'We got so screwed by Biden, as a party,'David Plouffe,who helped run the Harris campaign, told us," they claimed. And one paragraph later, "Plouffe added, 'He totally f---ed us.'" The article goes on to credit actorGeorge Clooneyfor writing an op-ed calling Biden to step down. The actor had attended a Biden fundraiser in June and the article gave an exchange where, "It seemed clear that the President had not recognized Clooney." But Clooney is Tapper's hero here. Not the legions of conservatives who complained about Biden's failing health long before. The Clooney name gets mentioned 59 times in the piece. Fifty-nine. That's five more times than Clooney has appeared in movies, according to IMDB.com. Even after Biden's debate with Donald Trump, two New York Times writers wouldn't give in. Lydia Polgreen wrote: "No one won this debate, but there is no question who lost: anyone who plans to cast a ballot for president in November." Jamelle Bouie agreed, "Well, we had a raspy and stumbling President Biden and a deranged and incoherent Donald Trump, who spent two hours unleashing a stream of lies. Is there a winner here? Nah." AP delivered one of the greatest understatements in history: "Debate-watchers in the Biden and Trump camps seem to agree on something: Biden had a bad night." Click Here To Read More From Dan Gainor Original article source:DAN GAINOR: Journalism's original spin. 7 ways the Tapper/Thompson Biden book attempts to absolve media

byDaniel Coleman

in

May 17, 2025

DAN GAINOR: Journalism's original spin. 7 ways the Tapper/Thompson Biden book attempts to absolve media

DAN GAINOR: Journalism's original spin. 7 ways the Tapper/Thompson Biden book attempts to absolve media Journalism is the first draft of...

Read More

Russia demanded Kyiv pull back troops before ceasefire, Ukrainian source says

Russia demanded Kyiv pull back troops before ceasefire, Ukrainian source says

By Tom Balmforth ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Russian negotiators at peace talks in Istanbul demanded Ukraine pull its troops out of all the Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire, a senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks told Reuters. The Kremlin declined to comment on the terms that Russia had put forward at Friday's meeting in Turkey - the first time the warring sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion. The talks lasted only one hour and 40 minutes, and yielded an agreement to trade 1,000 prisoners of war on each side. The two countries have not specified when that will happen. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on Saturday for stronger sanctions on Moscow after a Russian drone killed nine bus passengers in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine. "This was a deliberate killing of civilians," he said. "Pressure must be exerted on Russia to stop the killings. Without tougher sanctions, without stronger pressure, Russia will not seek real diplomacy." Russia, which denies targeting civilians, said it struck a military target in Sumy. Its defence ministry said Russian troops had captured another settlement in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine and Western governments, including the U.S., have demanded that Russia agree to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire lasting at least 30 days. But the Ukrainian source said Moscow's negotiators had demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, with a ceasefire to take place only after that. The source said that and other demands went beyond the terms of a draft peace deal that the United States proposed last month after consultations with Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the Ukrainian account, saying talks should be conducted "absolutely behind closed doors". He said the next steps would be to carry out the prisoner exchange and conduct further work between the two sides. Peskov said it was possible that President Vladimir Putin could meet Zelenskiy, but only if "certain agreements" were reached, which he did not specify. Zelenskiy had challenged Putin earlier in the week to meet him in person, an offer the Russian leader ignored. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said his country, after hosting the talks, was determined to continue its mediation role. PRESSURE FROM TRUMP Both Ukraine and Russia are under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to end what he calls "this stupid war". He has threatened to abandon U.S. efforts to broker an agreement unless they demonstrate clear progress. After Friday's meeting, Ukraine began rallying support from its allies to take tougher action against Moscow. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Reuters: "Yet again we are seeing obfuscation on the Russian side and unwillingness to get serious about the enduring peace that is now required in Ukraine." "Once again Russia is not serious," he said during a visit to Pakistan. "At what point do we say to Putin enough is enough?" French President Emmanuel Macron also said the talks in Istanbul had been fruitless. "Today, what do we have? Nothing. And so I tell you, faced with President Putin's cynicism, I am sure that President Trump, mindful of the credibility of the United States, will react." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was working on a new package of sanctions against Moscow, which France said this week should aim to "suffocate" the Russian economy. But after ratcheting up sanctions for more than three years already, it is unclear how much more they can achieve. In their efforts to forge a united front and make Putin accept a ceasefire, Ukrainian and its European leaders have been repeatedly thrown off balance by interventions from Trump. Having publicly told Zelenskiy to accept Russia's offer of direct talks in Turkey, Trump declared on the eve of the meeting that there could be no movement on peace until he had met with Putin. The Kremlin says Putin is ready to meet Trump, but such a summit must be carefully prepared in order to get results. It said there been no contact between Russia and the U.S. since Friday's talks. (Additional reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad, Pavel Polityuk and Christian Lowe in Kyiv, Dmitry Antonov in Moscow, Jonathan Spicer and Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul; writing by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

byDaniel Coleman

in

May 17, 2025

Russia demanded Kyiv pull back troops before ceasefire, Ukrainian source says

Russia demanded Kyiv pull back troops before ceasefire, Ukrainian source says By Tom Balmforth ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Russian negotiators at p...

Read More

The old slang term '86' probably started as restaurant-worker jargon. Suddenly it's in the news

The old slang term '86' probably started as restaurant-worker jargon. Suddenly it's in the news

NEW YORK (AP) — The slang termat the center of a political brouhahaswirling around former FBI Director James Comey is an old one, likely originating as food-service-industry jargon before extending to other contexts. Some of that spread has given rise to accusations from Republicans that it was meant as a threat toPresident Donald Trump. In a since-deleted Instagram post, Comey wrote "cool shell formation on my beach walk" to accompany a photo of shells displayed in the shapes of "86 47." He said in a follow-up post that he took it only as a political message since Trump is the 47th president, and to "86" something can be to get rid of it, like a rowdy patron at a bar or something that is no longer wanted. But Trump and other Republicans took it more ominously. They say Comey, with whom Trump has had a contentious relationship, was advocating violence against the Republican president, given that the slang term has at times been used as a way to mean someone's killing. It probably started in restaurants nearly a century ago The slang origins of "86" go back to codes used in diners and restaurants as staff shorthand in the 1930s or so, said Jesse Sheidlower, adjunct assistant professor in Columbia University's writing program and formerly editor-at-large for the Oxford English Dictionary. It meant that something on the menu was no longer available. Over time, he said, related uses developed. "The original sense is, we are out of an item. But there are a bunch of obvious metaphorical extensions for this," he said. "86 is something that's not there, something that shouldn't be there like an undesirable customer. Then it's a verb, meaning to throw someone out. These are fairly obvious and clear semantic development from the idea of being out of something." He said there have been uses of it as a euphemism for killing someone, as in certain fiction stories, but that usage is not nearly as widespread. More likely it means to jettison something that is no longer useful — a definition parodied in the popular 1960s TV show "Get Smart," whose lead character was known — wink, nudge — as Agent 86. That type of meaning is reflected in the entry for "86" from Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press. That definition says the meaning is "to throw out," "to get rid of" or "to refuse service to." While referencing that there have been uses of it to mean killing, the dictionary said, "We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use." But Trump and his administration insist that was the intent of the usage in Comey's initial post Thursday. "He knew exactly what that meant," Trump said during a Fox News interview Friday. "A child knows what that meant. If you're the FBI director and you don't know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear." The usage has prompted a federal investigation Trump's administration is investigating. Comey said on social media: "I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence." The relationship between the president and Comey has been strained for years. Trump fired Comey as FBI director in 2017, early in Trump's first term. In 2018, in a book, Comey said Trump was unethical and "untethered to truth." That a slang reference can cause this kind of agita is not surprising, especially not at a time like the one we are living in, said Nicole Holliday, acting associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. "I think that because we are in a hyperpartisan, polarized culture, everything is a Rorschach test," she said. "We're very sensitive about any indication that people are part of our in group or part of the out group." Language can be a fraught subject because language and the meaning of words can be fluid based on context or culture or other factors. "We're always kind of navigating this issue of, 'Well, I said this word and it meant X. But you heard this word and you thought it meant Y,'" she said. That navigation can be hard enough when it's person-to-person direct conversation. Taking it online the way much of our modern discourse is makes it even more so, she said. "In real life, when you have a conversation with a human being, you are negotiating meaning. (But) when somebody posts ... There's no space. This is why people are always arguing themselves to death in the comments," Holliday said. "We're not meant to communicate like this about serious issues," she said. "Really, we're not." ___ Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

byDaniel Coleman

in

May 17, 2025

The old slang term '86' probably started as restaurant-worker jargon. Suddenly it's in the news

The old slang term '86' probably started as restaurant-worker jargon. Suddenly it's in the news NEW YORK (AP) — The slang termat...

Read More

Turkey frees a Swedish journalist who was convicted for insulting President Erdogan

Turkey frees a Swedish journalist who was convicted for insulting President Erdogan

STOCKHOLM (AP) — ASwedish journalist arrested in Turkeyin March when he traveled there to cover nationwide protests was released and returned home to Sweden on Saturday. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote on X that "hard work in relative silence has paid off" and that Joakim Medin's release was due to intensive lobbying by the Swedish foreign ministry and European colleagues. "Welcome home Joakim!" Kristersson wrote on X. Last month, aTurkish court had convicted Medinof insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Medin was given an 11-month suspended prison term, but initial reports said he would remain in custody awaiting the outcome of a separate trial on terrorism-related charges. Medin, a journalist with the daily Dagens ETC, was detained March 27 as he arrived at Istanbul airport to cover last month's nationwideprotests following the arrest of Istanbul's popular mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu. The journalist was jailed days later on charges of insulting Erdogan and membership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Swedish media reported that Medin landed early Saturday at Stockholm airport, where he was welcomed by his wife and the Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard. "All is well after all. I'm really tired in body and mind. But I feel good," he said, according to Dagens ETC. "The pressure on my chest disappeared as soon as we lifted off the ground and we started heading home." Medin also said later on Saturday that "I've been thinking from day one about what to say at this moment. Long live freedom: freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of movement," Sveriges Television reported. Medin said that he spent his prison time in solitary confinement in a ward for political prisoners. He said that he had not been subjected to violence, but that the isolation took its toll. Kristersson said on X that "it is well known that Sweden and Turkey have different views on quite a few and big things. But we have also developed a climate of cooperation that allows us to discuss quite difficult issues." Local media reported that while Medin's separate trial on terrorism charges would still take place, he would not be required to attend it.

byDaniel Coleman

in

May 17, 2025

Turkey frees a Swedish journalist who was convicted for insulting President Erdogan

Turkey frees a Swedish journalist who was convicted for insulting President Erdogan STOCKHOLM (AP) — ASwedish journalist arrested in Turkeyi...

Read More

Audio of interview confirms Biden memory lapses

Audio of interview confirms Biden memory lapses

Newly released audio of a special counsel interviewing then-President joe Biden confirms memory lapses that White House officials denied at the time, including a president clearly struggling to remember the year his oldest son died. Even after the transcript was released, Biden aides, including then-White House spokesman Ian Sams,insistedthat the president did not forget the year that his son Beau died of brain cancer. The audio shows that Biden struggled to remember the year and had to be prompted by his lawyers, who were sitting in the interview with him. The recording of the interview wasfirst released by Axios. Sams did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The audio of Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur is likely to fuel a growing debate among Democrats and others about whether there was a concerted effort to cover up the president's diminished mental capacity, as well as whether that contributed to the party's 2024 defeat at the polls. It also comes as several new books offer insight into what many behind the scenes knew. Biden sat for more than five hours of interviews over two days in October 2023 as part of Hur's investigation into Biden's retention of classified documents at his home and office from his time as vice president. Hur later cited interviews in which he described Biden as an "elderly man with a poor memory" in his final report at the end of his investigation. Donald Trump and his Republican allies seized on Hur's description of Biden and demanded the audio of his interviews be released. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland released the transcript of Biden's interviews, but not the audio. Garland said at the time that the audio was covered by executive privilege, and the White House did not want it released. Republicans held Garland in contempt of Congress over his refusal to turn over the audio. News organizations, including NBC News, filed a lawsuit seeking any recordings of Biden's interviews, and the issue was not resolved before Biden left office. About a month after Trump took office, the Justice Department asked the court for more time to consider the issue because the new administration's "leadership is still in the process of being installed" in the department, according to a court filing. The judge agreed to an extension and ordered Justice Department attorneys to file an update on the status of the case by May 20. Hur, who was tapped by Garland to conduct a criminal investigation after classified documents were found in Biden's home and office, concluded there was evidence that Biden willfully retained classified information — a felony. But Hur said he did not believe he could win a conviction, in part because of Biden's faltering memory. "We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," Hur wrote in his report. Biden's lawyers at the time aggressively pushed back on that description, arguing that he performed well in a difficult interview and suffered the same sorts of memory lapses that witnesses often do. Biden's aides and senior Democrats excoriated Hur for including such a description in a report where no charges were brought. Months later, Hur's assessment of Biden was validated by his disastrous performance during a debate with Trump. Biden struggled to complete thoughts and sentences throughout the debate, which led to his exit from the 2024 race weeks later.

byDaniel Coleman

in

May 17, 2025

Audio of interview confirms Biden memory lapses

Audio of interview confirms Biden memory lapses Newly released audio of a special counsel interviewing then-President joe Biden confirms mem...

Read More