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Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, and if Trump was still in power I have zero doubt the media would call him out on what a cynical stunt this is - but Biden is in charge now, and that makes a huge difference to how they report on everything.

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It must sting that the (arguably) only successful thing to come out of this America First policy is now being credited to the Biden administration.

For all the mess Biden has inherited, he also inherited a near perfect vaccine production program. The reversals issued in the first 100 days did not reverse any export bans or regulations the Trump admin put in place for the vaccine production and rollout.

The vaccine program was failing to rollout when Biden inherited it.

The vaccines first got approval in December 2020, it wasn't failing it was just starting up. European vaccine rollout also had starting aches but was then very quickly limited by the supply-side.

Fair point. As we've seen there is due process and concerns as seen with some vaccines.

> The vaccine program was failing to rollout when Biden inherited it.

Regardless of what you think of Joe Biden or Donald Trump, this statement is categorically false.

There are enough legitimate things to criticize Donald Trump for that we don't need to make things up. As others have pointed out, the vaccine program was just starting up at the end of the Trump administration. Besides, much of the actual logistics were, and are, handled at the state level.

Please stop with this false narrative. American conservatives have giant and pervasive media organizations that cover Biden negatively 24/7. You're selectively choosing which "media" to criticize.

"Conservative media" (AM radio, Fox mostly, and various periodicals) are still treated as an alternative to "media", by all sides.

Fox news is the only "giant" media corporation promoting the conservative side and there are several individuals there that praise Biden. Everything else is left to far left, including our education system and the largest corporations in this country.

So, take your own advice and stop promoting this false narrative that there's negative Biden coverage anywhere near the amount that Trump had. It's absolutely obvious that's not true.

Let us not forget the climate that Trump created for himself. Much of that constant negative coverage was more about his antics and absurdities, and at some point, it became impossible for him to do/say much of anything without completely deserved backlash.

With that said, I can’t claim there is no media bias re: Biden, but we should not pretend that the circumstances are even close to similar.

That only happened because conservatives gave up trying to please a hostile audience. Reagan was Satan incarnate, until 20 years later, when he was a voice of reason compared to Dubya. Rinse and repeat.

Nobody cares about your conservative victomhood complex. If your leaders aren't mature enough to do their job without throwing a temper tantrum whenever someone says something mean about them, then sit the fuck down and let the adults handle it.

Yes but the media was biased before Trump, it just became glaringly obvious during his administration because they were profiting off of his antics. Their viewership has plummeted post Trump and you can see them grasping at anything to sensationalize and garner more views.

This reminds of the old quip about the founding of Fox News. Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch claimed they had found an untapped niche market in American broadcasting, "Half the country".

"left" ><

Ah now, the OP definitely has a point.

When Trump didn't condemn Saudi Arabia it was the worst thing any US president had done, when Biden does the same it's crickets.

Like, I hated Trump and I'm pretty happy with Biden, but to say that there isn't a substantial difference in media coverage is really just not true.

I never see your conservative media in any of my feeds unless I specifically go out and look for it. To us Europeans it looks like you Americans blindly approve of everything Biden does because that is the news you choose to show us.

I don't think it is healthy that you need to go to the other sides newspapers in order to get a proper evaluation of what Biden does, why should I have to dig through fox news to understand the narrative?

Well, Trumps actions would have been self-serving and cynical (as they all were). Biden hasn't shown those 'qualities'. Which is why I (and the WHO) give him the benefit of the doubt in this case.

But somehow some random "throwaway" account on a forum has more info than all of Biden's advisers? "Benefit of the doubt" is just a cover. We must assume competence and intent on the administration's part and hold them accountable for it (or give them credit), otherwise we're letting our bias/favoritism show through.

Let's be fair. We all gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. It was only after years of broken promises, and angry outbursts that some people turned against him by default.

Give Biden at least 1 year, and you'll see that some people are reflexively critical of him too.

Centrist voters may have given him some benefit of the doubt, but the news media never did and were never going to. Conservatives knew that ahead of time, which is why they voted for someone prone to angry outbursts.

Biden isn't exactly an outsider, and is just the face for scores of actual decision-makers in his administration; I don't think one more year is going to surprise anybody.

The news media is largely conservative. Over 50% of people in the US watch Fox news.

Now, granted, Murdoch wasn't always in favor of Trump, he still fell into line after the guy got elected.

> We all gave Trump the benefit of the doubt.

Seriously? Nothing of the sort happened. There was constant negative media and calls for impeachment immediately.

Let me remind you, in case you forgot, that the Muslim ban EO happened 7 days into Trump's tenure (as well as shithole countries remark). That's about all the "chance" I was prepared to give.

If that's how you lead foreign policy 7 days in, you don't deserve to be president. Full stop.

By "Muslim ban" you mean the travel restrictions of on citizens of the seven countries that Barak Obama also had restrictions on? It wasn't a muslim ban as nowhere in the language or practice did it ban muslims form entering the US. It restricted entry from people from seven countries that were listed by the Obama administration as having high rates of terrorist links. Hillary Clinton would likely have taken the same step if she had become president.

you realize under Trump, it was a blanket ban on all entry? that definitely wasn't the case under Obama.

Why is that do you think?

To revert self-serving orders, require extraordinary political clout above and beyond. Can that be done regarding every "bad" decision? A competent administration must not undo the "good" decisions as well.

The persecution complex...

What difference? Were they calling those bans a stunt before? No. You don't need to be hypothetical. This policy wasn't a secret.

The media didn't have to dig this deep when drinking bleach and injecting light were the topics du jour.

I think it's ridiculous to say "they, the media" here when media in the US is so often blatantly partisan. I don't believe it's difficult to find media that calls out Biden.

No, it is not. He is too centrist for left media. And right media hate him.

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