Seth Abramson's piece today is long but well worth reading in full. His thesis:
"Media lied to voters about the cause of President Biden’s subpar debate performance. The lie—described here in full—is unforgivable, and was intended to chill discussion of Trump’s cognitive decline."
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/we-now-know-what-really-happened
"Just 120 days ago, Joe Biden had a full cognitive work-up which showed no abnormal results. Major media had access to this report beginning on March 1 and pretended it did not. …
Major media is seeing its worst audience figures ever, and it’s bleeding money, and it’s experiencing scandal after scandal over bad hires (of both executives and on-air talent) and is angry over Americans quickly dissolving faith in corporate journalism."
"It feels constantly showed up by independent journalists and social media voices, and is angry at Team Biden in particular because it hasn’t given media the free content Trump did (not by being transparent, as the Trump White House was anything but, but rather by being so exponentially more corrupt and incompetent than the Biden White House that free major-media material emanated from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue almost daily)."
"While Trump's threats are happening out in the open — plain as day for everyone to see — they continue to receive relatively little attention from the press. Most outlets on Tuesday did not even bother to cover Trump threatening to jail Zuckerberg. It's a sign of how normalized his authoritarian-like behavior has become."
~ Oliver Darcy
https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/172058013292072befc9e607b/raw
"The New York Times joined the tabloid New York Post in noting that visitor logs showed that Dr. Kevin Cannard, an expert on Parkinson’s disease, visited the White House eight times between July 2023 and March 2024."
~ Heather Cox Richardson
In this morning’s Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz observed that “much of political journalism is divorced from policy and the substance of politics.” It’s all about a horse race, he wrote, while complex questions, competing public interests, and the history of an issue get distilled to “whether it’s good or bad politically.”
"After pressing White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for information beyond her statements that Biden is not being, and has not been, treated for Parkinson’s and that he sees a neurologist as part of his annual physical exams, a CBS News White House reporter accused Jean-Pierre of deliberately withholding information."
"Jean-Pierre pointed out that 'personal attacks' are not appropriate from the press corps and that the press team does its best to give the information they have. She said she took offense at the reporter’s tone.
Last night, White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor sent to Jean-Pierre a letter clarifying that the White House Medical Unit serves thousands of patients, many of whom are military personnel with neurological issues related to their service."
"Cannard was one of the team of specialists that annually examine the president. O’Connor’s office released the results of that examination in a letter dated February 28, he pointed out. It said, 'An extremely detailed neurologic exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder,'"
"'such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or ascending lateral sclerosis, nor are there any signs of cervical myelopathy.' The president does have 'peripheral neuropathy in both feet. No motor weakness was detected. He exhibits no tremor, either at rest or with activity.'”
"Everyone who jumped on that Parkinson's story - especially journalists - should really be doing some soul searching right about now. It will help guide you for the next few months, as long as you use it as a reminder of what not to do or fall for again. I'm not joking."
~ Isaac Bailey as quoted by Greg Dworkin
Unfortunately, the arrogance of many journalists precludes self-awareness and the moral depth required to self-correct.
"Predictably, the NYT treated President Biden’s speech to kick off NATO’s 75th Anniversary as if Biden merely invented the date and the event and maybe even NATO itself to cover up a shoddy debate performance. In addition to the subhead that nonsensically complained there was, 'no mention of President Biden’s political peril,' in his speech, in this 25-paragraph story, NYT made this a story about Biden’s campaign…."
~ Marci Wheeler
In February, David Sanger reported that even before Trump threatened to let Vladimir Putin invade NATO countries, European allies were discussing the possibility the US would withdraw from NATO. Now, he claims they're doing so only because Biden had a poor debate.
"To sustain this fairytale — that the NATO summit exists merely as a measure of Biden’s ability to recover from his debate — David Sanger and Lara Jakes lie. …
This election was always going to be at least close. As Sanger himself reported months ago, European allies have been anticipating the significance of a second Trump term for months."
"Yet now, because the NYT is so determined to make Biden’s electoral chances the cause for everything, Trump’s own preferences get a pass and are now caused by Biden’s plight.
The cause for NATO’s concerns is Trump. Not Biden’s campaign. And once upon a time, NYT reported it that way."
Nancy Pelosi on New York Times' misrepresentation of her statements about Biden and his candidacy:
"I don’t know what’s happened to The New York Times that they make up news. It isn’t true."
"Make up news" sounds to me like a polite way of saying that the New York Times lies, and quite deliberately so.
As Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, we already knew from a March 2024 study by University of Pennsylvania Computational Social Science Lab that the New York Times' coverage of Biden and Trump had been heavily skewed in an anti-Biden direction. And that was before the same outlet issued an editorial statement calling on Biden to step out of the race.
It was also before New York Times published 192 pieces in a single week after the debate attacking Biden as unfit to be president, at the same time publishing 92 pieces about Trump none of which "focused exclusively on the former president’s inability to pronounce words, his mental confusion and forgetfulness, and incoherent rambling at numerous campaign rallies."
Ben-Ghiat states,
"The Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection Trump incited to stay in office illegally, and the GOP’s conversion into a personal tool of a demagogue, have taken us into an emergency situation that conventional coverage cannot adequately convey."
"Yet Joe Kahn, executive editor of the Times, referred to democracy in a recent interview as merely one issue of interest “at the moment,” to be covered alongside other issues that are top of mind, such as immigration and the economy."
William Lindsey 
Urzl