Yes, the media’s Biden coverage was flawed. But its reporting on Trump was far worse

‘The media played a destructive role in Trump’s election, one that has never been adequately acknowledged.’ Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

With a new book out about Joe Biden’s failed re-election campaign, a media reckoning is in full swing.

It goes something like this: mainstream journalism failed the voters. Reporters were complicit; they didn’t tell us how much the elderly president had declined. They didn’t dig beneath the surface of what Biden aides were doing as they covered up the physical and cognitive decline of the leader of the free world.