The issue here is a larger one. The media in general (driven largely by the proliferation of far right sources in response to their perceived slight from a “biased” traditional media class) is engaged in a perpetual framing of all political issues as a “both sides” viewpoint. That is, instead of looking outside and seeing whether or not it’s raining, even mainstream media outlets will run a story and then run the “other side’s” response to the story rather than providing the underlying facts of the situation.
Another major issue is that a large portion of conservatives are voraciously consuming media that is objectively unreliable and constantly just running their own soap operas of the latest “gotcha” of the day. Since this is about the only media most of these lemmings use, they believe it is THE news and that any pushback to those carefully crafted stories are “biased liberal media.”
Finally, the right wing media creating these stories are either true believers or, more frequently, grifters who know exactly what they’re doing with their listening base of TheReffs of the world. Theres a reason TheReff, droves of social media users, and the bulk of the GOP keep rattling off these same names and epithets (Hunter Biden, Pierre, Hatch Act, those random names TheReff posts constantly): it’s the language used by the grifters on the right manipulating “news” coverage. All the sources they listen to on talk radio or FoxNews or OAN or whatever use the same talking points to drive home the broader point.
Further, since the mainstream media is more interested in both sides coverage instead of objective coverage, these ideas all end up with roughly equal treatment time wise whether or not the underlying stories have merit or not.
