Pat Wandling: Journalists off the job
Former President Biden’s health remains in the news amid revelations of prostate cancer, tell-all books, and a pending House hearing in Washington.
The former president’s declining mental and physical health has lately been well covered, but the real story is yet to come and when it does, it will be a smack at the Biden-friendly legacy media and those who denied, denied, and denied.
Biden’s political opponents and the right-leaning talking heads often engaged in ridicule, as I recall, calling into question the ex-president’s visible missteps, verbal gaffes, and memory lapses. The left-leaning legacy media never asked if the leader of the free world was up to the job.
Good journalists could have intervened in the Biden-Democratic hush-up by simply doing their job, without bias. The role of the legacy media in keeping the former president’s declining health out of the news seemed deliberate and certainly unacceptable.
And possibly detrimental to the country, if individuals other than the president were making decisions affecting important issues like immigration and foreign policy. It’s a story waiting to happen.
While Biden’s health and state of mind is old news, the more important story — the Watergate-like story — is yet to be revealed (perhaps, under oath)?
Lots of people reassured us on Biden’s health before last November’s election. All good, they said. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted “Joe is sharp as a tack.” Staffers attested to his skills and abilities, but it came crashing down in his debate with Donald Trump last June. Biden was a goner.
More troubling to me prior to the debate was the former president’s health which went unquestioned by a friendly legacy media. Reporters who spill the beans now insist they didn’t know then.
Since Biden is out of the White House, and we’re still talking about his health and state of mind, who in the media is apologizing for missing the ongoing story? Bigwig journalists like Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper who are pocketing lucrative advances and hawking their book Original Sin of course. These progressives looked the other way and fought back against the Fox News folks who said the president was out of step. The recent apologies, however, have not closed the credibility gap the legacy media has self-imposed.
Hopefully, the real story will emerge from a congressional committee hearing now in the works. The House Oversight Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. James Comer Jr. (R-Ky.) wants to know who knew what and when. Who was making decisions and wielding the autopen?
Given what we know at this point, there was a cover-up of an ailing president. The American people deserve to know the facts of this cover-up.
Diligent journalists could have unearthed that story. They could have dug into the declining president’s health, pushed for updates, challenged the “sharp as a tack” description, and pushed the Democratic National Committee to explain why they kept Joe Biden in the running for reelection knowing what they knew. The Democrats ousted him in a political coup once they saw he was going to lose and only then. It was about winning the game — and that’s why they lost.
If the former president was cognitively impaired and had other health issues, why did the DNC play along to the embarrassing end? That’s a question journalists should have been asking, including those sympathetic toward Biden.
I’m increasingly concerned about the state of journalism, as much as I am about a free press, which is so vital to democracy. We need information and access to our government. Journalists have a responsibility to bridge that gap.
The real story of the Biden Administration and the former president himself has yet to be written, but perhaps with information garnered from Comer’s upcoming hearing and the sworn input of Biden family members, friends, and staffers. The people deserve to know who was in charge.
Those like Tapper and Thompson did not feel compelled to say something or write a news story about the former president’s issues. Their ilk sometimes engaged in “spitting contests” with Fox News and Biden critics generally. By doing nothing, those legacy media figures did a disservice to the public and hurt their credibility.
Change is in the wind, I hope. Congressional hearings could provide answers to lingering questions: Was there a cover-up by family, friends, political operatives, and the legacy media? Will there be accountability? The public wants to know.
Pat Wandling hosts Speak Your Piece weekdays at noon on WBCB 1490.
