Along with proclaiming Joe Biden the winner before recounts are completed and before seeing how the Trump campaign’s legal challenges fare in the courts has come the nauseating previews of what state-run TV could look like under a possible Biden-Harris admin.

We saw CNN’s Brian Stelter gushing last week over what he believes would be a “restoration of normal relations between the president and the press corps” after an interview with Biden campaign press secretary T.J. Ducklo.

There was also the CNN segment where anchor Jake Tapper and his colleagues Dana Bash and Abby Phillip fangirled over the thought of Kamala Harris becoming the first woman of color VP.

This week, the worst we’ve seen from the media on the state-run TV front is not so much in how their anchors have waxed poetic about what a Biden-Harris admin might look like, but instead how reporters have conducted themselves during press conferences. There was the one from Monday with the press and Joe Biden that Fox News’ Bill Hemmer correctly characterized as a “bit of a love-fest” of sorts between the two.

And then there was Thursday’s “press conference”, which was arguably worse than Monday’s (both for Biden and the media). Newsbusters’ Curtis Houck sets the stage:

ABC senior congressional correspondent Mary Bruce continued her accumulation of quite a highlight reel if she ever wanted to join the Biden administration, wondering to Biden in the first of two questions: “How many lives do you think are at risk here if this transition remains stalled?”

[…]

NBC’s Kristen Welker: “You have said that lives could be lost if you don’t start getting briefings from the Trump administration and now here we are, more than 250,000 lives could be lost. Given that, how do you justify not taking legal action to get the briefings that you say are critical, that you say you need?”

[…]

PBS NewsHour journo Yamiche Alcindor: “And what did you say to Americans, especially immigrant Americans who came to the United States, looking for political stability and are seeing all the things that the President is doing?”

Basically, it was an “are you as eager as we are to see Donald Trump get out of the way so you can begin the process of unity and healing, Mr. Biden?”-type back and forth.

Watch the Oprah-like exchanges below, via MRC-TV:

Just downright pathetic, especially when you consider how the White House press briefing room degenerated into a disgraceful “Romper Room” atmosphere Thursday after Vice President Pence gave updates on the coronavirus vaccine.

Jim Acosta even had the nerve to complain about it even though his network couldn’t be bothered to cover it:

CNN didn’t cover the briefing. https://t.co/6rM7w24jqg

— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) November 20, 2020

As I noted yesterday, regardless of who ends up being certified as the winner of this presidential election, the national media are only going to get worse in the months and years ahead. This is why supporting non-traditional and independent news media sources is so vitally important right now. It’s pretty much the only way left for real reporting to have a chance at prevailing.

Related –>> Adam Housley Schooled Brian Stelter on What Journalism Is and Isn’t During Rudy Presser, and It Was Glorious