Thanks to the mass media, voters know more about Trump’s scandals than Biden’s laws

Since pub­lish­ing the ini­tial results from its Biden v. Trump bat­tle­ground states polling project yes­ter­day, the polit­i­cal bureau at The New York Times has been busy writ­ing “reac­tion sto­ries” to its own pub­lic opin­ion research.

The lat­est of those is by reporters Maya King and Lisa Lerer, and it is titled: “As Black Vot­ers Drift to Trump, Biden’s Allies Say They Have Work to Do,” with this sub­head: “A New York Times/Siena Col­lege poll paint­ed a wor­ri­some pic­ture of the president’s stand­ing with a cru­cial con­stituen­cy. Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gists warned that the ero­sion could threat­en his re-election.”

Much of the arti­cle con­sists of on the record state­ments from voters.

This one in par­tic­u­lar got my attention:

Key­on Reynolds-Mar­tin, a father of one in Mil­wau­kee, praised what he saw as Mr. Trump’s pri­or­i­tiz­ing of the econ­o­my and domes­tic pol­i­cy, recall­ing the stim­u­lus checks he received dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Mr. Trump ini­tial­ly did not sup­port the relief checks, which were spear­head­ed by Democ­rats. He lat­er affixed his sig­na­ture to them, rep­re­sent­ing the first time a president’s name had appeared on an Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice disbursement.

Mr. Reynolds-Mar­tin, 25, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump next fall, when he casts his first bal­lot ever.

Of Mr. Biden, he said, “He’s not giv­ing mon­ey to help the Unit­ed States, but he’s giv­ing mon­ey to oth­er coun­tries,” adding, “At least Don­ald Trump was try­ing to help the Unit­ed States.”

The very next para­graph is a sen­tence intro­duc­ing read­ers to anoth­er Black vot­er. There’s no dis­cus­sion of the fact that what Reynolds-Mar­tin said is false, wrong, non­sen­si­cal. The state­ment that Biden is “not giv­ing mon­ey to help the Unit­ed States, but he’s giv­ing mon­ey to help oth­er coun­tries” is prov­ably false.

Since becom­ing Pres­i­dent, Joe Biden has request­ed and won tril­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing from Con­gress for Amer­i­ca’s pri­or­i­ties. That’s tril­lions, with a t. (It’s actu­al­ly Con­gress’ respon­si­bil­i­ty to make appro­pri­a­tions and pass budgets.)

Biden pro­posed, and Con­gress passed, the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, which includ­ed direct cash assis­tance to mil­lions of Amer­i­cans like Key­on, rent sta­bi­liza­tion aid, an exten­sion of unem­ploy­ment insur­ance ben­e­fits, a pover­ty-slash­ing Child Tax Cred­it, and more finan­cial help for busi­ness­es affect­ed by the pandemic.

Biden pro­posed, and Con­gress passed, the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act, which is help­ing to tack­le our nation’s infra­struc­ture deficit with mon­ey for pri­or­i­ties like clean drink­ing water infra­struc­ture, reli­able high speed Inter­net, and expand­ed pas­sen­ger rail ser­vice. (Biden is in Delaware today to make an announce­ment about fund­ing pas­sen­ger rail projects, incidentally.)

Biden pro­posed, and Con­gress passed, the CHIPS and Sci­ence Act, which allo­cates about $280 bil­lion in new fund­ing to boost Amer­i­can research and man­u­fac­tur­ing of semi­con­duc­tors, which are essen­tial com­po­nents of mod­ern elec­tron­ics, now used in every­thing from cars and home appli­ances as well as com­put­ers and mobile com­put­ing devices.

Biden pro­posed, and Con­gress passed, the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act, which invest­ed long over­due funds in mak­ing the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice work bet­ter for tax­pay­ers, final­ly allow­ing Medicare to nego­ti­ate the cost of pre­scrip­tion drugs, extend­ed health insur­ance sub­si­dies to pre­vent around three mil­lion Amer­i­cans from los­ing cov­er­age, and pro­vid­ed tax cred­its to encour­age invest­ments in clean ener­gy and elec­tric vehi­cles that don’t emit pol­lu­tants from tailpipes.

Trump, mean­while, request­ed and signed leg­is­la­tion to give the wealthy and large cor­po­ra­tions big tax cuts. He talked about doing an infra­struc­ture bill, but nev­er fol­lowed through. It was Biden who signed a big infra­struc­ture bill into law.

Does Key­on Reynolds-Mar­tin know about any of this? I’m guess­ing not.

Reynolds-Mar­tin was inter­viewed for the arti­cle. That means there was a con­ver­sa­tion between him and the staff of The New York Times.

Did King or Lerer push back and cor­rect Reynolds-Mar­tin after he wrong­ly said that Biden is “not giv­ing mon­ey to help the Unit­ed States, but he’s giv­ing mon­ey to help oth­er coun­tries”? If not, why did­n’t they? And why run this demon­stra­bly false state­ment in The New York Times with­out dis­cussing Biden’s actu­al record?

This is jour­nal­is­tic mal­prac­tice, in my book.

Seek truth and report it is sup­posed to be a a key guid­ing prin­ci­ple for jour­nal­ists. It’s right up there at the top of the SPJ’s Code of Ethics.

Here, the truth about Biden’s record is appar­ent­ly just not impor­tant enough to put into an arti­cle in which vot­ers are weigh­ing on in Biden’s record.

Is it any won­der that many vot­ers in Amer­i­ca know more about Don­ald Trump’s scan­dals than Joe Biden’s laws? What they know is a reflec­tion of what the mass media decides to pri­or­i­tize. And to bor­row a line from a mem­o­rable Pat­ty Mur­ray stump speech deliv­ered in the 2004 cycle: They’ve got the wrong priorities!