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What the Media Missed: Democracy dies with Bezos and RFK Jr. makes us sick [1]
['Daily Kos Contributor']
Date: 2025-03-02
Welcome to What the Media Missed, where we dig into the many examples of legacy media malpractice that disgraced the nation’s front pages this week—while highlighting how Daily Kos goes past the spin to uncover the real horror stories of our new Trump era.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. plays doctor
The legacy media’s endless quest to be seen as perfectly objective often leads the nation’s newspapers of record into funny little intellectual cul-de-sacs. Nowhere is that more apparent than in recent coverage of noted vaccine conspiracy theorist and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On Feb. 18, The New York Times dutifully dictated Kennedy’s unhinged talking points in an article headlined “Kennedy Says ‘Nothing’ Off Limits in Scrutinizing Chronic Disease,” which sounds … good, right? Shouldn’t the government be going all-out to solve the chronic diseases that plague nearly half of all Americans? Maybe Kennedy isn’t quite so crazy after all!
Daily Kos had a different take on Kennedy’s new direction for HHS. “RFK Jr.’s ignorant war on vaccines will make America sick again,” wrote Alex Samuels, along with some critical reporting the Times left out. As it turns out, Kennedy’s “nothing is off limits” approach doesn’t apply to COVID-19 vaccine research, which he abruptly shut down despite the program being mere days from accepting 10,000 trial patients.
A coincidence, surely.
Kennedy isn’t “scrutinizing” chronic disease, as the Times claims—he’s actively hindering efforts to prevent outbreaks and slashing thousands of mission-critical jobs. We saw more of that distract-and-evade approach this week when Kennedy downplayed an ongoing measles outbreak that recently claimed the life of a young Texas girl.
Kennedy may be able to launder his lack of credentials through a complacent media, but it will be tougher to hide the death toll.
The Washington Post goes MAGA
When billionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, announced this week that the newspaper’s legendary opinion section was changing, he really buried the lede. In a post shared on X, Bezos announced the departure of opinion editor David Shipley and a pivot towards coverage that championed “personal liberties and free markets.”
In reality, it was nothing short of a surrender to Trump’s ongoing media pressure campaign.
Daily Kos saw Bezos’ move for exactly what it was, writing that the “Washington Post opinion page is going MAGA—and team Trump is cheering.” Other outlets weren’t so quick, with cable news outlets largely framing Bezos’s motives as genuine and right-wing outlets praising the billionaire’s patriotism. But what does Bezos’ ultimatum actually mean?
A healthy newspaper opinion page challenges conventional wisdom, even the opinions of its owner. The right question for Post editors to ask is why Bezos believes Trump represents “personal liberties” and “free markets” when most of the president’s record points the exact opposite direction.
Can anyone seriously argue that Trump, yuge fan of trade wars and tariffs, who routinely calls for prosecuting critical media outlets, is any kind of champion for free markets or free speech? Unfortunately, the Post no longer has a healthy newsroom to raise those kinds of glaring contradictions. The boss just made sure of that.
Despite media hand-wringing over Bezos’ pronouncement, few outlets actually criticized him in public because a growing number of media outlets are owned by Trump-supporting billionaires like Bezos. When MAGA sycophants like Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Bezos make common cause to shift their papers rightward, neither has any business incentive to report on the other side.
The Post is quietly making its peace with Trump as Bezos positions his newspaper to serve as MAGA’s megaphone in Washington. Thanks to the complicity of his fellow media magnates, Bezos’ quiet revolution will definitely not be televised.
America’s invisible veterans
Even the largest media outlets have struggled to keep pace as Trump and Elon Musk slash their way through the federal workforce. Lost in the crush of events are the over 6,000 veterans facing serious financial worries after being pushed out of their jobs earlier this month. Yet those betrayals barely made headlines this week, drowned out by other sideshows in Trump’s chaotic circus.
Though the layoffs affect veterans across the federal government, Trump’s team reserved most of their ire for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Officials there have faced multiple rounds of purges and expect even more firings as Musk and his DOGE project descend on the agency.
“We are watching the gutting of the VA,” one employee told military newspaper Stars & Stripes.
Daily Kos was one of the few outlets reporting on House Democrats’ effort this week to advance the Protect Veteran Jobs Act, which would reinstate the thousands of veterans fired by Musk’s unofficial cost-cutters and also require regular transparency reports whenever federal agencies fire veterans. So far, not a single Republican supports the measure. Go figure.
As troops and their families start feeling the burn of Trump’s cuts, they’re beginning to reconsider their traditional loyalty to Republican policies. That’s given Democrats unlikely new allies in spouses of fired veterans, many of whom feel personally betrayed by Trump’s unceremonious sackings.
Military families have all too often tuned out traditional Democratic messaging. With their worlds in doubt and Republicans unsympathetic, many of those disaffected military families are ready to start talking.
Headline Watch with Oliver Willis
“Slow walking” right off a cliff.
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