Biden’s Team Shows Increasing Hostility Toward Press in Election Year
The occupants of the White House have historically had issues with news coverage. Now, Joe Biden’s administration is publicly challenging the portrayal of the President more aggressively than before.
In recent weeks, an administration aide sent a letter to the White House Correspondents’ Association, complaining about the coverage of a special counsel’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. Additionally, the president’s campaign objected to the perception that negative stories about Biden’s age received more attention than remarks made by Donald Trump about the NATO alliance.
This increased pushback against the media is a noticeable change, although not as extreme as the “enemy of the people” territory, according to Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University and former CNN Washington bureau chief.
This strategy is intended to make the media a foil and also serves to distract voters from negative news. The criticism serves as a reminder for some newsrooms to think twice about the stories they publish, according to Sesno.
The letter from Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, accused reporters of improperly framing stories about the special counsel’s report. He suggested that certain stories misstated the findings and conclusions of the investigation and urged journalists to provide more scrutiny to House Republicans and the reasons behind their impeachment inquiry of Biden.
Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, disagreed with Sams’ concerns, suggesting that the criticisms should be directed to individual news organizations and not through internal pool distribution channels.
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