‘Living on Negativity’: Brookings Institution Think Tank Rips Media for Portraying Biden as ‘Doddering Old Man’

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The Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington that was founded in 1916, published a piece this past week that ripped the media over the way it reports on President Joe Biden.

According to a Brookings blog post from reporter Marvin Kalb, Biden is portrayed as a “doddering old man” by reporters who are “living on negativity.”

Kalb wrote:

The American press corps struggles every day to prove to readers and viewers that it is “fair and balanced,” the slogan cleverly adopted by Fox News. If it strongly criticized Donald Trump during his presidency (and since), then it follows that it must also strongly criticize Joe Biden, which is exactly what it’s done.

Fair, isn’t it? Balanced, too, right?

Wrong.

The 92-year-old author and journalist ripped news reporting for what he equated to unfair “bothsideism.”

“The press image of Biden, president of the United States of America, has been whittled down to that of a doddering old man, wobbly on his feet and barely able to articulate a single thought without slurring,” Kalb wrote, before he asked, “Is that a fair and balanced image of Biden?”

Kalb noted Biden enjoyed a healthy 55% approval rating, prior to the chaotic way U.S. forces left Afghanistan last year after two decades in the country.

He said that as the poll numbers dipped, negative coverage of Biden unfairly ramped up. Kalb complained:

My own experience as a journalist for more than three decades corroborates Patterson’s research. I had a much better chance of getting my story on the evening news if I was reporting an administration disaster than if I wanted to report a success.

Negativity sold then, and it does now; but now it is technologically empowered by social media and looser journalistic standards that make governing a democracy a minute-to-minute firecracker of a challenge.

“By living on negativity, the press has only compounded the inherent problems of governing a democracy already spinning out of control,” he concluded.

Brookings describes itself as “a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.”