A new book has fueled controversy over press handling of the ex-president’s decline. But that distracts from a bigger problem

With a new book out about Joe Biden’s failed re-election campaign, a media reckoning is in full swing.

It goes something like this: mainstream journalism failed the voters. Reporters were complicit; they didn’t tell us how much the elderly president had declined. They didn’t dig beneath the surface of what Biden aides were doing as they covered up the physical and cognitive decline of the leader of the free world.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture