Since taking over the White House office, President Joe Biden hasn’t been that active when it comes to interviews and news conferences. According to a recent report, Biden has only given 33 news conferences in his first three years, lower than any president since Ronald Reagan, and that the 86 interviews he’s given were also much lower than any other president since Reagan.
In comparison, former President Obama gave 422 interviews during the first three years of his presidency, and Trump had given about 300 to this point in his, according to Martha Kumar, a Towson University professor emeritus and press expert.
Instead, Biden prefers more informal appearances where reporters ask a few questions, with comparatively little opportunity for follow-up, she said: The 535 such sessions that Biden conducted was second only to Trump’s 572.
Biden admin slams White House reporters
President Biden’s team is stepping up their game after the release of the Robert Hur report. They’re really trying to push back against what they see as unfair and wrong news stories about the president. This move made some journalists unhappy.
The White House’s legal team spokesperson, Ian Sams, wrote a letter to the group that represents White House reporters, saying that the news was getting the story wrong about the Special Counsel’s investigation into how Biden dealt with classified documents.
Sams was upset over news stories claiming Biden deliberately did something wrong with these classified documents, as reported by the Associated Press on Wednesday. The investigation, led by Special Counsel Robert Hur, didn’t end with suggesting that the president should be charged after looking into the situation with the classified materials for several months.
Sams argued that since Hur didn’t recommend any charges, it disproves the idea that the president intentionally kept classified material, as he shared in his letter on social media.
White House Correspondent’s Association responded to the critics
Kelly O’Donnell, who leads the group for White House journalists, disagreed with the letter’s approach, saying that the White House should have directly talked to the news outlets involved.
“It is inappropriate for the White House to utilize internal pool distribution channels, primarily for logistics and the rapid sharing of need-to-know information, to disseminate generalized critiques of news coverage,” O’Donnell said as reported by the Associated Press.
Biden’s team angry on the reporting
The Biden team has also been vocal about how much attention is given to Biden’s age and memory. A point in Hur’s report described Biden as an old man with good intentions but a failing memory, which might make him seem more relatable to a jury.
T.J. Ducklo, speaking for Biden’s campaign, strongly criticized the media for dwelling on the president’s age. He insisted that it’s important for journalists to seriously and vigorously report on what former President Trump says and does, according to the AP’s report.
This statement expressed disappointment with the emphasis on Biden’s age and pointed out that there’s been insufficient reporting on some recent controversial remarks by Trump regarding NATO.
A journalist from the White House shared with Fox News Digital that despite the administration’s attempts to control the narrative, the release of the special counsel’s findings means all bets are off.
White House deputy press secretary reaction goes further
Andrew Bates, the deputy press secretary for the White House, also voiced his frustration with how the media has been covering the president, particularly focusing on Biden’s age and memory after the special counsel’s report came out.
Bates, responding to an article by Puck News about the media’s reluctance to discuss Biden’s age, argued that the president’s age had been a topic among journalists well before the Hur report was made public.
New York Times publisher is “extremely upset”
The New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger said Monday that the White House is “extremely upset” about its coverage on President Joe Biden’s age but the newspaper will “continue to report fully and fairly.”
“We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden,” Sulzberger said in an interview with The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
“He is a historically unpopular incumbent and the oldest man to ever hold this office. We’ve reported on both of those realities extensively, and the White House has been extremely upset about it.”
