Eric Boehlert: CNN keeps trying to bury Biden [View all]

[babylonsister]

https://pressrun.media/p/cnn-keeps-trying-to-bury-biden?

CNN keeps trying to bury Biden
They miss Trump
Eric Boehlert
1 hr ago


CNN faced a predicament recently when its new poll showed President Joe Biden with a healthy 50% approval rating. The high-profile survey was certainly good news for the White House, which has been battered with negative news coverage since August, with the Beltway press circling, eagerly predicting the Democrat’s demise just nine months into office.

The CNN poll represented an internal problem because it punctured the preferred media narrative about Biden being caught in a slow-motion spiral. Plus, the 50% poll followed on the heels of a Fox News poll, which also showed Biden at the respectable 50% mark — a public approval plateau that Trump never once reached while in office.

So what did CNN do? Did it buck the Beltway groupthink and report that Biden’s popularity was on the upswing? It did not. Instead, the network did its best to bury, or downplay, its own polling so it wouldn’t have to upset the beloved storyline of Biden being locked in a constant state of crisis. (A White House “under siege.”) Still itching for the daily drama of the Trump years, CNN continues to uncork breathless, perilous coverage that often does not match reality — even the reality of its own polling.

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CNN’s doomsday drumbeat has become relentless: “The coronavirus pandemic Biden thought he had tamed this spring continues to deny Americans a return to normal life,” one piece recently claimed. Americans haven’t returned to a more normal life under Biden? 50 million school children aren’t back in classrooms? Football stadiums on campuses coast-to-coast aren’t packed with fans? Tens of millions of employees haven’t returned to their workplace? 190 million Americans haven’t been fully vaccinated?

Last month, I recounted how CNN seemed to traffic a made-up GOP story about how a bipartisan group of lawmakers “stormed out” of a classified briefing session regarding Afghanistan. It was all part of the network’s urgent attempt to paint the Biden White House as besieged and floundering. According to CNN’s own polling, voters aren’t buying it.