Media critic: Social Media a Landmine for Journalists Pollster: Democrats, We Have a Problem

Dylan Byers at NBC News cites the case of Politico editor-in-chief John Harris, who last week implied in a tweet that President Trump is a white nationalist, as a “reminder of the perils journalists face on Twitter, where there is a temptation to stray from reporting and share jokes and opinions” that expose “their own biases.” Harris insisted his tweet was only “a quip” — which only “makes one wonder” why he “was quipping on Twitter in the first place.” Because “the nature of Twitter itself makes particular examples of partisan behavior stand out, in turn opening news organizations to accusations of partisan bias.” And as Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei, who maintains journalists should only share links to published reporting, has suggested, reporters’ social-media activity has “almost always betrayed a left-wing bias.”

Democrats have “a serious problem” — one Douglas Schoen at Fox News contends “they have yet to acknowledge fully or, frankly, at all.” It’s that their party has moved “so far to the left that Republican attacks on them for being extremist and too far in the clutches of their tired, out-of-touch leadership” are “working well.” Moreover, “the loud agenda of their Democratic socialist wing and the utterances of many of their potential 2020 presidential candidates only compound this perception.” It’s “the same problem that Hillary Clinton faced in 2016.” Once again, he adds, “Republicans are making the case” — successfully, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll — that Democrats “are too far outside of the mainstream to be trusted.”