Mastodawn

Jay Rosen Aug 28, 2023

CNN headline today:

"McCarthy starts to plot Biden impeachment strategy while GOP skeptics remain."

What the GROUNDS for impeachment might be is addressed in paragraph nine. CNN thus buries the lede of a more striking story: a vibes-based approach, where you establish first the feeling, "we wanna impeach," relegating the small matter of "impeachment for what?" to later stages.

That's news! Instead CNN frames for us another strategy story.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/28/politics/mccarthy-biden-impeachment-strategy/index.html

#journalism #uspol #science

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Jay Rosen Aug 28, 2023

Note to repliers. I"m not trying to suss out what McCarthy is up to. It's pretty obvious.

My concern is with the journalists at CNN, and what they do in response to this kind of maneuver.

Do they make a strategy story from it? Is that the right frame?

Or is the news the outlandish idea of impeachment in the abstract, with evidence to come later in the process?

First the action, then the cause of action, is pretty Alice in Wonderland of them. To me that's the news.

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Ton Chrysoprase

@jayrosen_nyu Well, they set the stage for this dereliction of duty with all their hot takes of 'if you impeach Trump for obviously impeachable stuff, you're giving Republicans a precedent for impeaching Biden because they feel like it.' Thanks for your service in pointing that out each time! It's necessary to do that.