Early in the morning on April 4, Eric Boehlert — a veteran and unrelenting critic of the American news media — hit the button to publish the latest installment of his popular newsletter, Press Run. The piece — headlined “Why is the press rooting against Biden?” — stands out for two reasons.
The first is that Boehlert’s column really exemplified the difficult and often lonely mission he’d tackled with such ferocity since the did-Al-Gore-claim-to-invent-the-internet days of the late 1990s — yet another whack at the bad habits of the mainstream Beltway media. The piece asked pointed questions about why the press had ignored a flood of good news every month about the U.S. job market since President Joe Biden took office — to the point where a poll showed a plurality of Americans wrongly believe joblessness has actually worsened over the last 15 months.
“Is the press either hoping for a (Donald) Trump return to the White House, or at least committed to keeping Biden down so the 2024 rematch will be close and ‘entertaining’ for the press to cover?” Boehlert asked pointedly after reviewing headlines that downplayed the surge in monthly gains. He later added: “Biden is facing not just one organized opposition in the form of the GOP, but another in the form of the Beltway press corps.”
