On Sunday, President Trump demanded that Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent, take a drug test ahead of (or just after) their first debate, which is tonight. “His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???” Biden initially declined to respond, but his campaign subsequently did decide to clap back. “Vice President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words. If the president thinks his best case is made in urine he can have at it,” a spokesperson said. “We’d expect nothing less from Donald Trump, who pissed away the chance to protect the lives of 200K Americans when he didn’t make a plan to stop COVID-19.” Thus was the tone set for a debate that may prove to be up there with the most consequential in American history. In the buildup, mainstream media coverage has been more high-minded—though not always by much. Many reporters and pundits have, as is their wont, rushed to gamify the stakes—comparing them explicitly to sports, and babbling about winners and losers, offense and defense, expectations and tactics, narratives and polls. Moral considerations have often been secondary to optics, or shrouded in euphemisms or false equivalency. The New York Times referred to Trump’s despicable drug-test smear as evidence of “an absence of guardrails”; news outlets have cast the president’s debate “style,” as, variously, “unconventional,” “brash and unorthodox,”... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-09-29 12:19:19 UTC ]
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[ The New York Times | 2011-02-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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