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Corporate media’s attempt to downplay concerns about President Joe Biden’s mental fitness faced criticism after his debate performance with former President Donald Trump.
Despite ongoing doubts about Biden’s cognitive abilities and numerous gaffes during his 2020 campaign, legacy media previously dismissed these concerns, attributing them to Republicans and even suggesting they were influenced by Russia.
“This is the sort of gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life,” an August 2021 CNN analysis by Chris Cillizza read. “If Republicans have some sort of proof that Biden is declining, they should bring it forward. If they don’t, they should stop doing what they’re doing. Immediately.”
“Some have been quick to question Biden’s mental fitness, hinting at a possible age-related cognitive decline (he just turned 77 years old), but it’s important to consider that many of those missteps could have been caused by his lifelong struggle with a speech impediment,” The Hill wrote in 2019.
“‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead,” The Washington Post wrote in 2024.
“The use of these clips is an especially pernicious couple of examples of manipulated video… because it’s intended to create a false narrative that doesn’t reflect the event as it occurred,” the outlet added.
Recent reports have highlighted worries expressed by former President Barack Obama and growing calls for Biden to reconsider his candidacy due to age and fitness-related doubts.
“There’s ample speculation online about what the news media did and didn’t do with respect to covering the president’s age,” NYT executive editor Joe Kahn stated. “What I’ve seen and what our readers have experienced from our team is steadfast, fact-based reporting on the subject that began a couple of years ago as we documented Biden’s age-related challenges in multiple, industry-leading articles. We have stayed on that story at every turn, always with nuance and context, through today’s outstanding report.”
Coverage of Biden’s competence has remained debated, with some mainstream outlets criticized for not scrutinizing the issue more intensely.