As President Joe Biden reaches his first hundred days in office, the media has had ample time to adjust to the new administration. And it has – but at the expense of issues that less than a year ago were central to their reporting.
Both Biden and Trump took office on January 20 after their respective elections, but Biden did not hold a press conference until March 25. Trump held his first on February 16 – and at the time, he was ripped [1] because “no president [had] waited longer to have a press conference.“ But when Biden took even longer, he was heralded [2] for not being an “in-your-face” president.
As Biden began to make policy decisions, the double standard became more apparent.
- Executive orders – During Biden’s first 100 days, he signed 42 executive orders – the most since President Harry Truman, according to NPR [3]. Trump signed just 24 in his first hundred days. Throughout the Trump presidency, however, media outlets including PBS NewsHour called Trump’s use [4] of executive orders “dangerous.” Biden’s use of them was waved away by the same outlet as a “flurry” [5] of orders, with no suggestion of overreach.
- Immigration and the border – Mainstream media repeatedly railed against Trump [6] for putting children in “cages.” They briefly hit Biden for the same issue as he opened a “migrant facility for children, [7]“ but allowed Biden to rebrand it, despite that it was essentially a change from “cages” to “children in facilities similar to jails.” [8]
The media have covered the border crisis under Joe Biden completely differently than how they covered one under Donald Trump.
We have the clips to prove it. pic.twitter.com/1RpN9jgyK5 [9]
— MediaResearchCenter (@theMRC) March 23, 2021 [10]
AOC eagerly impeached Donald Trump twice, but calls us "privileged" for critiquing @JoeBiden [11] for accelerating deportations, reducing the amount of refugees the U.S. accepts, & expanding U.S. wars & sanctions at a more rapid rate than even Trump—yet imperialist @AOC [12] remains silent
— ?imperialism over-understander????? (@fOrGiVeNcHy) April 22, 2021 [13]
- COVID-19 – The vaccine rollout to fight COVID-19, after the media doubted Trump’s ability to get a vaccine as quickly as he did, underwent drastically different media treatment under Biden. They praised Biden for the same Trump plan [14] they scrutinized looking for problems. Outlets doubted when the vaccine would be rolled out and when Americans would be eligible to get it – before Biden was even president, NBC News quoted “Biden advisers” [15] as saying that Trump’s “mass vaccination timeline may be too optimistic.
Hypothetically – and I want to emphasize I'm asking this for no particular reason – will the definition of "misinformation" include things like whether the Trump admin left behind a robust COVID-19 vaccine regime vs. the Biden admin had to start from scratch? https://t.co/kYr57AbhEb [16]
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) February 20, 2021 [17]