Joe Biden decision surprised most US TV news networks: How CBS, MSNBC and more scrambled to cover bombshell

People, the public, like to think of "the media" as this adversarial truth seeking establishment. That media is waging this honorable, determined cold war against government and leadership, against businesses and important figures, against all the bad things and bad people, to Find Truth and Inform The People.

Which isn't at all how it works.

Mainstream media values "access" and "privilege" more than truth or information. Politically, this means the reporters basically play ball. All the time. They don't make waves, they don't upset sources, they don't rock the vote or upset the key figures.

You see movies, where some reporter is determined to find the truth and share it, against heavy opposition trying to silence those inconvenient truths. That doesn't happen in reality. Sure, "the media" will run with some embarrassing story, but only collectively. They all use each other as cover.

"Well, we have to lead with this story and talk about it, even though it makes you and your candidate look like a complete fool, because they are too." That's what a reporter, or more likely the newsroom director, will tell the candidate's or senator's, governor's, president's, mayor's, whomever's, representative when they call trying to quash a story.

Once something's somehow broken wide (these days often by an insider leaking it to social media), only then the gloves can come off and it's now officially a story. Until then, it's nudge-nudge, wink-wink, what have you done for me lately? Access and Privilege is a strong motivator to keep reporters toeing the line the way their subjects want it toed.

Politicians, their campaigns, their parties, dangle A&P constantly at the media. If a reporter or a media outlet pisses a principal off, that media source is frozen out. The candidate (and their campaign, party) stops taking calls, stops answering questions, doesn't give quotes, and won't give them exclusives or background briefings or off-the-record comments or anything else. No more "here's what's about to happen, so you can be the first" or "tomorrow X will happen so prep for it now." Complete cold shoulder.

And the media, or at the very least their corporate masters, don't want that. Why? It makes their process (being a media source) harder, meaning more expensive.

Beat work, aka being a reporter, can be expensive. In time and resources. Look at any media character in most movies and shows, and what do they depict? The reporter tirelessly pounding the streets, working the phones. Dropping in on buddies and contacts, conducting interviews, digging through libraries and archives for old documents, running down facts and figuring out how they puzzle piece together, and so on. You know, working.

That work takes time. Which costs money since the reporter is on their media source's payroll, and further is probably racking up expenses like phone bills, archive fees, travel and lodging, and so on.

Much, much cheaper to just call the campaign's press agent, and get a quote. Never mind that quote will, of course, be designed to only say exactly what the campaign wants said, in the way the campaign wants it said. Cheap and easy carries the day. And if they don't say what it says how it should be said, they're frozen out. Can't have that.

Used to be, every reporter was a reporter. Even with TV news involved, the lion's share of news happened at the newspaper level. Locally. Even national news originated locally, which is why papers like the New York Times and Washington Post became elevated to where they eventually did; they were ground zero in Important Cities where Big Shots Did Stuff.

Then politicians began to realize image mattered more than substance. So did media. Especially TV news. Broadcasts began to realize that who audiences wanted "reporting" the news (aka, reading it out to them on TV screens) wasn't a tireless hardcore reporter, but someone good on TV.

Now that's not necessarily wrong or bad, so long as the content that talking head reads is generated by actual reporters. But there's no real news anymore. It takes reporters to do reporting, and that's unnecessary expense that's been cut. Newsrooms have been slashed, reporters fired.

They all just lean on A&P, on frictionless and effortless social media, for their "news". They see a tweet drop, and call the campaign or the company's press office. Brief phone call, maybe some emails are traded, and then they've got "a story" they run with. No verification, no pushback, no cross-checking, no investigation, no second or third sources.

Now, my understanding is even though Biden was apparently being leaned on hard behind the scenes to withdraw, he was keeping his own council. There are quotes scattered around where mere minutes before (and I think even minutes after) Biden's tweet, campaign staffers were working the phone lists contacting Big Donors asking for campaign donations. So even "his own people" didn't know.

But actual newswork would have revealed most of what presumably led to Biden then deciding to announce his resignation from the race. Now that there's a story to chase, a bunch of mainstream media has been calling around to various Bigwigs on the Democratic side and finding out a lot of closed door meetings were happening. Quiet conversations, back room conversations, behind the curtain conversations.

That's the kind of thing most ordinary people just assume reporters are doing all the damn time. But they're not. They wait for the call. Or wait for a feeding frenzy.

Either way, none of the "reporters" were closely monitoring the DNC and Democrats in the weeks leading up to Biden's announcement. If they had been, they probably would have stood a chance to start putting pieces together. As random examples, perhaps Pelosi and other senior Democrats were meeting with Biden a lot more after the debate than they were before. Perhaps Biden Campaign staffers, or other people known to be close to Biden, were voicing concerns and having meetings about "what if". Perhaps big donors were declining to continue donating.

That last one is apparently only now coming out. Which just underscores my point. What the fuck are "reporters" doing if they're not chasing that kind of thing?

Yesterday I followed some recommendation chains through and ended up on a NYTimes podcast about the aftermath of Biden's announcement. The podcaster had someone who's a member of Biden's "donor council", whatever they called it. A group of rich people who regularly donate, and help solicit and coordinate donations, to Biden's campaign. One of the things they covered on the podcast really pissed me off, in so many ways.

The donor talked about how, in the past few weeks, donors were increasingly becoming angry and upset with Biden, and withdrawing financial support. The donor took the position that this, more than anything else, convinced Biden to withdraw. In plain words, rich people didn't support him anymore, so of course he had no choice but to withdraw.

Now, Biden withdrawing needed to happen. It needed to have happened more than a year ago, for him to have said in a more orderly fashion "find a 2024 candidate because it won't be me" but that's neither here nor there at this point. But that donor pointing out how much leverage money had over the decision, more than politics, more than the realities of the country and where it'll be headed if Project2025 is allowed to begin happening, really pisses me off. Even though it's not a surprise, that he was so comfortable discussing how much outside influence money (his money) had over the process, it's still angering for that in itself, along with the fact that it works that way in the first place.

And it also underscores my point here; that media is lazy as hell and doesn't seem to do anything we'd consider reporting. They could've been talking to donors. Political donors are often open donors. Sure backroom bullshit happens, but a lot of it does happen above board and openly. The names are known, people know who's giving money, when, and how much. Did any reporters start working the phones checking with the donors as part of a proper investigation to determine if Biden was or wasn't planning on withdrawing?

Nope, because that would be work. And work is expensive. They just did what they always do these days. They called the handful of "senior figures" inside the campaigns and politicians' offices, and took those quotes as the sum total of their "reporting". Those "sources" are used to fill out 35-40 minute chunks of content per hour (gotta have room for commercials obviously) where they just blather mindlessly without actual information to fill the time.

Which is why media was "blindsided". Along with how Biden staffers were calling for donations even after the tweet, various media sources had been in phone conversation with senior Biden staffers even minutes before the tweet. Communications directors, senior aides, the usual insider sources; who didn't know because Biden hadn't told them. So they were telling their media contacts "no, President Biden is committed to the election and saving the country from the scourge of Trump" only to minutes later see that tweet scroll up on their phones the same as everyone else.

None of the media were doing their jobs. They were, instead, playing the modern media game where you don't piss principals off so they keep letting you take at bats. T-ball at bats, swinging against a wiffle ball. Because if a media source goes "hard hitting" and "digs deep" then they have to do that all the time, every time, and that's just too much bother. They'd rather just trade some phone calls and then have an intern stretch a non answer, a nothing burger statement, into some empty bullet points a talking head will use to fill an empty segment for TV where they just say nothing in many more words in between commercials.

Media isn't news anymore. It's entertainment. It's like sports for all intents and purposes. "Live" every day, so you feel like you have to keep tuning in. Which drives their ratings, and they keep selling ad time to advertisers whose checks always clear.

And we wonder how we've ended up on the brink of national chaos and violent historic events. Guess it's a mystery. We'll never know. Anyway, after these messages we'll discuss how surprised we all were at Biden's withdrawal from the race and ask the question why didn't he tell all of us 48 hours before you plebeians in the general public learned of it.