Moves from the mainstream left-wing media to get Joe Biden off of the Democratic electoral ticket for the November presidential elections due to his age and mental capacity have provoked the president's anger. New York Times Chairman Arthur Gregg Sulzberger acknowledged that the White House has conveyed to them that the president is "extremely upset" by such reports.
In a interview with the Reuters Institute of Journalism, Sulzberger justified the need to publish information that Biden does not like in the same way that they include news against Donald Trump, pointing out that it is a reality, no matter how much the president's team would like related media to refrain from mentioning it.
We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden. 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.
War against the media
Although Biden and his entourage are especially nervous about friendly fire, especially when it comes from newspapers like The New York Times or The Washington Post, or television networks like CNN, ABC and NBC, the White House's war on the media has been extended to all outlets that echo information questioning the president's cognitive ability and criticize his age. This is demonstrated by the very harsh letter that one of Biden's spokespersons, Ian Sams, sent to the White House Correspondents' Association criticizing the coverage of special prosecutor Robert Hur's report on Biden's papers.
Many outlets have reported striking inaccuracies that misrepresent the report’s conclusion about the President, and reporters in the White House Briefing Room have asked questions that include false content or are based on false premises. When significant errors occur in coverage, such as essentially misstating the findings and conclusions of a federal investigation of the sitting president, it is critical that they be addressed.
Sams himself uploaded the letter to X to illustrate his complaints. He includes the headlines from The New York Times, CNN, CBS, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal as well as a question from an unidentified reporter.
The Special Counsel report was ~400 pages long, meandering and confusing. That led to a lot of misreporting on its conclusions, namely that it found POTUS “willfully retained” classified docs.
That’s wrong.
I sent a letter last night to the WH press corps explaining the facts: pic.twitter.com/Dd4pI9abg6
— Ian Sams (@IanSams46) February 14, 2024
Journalists respond to 'inappropriate' White House letter
The president of the White House Correspondents' Association, NBC journalist Kelly O'Donnell, responded forcefully to the letter, which she described as "inappropriate," while warning Sams that the organization "does not, cannot and will not serve as a repository for the government’s views of what’s in the news."
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. We will not distribute them going forward. As a non-profit organization that advocates for its members in their efforts to cover the presidency, the WHCA does not, cannot and will not serve as a repository for the government’s views of what’s in the news.
