Why reporters are focused on a book about the former president instead of the current one
In Tuesday’s newsletter, I wrote about the upcoming book about Joe Biden from authors Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios: “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”
It paints a pretty bleak picture of Biden’s final months in office, when he was described as having good days and bad, often working limited hours and, according to the authors, “an increasing number of moments when he seemed to freeze up, lose his train of thought, forget the names of top aides, or momentarily not remember friends he’d known for decades. Not to mention impairments to his ability to communicate — ones unrelated to his lifelong stutter.”
There have been plenty of reactions, but chief among them (at least in my inbox) is why we are talking about the former president when we should be concentrating on all the things being done by the current president.
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem