The media have shifted from watchdogs to willing partners in political narratives, and two recent revelations — the Biden ghostwriter tapes and the Fauci diaries — make that plain.
I wanted to be a journalist once, thinking the press stood between power and the public. A journalism professor warned us to protect credibility even by abstaining from voting, a reminder of a different era. Today that ethic looks dead.
The media are the enemy of the people when they stop reporting and start protecting. What we have now is propaganda dressed up as journalism, with reporters willingly smoothing over or hiding the worst failures of friendly politicians and officials. That collapse matters because it shapes what the public believes and who governs.
Two stories this week illustrate the problem. First, the tapes between Joe Biden and his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer surfaced, and they confirm what many suspected about Biden’s cognitive decline and his handling of sensitive material. You can listen to the Biden-Zwonitzer tapes on YouTube.
On those recordings Biden repeatedly admitted to retaining classified documents and to sharing material he didn’t always recognize as classified. “Some of this may be classified, so be careful,” he told Zwonitzer, the kind of line that raises real legal and security questions. Meanwhile we’re still waiting for the transcripts from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview, which the courts have allowed to be released after litigation.
Hur described Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” That description was deployed by friendly outlets as cover, and many in the press rushed to dismiss video evidence and public concerns. Major outlets labeled footage of Biden’s struggles as “misleading” and “deceptive” rather than doing the hard work of reporting what actually happened.
Reporters and pundits offered explanations like “it was complicated” for why they avoided hard coverage, treating cognitive decline as a sensitive subject to be avoided. CNN’s internal discussion about why they didn’t press harder was revealing in its timidity. Alex Thompson even published a post arguing Biden’s debate fade could be explained by travel, a claim that didn’t hold up to scrutiny.
That pattern of protectionism is the media operating as collaborators, not critics. When a president’s mental fitness affects national security and governance, the press is supposed to investigate, not manufacture excuses. Their failure here is not neutral error; it is a consequential political choice.
https://x.com/JeffClarkUS/status/2081856734759366659
The second scandal is the Fauci diaries, which reveal cozy relationships between Anthony Fauci and high-profile journalists. Those entries show exchanges with Dana Bash, Jon LaPook, Lena Sun, George Stephanopoulos and others, often in tones that look less like oversight and more like coordinated messaging.
Fauci’s diaries even describe interactions that led to stories being softened or killed, and they record laughter about a Vanity Fair line that described a Republican as having “trip[ped] over his own a****le trying to debate Anthony Fauci.” Those aren’t isolated notes; they map a pattern of friendly access that compromised independent reporting on lockdowns and public health policy.
CBS’s LaPook coordinated before interviews and later produced flattering segments, while Lena Sun was recorded as taking calls that resulted in stories being changed. George Stephanopoulos texted Fauci “Thank you. So impressive,” and Andrea Mitchell was described as “very apologetic” after a booking miscommunication. The diary entries show a press corps that traded praise and favors instead of tough questions.
Even Jake Tapper, who scolded critics of Biden, built a “friendship building” with Fauci while policies closed schools and shuttered businesses. That relationship is especially damning because it shows the distance between what officials told the public and what some journalists privately accepted. Fauci later admitted in his diary that COVID likely came from a lab and that he helped drive the lockdown decisions for New York and California.
These episodes are not just errors in judgment; they are active betrayals of journalism’s role. When reporters become mouthpieces, bad policy goes unchecked, livelihoods get wrecked and public trust in institutions collapses. The journalism profession has traded skepticism for squad loyalty, and the costs are real.
Call them scandals — scandals — that have done measurable damage to the economy, to education, and to the public’s faith in science and government. Names like Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, George Stephanopoulos and others now show up not as watchdogs but as bystanders or enablers. In a functional media environment, those relationships would have prompted accountability and corrective reporting long ago.
The press can no longer pretend it is neutral when its behavior repeatedly protects political allies and officials who misled the nation. Americans deserve a free press that asks hard questions and reports facts without fear or favor. Until that returns, distrust will only deepen, and the line between journalism and partisan advocacy will keep getting blurrier.
