Voters Want the Truth (and they can handle it)

On Sunday, May 18^th, 2025, mainstream media reported former President Joe Biden’s diagnosis of stage-four prostatic cancer. It was a significant change in the media’s coverage of the former President, if for nothing else than its unflinching candor.

During Joe Biden’s presidential campaign of 2020, progressivist media portrayed him in the best of light. Networks like MSNBC and CNN would show Biden confidently deliver a rousing speech to a crowd, or a sharp interview to a reporter. Later, conservative media would show the unedited footage from these appearances, which portrayed Biden less favorably. He stumbled over his words in places, appeared disoriented, and at times he needed handlers like Jill Biden to guide him by the arm off stage. His “rousing speeches” were but short excerpts during a window of lucidity, and the “crowds” were more a product of skillful camerawork to make meagre attendance appear greater (mind you that this was in 2020 during the pandemic, so many people were avoiding large in-person gatherings).

After Biden won the election, progressivist media continued this favorably edited coverage of his presidency, only this time with higher stakes. This was the Commander-in-Chief – the guy with his finger on the proverbial red button – and certain media thought it appropriate to deceive the citizenry about the President’s mental competence. In June 2023, President Biden confused Ukraine with Iraq during a press conference at the White House. On February 6^th, 2024, Biden confused France’s current President Emanuel Macron for its former President François Mitterand, who was at that point deceased for 28 years. In July 2024, he introduced Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as that of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and introduced Kamala Harris as “Vice-President Trump.”

Progressives regularly dismissed these as minor gaffes – instances of flustered misspeaking which can happen to anyone – but the jig was up after the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on June 27^th, 2024. Finally, voters had an unvarnished look at President Biden in action, and it was worrisome. Even NBC anchor Lestor Holt’s attempt to rehabilitate Biden via a softball interview on July 15^th, 2024 – two days following a close attempt on candidate Donald Trump’s life in Butler, PA – could not sufficiently restore Biden’s image. On July 21^st, 2024, the “party of democracy” told 14 million Democratic primary voters nationwide that their choice of Biden did not matter, as he would be swapped out of the race with all the ease of unscrewing an extinguished light bulb.

Pundits have commented that President Biden’s diagnosis of cancer was discovered earlier but was suppressed so that he could win, then immediately resign in favor of Kamala Harris. IF true, it would hardly be the first time a president had concealed infirmity from the public. President Woodrow Wilson’s concealment of a thrombosis in September 1919 lasted seventeen months and was so extensive that it occasioned the 25^th Amendment. However, the current trend has been towards candor, mostly, as evinced by John “Casual Friday” Fetterman’s successful campaign for U.S. Senate in 2022, after admitting to having suffered a stroke – conclusively demonstrating just how much brain power is needed to serve in the Senate. Given that screening for prostatic cancer has been part of the presidential medical battery since Barack Obama’s administration, these pundits could be correct, but we may never know. More to the point, it hardly matters since the central issue here is not a candidate’s deceit regarding his health, but the media’s complicity therein.

The electorate depends on the media for information about the candidates. Just as it would breach good journalism to misrepresent a candidate’s positions so as to mislead voters, misrepresentation of his medical fitness for office is no less blameworthy. If a network’s editors continually have to purge footage of a candidate’s disorientation during public appearances, that is no longer journalism but rather purposeful deception of the electorate.

Earlier progressivist media was mentioned, but of course both sides play this game. Candidate Trump committed all sorts of gaffes on the campaign trail, which conservative media did its best to suppress, and of course it still covers for him now that he is President.

Imagine if the media simply presented all balloted candidates as they actually are; unfiltered in their public utterances and appearances. That honesty alone would be a sea change in journalism. Free speech allows a network to highlight its audience’s preferred candidate over others, but no network should exclude a candidate’s public manifestations of serious medical concerns which may compromise his performance in office.

Ultimately, it is the consumers of media who will hold networks to account for their coverage of candidates. Independent media has long surpassed mainstream media in audience (compare the Joe Rogan Experience’s 14.5 million dedicated listeners to MSNBC’s daily viewership which peaks at just 1.024 million). This indicates that consumers trust alternative media over the legacy networks. Considering that 6.2 million blue votes were lost from the presidential election in 2020 to that of 2024, this may indicate that media consumers were alienated by certain networks which had assured them over four years of their candidate Joe Biden’s mental acuity, only to be betrayed by the post-primary revelation of Biden’s mental distress. Maybe greater honesty can be a winning marketing strategy for moribund mainstream media.

In any case, it is fervently hoped that former President Biden can recover from this malady. If not, then hopefully he can be as comfortable as possible as he settles his affairs.