Those dastardly politicians on the right are getting political over politics!

Some time ago there was a media scandal when a message board had been revealed, entitled ‘Journolist’. On it some prominent media names would get together and go over their coverage of the news events, coordination of sorts. Formed by Ezra Klein, the membership numbered into the hundreds and featured only left-leaning names, something Klein defended. That this fed directly into the claims of bias in the press were both denied and led to its being shut down.

Other such digital gatherings have surely cropped up, but the media hive mind is also fed by regular dispatches from the leftist crank outlet Media Matters. Every so often you will see a common story, and even common language, suddenly cropping up in a news cycle and much of the time this is due to this level of coordination. We are seeing a J-List style of echo-chamber reporting today, arriving from both the New York Times and Politico. Somehow both outlets have delivered a similar storyline of President Biden being unfairly aggrieved by Republican approaches to the pandemic response — ‘independently’.

At The Times we get delivered this assessment: Republicans Seize On Shuttered Schools As A Political Rallying Cry. Then, just to drive home the point of how vile these GOP master villains are, they found another sinister method when they promoted the article: ‘’Republicans in Congress are hammering at the issue…’’. Curiously, over at Politico they managed to cover not just the same story, but they shared a nearly identical approach. GOP Tries To Weaponize Pandemic-Exhausted Parents Against Biden.

Yes, we get the tired method of reporting not on the problem on the left but the reaction to it on the right, with all the ‘’pouncing’’ and ‘’seizing’’ they could muster. The telling aspect is how two separate outlets came up with covering the same specific news item, and also managed to arrive at the same conclusion. You can almost see an exchange between the reporters.

NYT – Are you doing a GOP piece on attacking Biden?

POLITICO – Yea, it’s pretty unfair of them to politicize the virus, that’s the Dems’ plan, after all.

NYT – True, true. We’ll approach it as ‘’GOP Seizes’’. 

POLITICO – Okay, dibs on ‘’weaponize’’,

NYT – Good one. We’ll probably use ‘’Hammers’’ on Twitter, so you know.

POLITICO – I like it! I think some here are toying with ‘’throttles’’, or ‘’torches’’ as well.

Both outlets calmly sidestep any true criticism of Biden here by turning the focus onto his critics. There is no real exploration of the insipid proposal by the administration to open schools in some districts for one day a week. This cynical plan will allow Biden to claim he meets his school opening goal in 100 days…by kind of, sort of, technically but not really opening schools. It is such a lame piece of chicanery that they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge it.

What is notable in both of these efforts is that the approaches taken do two things at once. First they have to ignore the mounting evidence out there saying that there is little risk in reopening schools. That is, they, and the administration, are ignoring science. The second detail is that this approach means they have to effectively be painting parents and families as the bad guys in this scenario, in order to appease the unions who have been making ridiculous claims in order to see schools remain closed.

In many areas, teachers’ unions are saying they will not return to work until certain demands are met. The issue – these demands have little to do with health and safety. Now that a vaccine has arrived (one of the earlier demands made before classes could open) the unions are moving to more obtuse demands before they will go to work. Now the call is to ban charter schools, increase payout benefits, halt evictions of out-of-work citizens, and any number of other requirements non-related to teaching.

This is the side of the issue the news outlets are backing. And they are wondering why the Biden administration is facing the challenge of the emerging voting demographic of disgruntled parents of school children chained to their laptops at home. Joe may be paying respects to his union cronies, but he will be facing down voters growing more fed up with the forced closures. The GOP should be spry enough to pounce on the needs of these parents.