Throughout the year, we have (dis)honored the press with our regular feature commemorating the efforts of press unprofessionalism, journalistic sloth, and generally deserved media mockery through nominations for The Golden Remington Awards.
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Our Trophy is a nod to the olden days when hard-scrabble hacks committed actual journalism and hammered out dispatches on those hefty wordsmith devices. To commemorate that past of muckraking reporting and shoe leather investigation, we acknowledge those journalists or outlets who fall short of that once respectable goal.
In this first of three entries, we will be recognizing individual special achievements, those moments throughout the year we saw actions of particular notability. So let us begin the ceremony of presenting the least-honored trophy in journalism – THE REMMYS.
MSNBC
On the network’s official Instagram account, they posted a clip of Joe Rogan lending his support for Kamala Harris. This came as a small surprise, as at that time in August, no one was aware that he had backed a candidate. As it turned out, he had not done so, and the heavily edited video clip included him saying things such as he was impressed by her military service. This was because MSNBC tried to present his words about Tulsi Gabbard as an endorsement for Kamala.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
As the press was involved in a furor over SCOTUS Justice Sam Alito flying the American flag upside down at his home, the Times wanted to jump into the fray with an exclusive of their own. Three reporters were gathered to deliver the breaking report that they had come into possession of photographs that show a year earlier at the Alito vacation residence in New Jersey — they had flown The Appeal To Heaven flag as well! This created the reaction that basically amounted to – Okay, so what???
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According to their strained report, this “provocative” flag was considered to be tied to the January 6 riot and the Stop The Steal push. One problem with their claim, however. The same New York Times did an exhaustive study of all the emblems and symbology spotted on January 6 and the paper never alluded to this flag being representative of anything to do with that day.
60 MINUTES (CBS NEWS)
The stalwart network news show embarrassed themselves once again when they tried to run the interview with Kamala Harris. It began with a Sunday morning teaser clip, but when the show ran the “full” interview, people noticed that her nonsensical answer from the promo piece was not included. This, and numerous jump cuts seen in her other answers, indicated this was an edited display. There were tepid initial responses from CBS, and after weeks of controversy, the show issued an explanation, claiming the interview had been trimmed to fit broadcast timeframes.
This did little to assuage criticisms, as that introduction piece was only 90 seconds, but the full primetime broadcast supposedly had no room for her answer. Also, the program avoided the usual practice of issuing a full transcript of the interview. It was clear the show performed a full cleanup job on the fumbling candidate.
Profanity alert:
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LAWRENCE O’DONNELL (MSNBC)
The MSNBC newsman earns this special honor for his coverage of the arrival of Stormy Daniels into the courtroom for the Donald Trump trial in Manhattan. More than a straightforward report on her arrival, Larry delivered a rather unsettling account that sounds more like a piece of fan fiction by an obsessive with a particular attraction to the subject.
The way that Larry describes her appearance and then creepily lapses into cringe-like imagery — such as imagining her doing dishes or tending to her horse in a stall — smacks of the opening pages of a script for a low-budget soft-core film.
CHUCK TODD (NBC NEWS)
A few journalists desperately tried to come out with their “new” coverage as if they had just discovered this detail about the president that the vast majority of the viewing public knew for themselves. Chuckles went a step further than that, perhaps unintentionally. On his program “The Todd-cast” (also known as “Mr. Todd’s Mild Ride”), Chuck was speaking with Jonathan Martin about Joe Biden’s condition, and Chuck let it slip that he was discussing the problems about Joe Biden with an administration official.
Todd described the conversation where the official admitted they had not heard from the president in some time, and the two discussed what he called an open secret, which was Biden’s debilitating condition. This conversation took place two years prior to Biden’s meltdown this summer, according to the journalist, and at no time after this did the newsman provide any coverage about Biden’s slipping mental state. Chuckles is the same guy who becomes testy whenever he hears about media bias.
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CBS NEWS
In its attempt to debunk video evidence of Joe Biden’s steady breakdown, the network literally resorted to the very behavior it condemned in its report. In lapsing into the then-hot narrative of cheap-fake videos, CBS gave an example that showed Joe Biden wandering off from world leaders at the G-7 Summit. The report explained Joe was moving over to speak with someone. The issue was not supposedly hiding why Biden stumbled away; it was that he was distracted and walked off from the photo op he was gathered for.
The problem the producers ran into was the claim that these videos do not show that Biden was walking over to speak with a paratrooper, except the soldier was visible because they mistakenly loaded up an accurate clip. After this, they swapped out that snippet to one it claimed was altered, though it appeared to be one edited by CBS. Once called out for this, they issued a correction explaining the edit.
BAKARI SELLERS (CNN)
We got a real sense of how difficult it had been for members of the press to sell Kamala Harris to the public when we saw them reduced to raving about the most pedestrian acts. Did you know she likes music? Say, you enjoy food, don’t you? So does Kamala!
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But the effort hit a new low when we were given this assessment from Bakari Sellers.
Did we mention pedestrian! Well, here was Mr. Sellers trying to sell us on the concept that it was somehow novel to a presidential candidate…walking. I mean, look, we know with Joe Biden that perambulation is actually a bit of a challenging concept, but c’mon, when selling a candidate with…THAT as a skill set, you are truly out of attributes.
DES MOINES REGISTER / ANNE SELZER
The paper pushed a shocking polling result in the days before the election, and the national press jumped all over the deeply biased result. After this same poll showed Trump leading over Kamala Harris in the state of Iowa all year, suddenly her results had Harris with a three-point lead. Despite all other polls in the state showing a Trump victory, the press did not call this one an outlier and instead pimped it hard with headlines.
Election night showed what a sham this had been, as Trump won the state handily with a huge +14 percent victory in Iowa. This exposed the biased national press, it shamed the paper significantly, and it led to a quick announcement later that Selzer was retiring from the polling business.
MELISSA GOLDIN (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
In the thick of the cheap-fake video media push to protect Biden, AP fact-checker Goldin tried debunking a claim that at the G-7 summit, Biden was misrepresented on video. Despite the fact that the issue was Biden hunched over for a lengthy period, Goldin latches onto a claim made by some on social media saying he tried to sit in a non-existent chair.
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She delivers a heavily edited clip that shows he does sit in a chair, as if this disproves his condition. However, an uncut clip shows the president bent over as his wife Jill covers her mouth to direct him not to sit yet, and we see Biden suspended awkwardly in mid-squat for a duration.
DANIEL WU (WASHINGTON POST)
Getting to new levels of positive insistence in the act of simping for Joe Biden’s electric vehicle push, the paper was less than forthcoming, though still technically accurate. Reporter Daniel Wu is clearly impressed that a couple from Scotland made the first-ever trip from the North Pole to the South Pole in a modified 4×4 EV Nissan Ariya SUV. The trek went for 20,000 miles and took nine months.
The couple, who in January returned home to Aberdeen, Scotland, told The Washington Post they hoped their feat could inspire other adventurers and any consumers considering electric vehicles. ”It just proves that EVs can go the distance.”
Does it though? Yes, they made the trip in the electric vehicle, but it took a bit of petroleum support to make the trek. It takes about 11 paragraphs to get to the small details of the trip. The couple “couldn’t eschew fossil fuels entirely — they recharged the vehicle using a gas-powered generator — but the vehicle’s battery and electronics held up.”
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JAKE TAPPER (CNN)
After some earthquake activity off the coast of California, Jake brought on a seismologist to discuss the event. Tapper could not help but fall back on the preferred narrative in the press regarding any kind of earth-based activity as he actually asked the tectonic expert if the earthquakes had been influenced at all by climate change.