CBS News Uses Far Left Blog Headlines To Claim ‘Media Watchdogs’ Believe Biden’s Age ‘Overcovered’ and ‘Overstated’ in Press
A report from CBS News on Sunday said that “some media watchdogs” argue that the press have irresponsibly over-covered the issue of President Joe Biden’s age, alongside a graphic displaying headlines from various left-wing writers and outlets as the representative sample.
The subject of age in general, and Biden’s age in particular, took up a major portion of the latest episode of Sunday Morning from CBS News, during which reporter Robert Costa suggested that the media is covering age, and Biden’s age in particular, too much.
It was while speaking with Dan Balz of The Washington Post that Costa brought up the idea, asking him, “Are you worried that sometimes issues like age can be dominant, but discussions about some of those other issues on policy just don’t get the bandwidth they deserve?”
Balz acknowledged that it can be “easier” to focus on a simple issue like age versus a complex issue, but also that age hasn’t been the only issue in the election.
It was during this part of the show when Costa made an appeal to expertise, and said “Some media watchdogs argue President Biden’s age has been over-covered, overstated and over-analyzed, particularly when compared to former President Trump’s.”
It’s not clear how Biden’s age has been “overstated” as no examples of anyone inflating the number were shown. But as Costa referenced “watchdogs” his on-screen graphic showed headlines from Media Matters, a far-left group focused on criticizing media, far-left magazine Mother Jones, and two Substack blogs from writers on the left, Margaret Sullivan, formerly of New York Times and Washington Post, and Judd Legum, formerly of Think Progress.
Sullivan’s article, dated February 12, took the media to task under the headline “The media’s circular logic and destructive obsession with Biden’s age.”
Legum’s article, also on the 12th, took the media to task under the headline “Manufacturing a political crisis.”
Not pictured in Costa’s on-screen graphic were another similar article on Substack from liberal media writer Seth Masket on the 12th, nor Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire linking to the above posts from his own the same day that repeated the charge of “destructive obsession” against the press at large.
David Corn’s article at Mother Jones said that “the actual threat to Biden’s political prospects is the deluge of negative media coverage,” about his age. That one came a day later on February 13.
Deluge, indeed.
In the remainder of the segment from CBS Sunday Morning, other than to discuss “gaffes” by Donald Trump, Costa did not mention that the age issue has to do with ideas of competence, acuity, or health, focusing entirely on simply the age as a number. This despite the fact that most coverage outside of far-left blogs does put the issue of age in the context of voter concerns about health or mental fitness, or about politicians using such concerns to score political points.
Watch the clip above, via CBS News, or see the full report here.
