![]() ![]() The problem with the “gaffe” coverage, as I see it, has more been one of contrasts. Indeed, if Putin’s continued rule is at odds with global democracy, so is one country’s leader appearing to call for regime change in another-especially given America’s history of fomenting regime change overseas. The broader, pro-democracy message in his speech was indeed consequential, but this, too, has received media attention, and if the Putin comment overshadowed it, then that’s Biden’s fault more than anyone else’s. It’s thus hard to see all the focus on Biden’s comments as contrived. Even if he meant them, Biden’s words, on their face, were recklessly imprecise, risking the escalation of conflict with a nuclear-armed superpower whose leader is notoriously paranoid. On this particular occasion, however, the line between words and substance strikes me as being a lot more blurry-message discipline in the middle of a war, after all, is a whole lot more consequential than message discipline in a presidential campaign. ![]() If coverage characterizing Biden’s Putin remark as a “gaffe” instinctively feels trivial, that’s because political media has a history of trivial coverage. Obsessing over message discipline tends to relegate the substance-true or otherwise-of what has been said to secondary importance, something that we have seen already in coverage of Biden’s stance toward Ukraine. This worldview makes message discipline a central standard by which politicians ought to be judged, an area in which there does generally seem to be a double standard between coverage of most politicians and Trump, whose comments reliably drive outraged punditry but often get framed as an honest reflection of what he really thinks (despite his many lies). Often, such framing has been telling of a shallow media obsession with what Serious People consider to be smart political strategy-or the “cult of the savvy,” as the media professor Jay Rosen has called it. In the past, I, too, have regularly been annoyed by media coverage of “gaffes,” not least Biden’s. What does that have to do with Russia’s war in Ukraine? ICYMI: Mali banned two French broadcasters. Biden is 100% correct,” Dean Obeidallah wrote in a CNN op-ed. Lionel Barber, the former editor of the Financial Times, called for some media “perspective,” characterizing Biden’s remark as a “one-day story” whereas “Putin’s barbaric, unprovoked war against Ukraine goes on and on” Terrell Jermaine Starr, a high-profile US journalist who is covering the war from the ground, argued that “the only people who give a damn about what Biden said are media snobs who are out of touch with most people who aren’t in their comfortable cafes and aren’t ducking bombs.” Others argued simply that what Biden said about Putin not remaining in power was true. This framing, and the broader media furor around Biden’s apparently off-the-cuff comment, seemed to irk a variety of Biden allies, outside observers, and media critics, who variously argued, among other things, that Biden knew exactly what he was doing (even if some of his aides didn’t like it) that he clearly wasn’t actually advocating regime change as a matter of US policy that his remarks pale in comparison with Trump’s past “gaffes,” not that the media ever used that word to describe them that it’s hypocritical for the media to call for Biden to take a tougher stance toward Putin then chide him for doing so and that the focus on the last nine words overshadowed the highly consequential substance of Biden’s speech, which was about the global battle between democracy and autocracy. Another word, one commonly associated with Biden over the years, has recurred in coverage, too: the notion that he had just committed a “gaffe.” Biden’s apparent call for regime change has since dominated coverage of his speech despite the insistence of blindsided administration officials-and, as of yesterday, Biden himself-that regime change is not US policy. ![]() “Nine unscripted words.” Those three words ( or similar) were scripted by multiple major news outlets over the weekend to refer to a statement that President Biden made about Vladimir Putin-“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”-at the end of a major speech about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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