While President Joe Biden signed a $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill that is supported by a solid majority of Americans and that funds the distribution of coronavirus vaccines, among many other things, Fox News he is fixating on something he is not doing: organizing formal press conferences.
Although he has repeatedly answered questions from reporters in informal settings and conducted a CNN city hall, Biden has gone 50 days without giving a formal press conference. It would be ideal for him to do one, but there are many good reasons why he hasn’t done it yet – the urgent economic and public health crisis he inherited, a pandemic that complicates logistics and the legacy that former President Donald Trump left him in the presidency press conferences doubling as hate shows.
Still, it is beginning to irritate members of the press, with the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association telling Vanity Fair that full press conferences are “essential to informing the American people and holding the administration accountable.” And the Washington Post editorial board wrote that “it’s past Biden’s time for a press conference” – even though he acknowledged that more press availability did not mean more truth or transparency with the previous president.
The Post’s careful editorial board exemplifies how journalists are having to reevaluate power relations and what it means to do opposing journalism now that the White House isn’t home to a habitual liar who routinely turned reporters into objects of hatred , even when it was accessible to them with helicopter-side printer availability and press briefings on the coronavirus that are most remembered by Trump, suggesting the idea of disinfectant as a cure for Covid-19.
But on the cable network that benefited most from Trump’s presidency, all that nuance was lost.
Fox News has done its best in the last few days to blow up the fact that Biden has yet to give a formal press conference in a major scandal, complete with special graphics and coverage on programs suggesting that Biden is hiding something.
Only on Thursday morning, Fox News presenters said things like “President Biden answers reporters’ questions while going 50 days without a formal press conference”, and “Here we are, on the 50th – 50 days after Biden’s presidency – and we have a prime-time speech, but still no formal press conference.”
While it is true that Biden broke the modern precedent of not giving a press conference at some point during his first month in office, press secretary Jen Psaki answers questions from reporters every day of the week during briefings that illustrate one of the reasons why which Biden may be in no hurry to do one himself.
Fox News’s Peter Doocy stood out during Psaki briefings for asking loaded and stubborn type questions regularly on topics ranging from the National anthem to the Olympics for energy policy to the reopening of schools.
One can understand why Biden, who has fair repeatedly with Doocy during press releases in the past few months, you may want to spend your time on things other than helping Fox News create clips ready for Hannity to own him. But his decision not to engage has fueled the narrative Fox has been pushing since the campaign about him supposedly hiding something and having less energy than former President Donald Trump.
“Your viewers remember when [Trump] he would go out to get Marine One, he would just do those makeshift press conferences and he would answer all the questions, all the questions, sometimes he would be there for 30, 40 minutes, “said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) during Tuesday’s edition of Sean Hannity’s show “This is what the American people deserve.”
What Jordan and Hannity do not mention, of course, is that, while Trump may have been more willing to engage with reporters than Biden himself so far, the former president’s interactions with reporters were the opposite of constructive.
Trump’s press conferences are nothing to regret
No discussion of the controversy surrounding Biden and press conferences (as she is) would be complete without remembering that during Trump’s years, presidential engagement with reporters was more WrestleMania than a bona fide sharing of information – something that Psaki tried and almost always succeeded in doing during his press conferences.
To be clear, political journalism that does not hold the powerful accountable is nothing more than public relations. Some degree of tension between the press and elected officials is a good and natural thing. But during the Trump years, the relationship between the executive branch and the journalists covering it became abusive.
For example, during Trump’s first formal press conference – held on February 16, 2017 – he criticized the press for accurately covering the circumstances surrounding the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn amid revelations he lied to. FBI about his contact with Russia, saying things like “the report is false” and criticizing reporters as “dishonest”.
That press conference was such a disaster that Trump was more than a year before holding another. However, some observers are contrasting the Trump cage fight in February 2017 with the fact that Biden has not yet given a press conference as evidence that Biden is somehow falling short of expectations.
I file under the things that we would all go crazy if Trump did that. Biden has spent 50 straight days without holding an adequate and individual press conference. “The previous record was set by President George W. Bush, who waited 33 days.” https://t.co/RMkL5ew5AP
– Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) March 11, 2021
Although Fox News would probably use a Biden press conference to create catchy moments, there are legitimate questions that the president must answer. What is his strategy for raising the minimum wage, since he did not enter the Covid-19 bill? What is your long-term plan to deal with the recent increase in undocumented migrants on the southern border? What is your response to the Democrats who criticized your decision to launch air strikes in Syria?
Psaki recently told CNN that Biden plans to answer questions from reporters during a formal press conference soon.
“We hope to hold a full formal press conference, but in the meantime, the president answers questions from reporters covering the White House regularly, including this morning. [on March 3], “she said.” And her focus day after day is to keep the pandemic in check and get people back to work. That’s what people elected him for. “
In fact, by signing the Covid-19 bill on Thursday, Biden has hinted that he will be holding a press conference soon, saying reporters, he will “answer” their “questions in the next few days”.
Fox struggles to deliver blows to Biden
It is fair to point out that Biden has spent a relatively long time without a press conference. But Fox’s most pronounced tendency to turn the issue into a major scandal illustrates the difficulty they are having in drawing blood from the Biden government.
Before presser-gate became a big topic, Fox News spent most of the week blaming Biden for Dr. Seuss’ (fake) cancellation. Hannity has been pressing relentlessly conspiracy theories about Biden’s health, while the “news side” of the network has endeavored to feed the complaints of the right with endless discussions about the “cancellation of culture”.
In this case, as in many others, Fox’s coverage echoes what prominent Republicans like RNC President Ronna McDaniel are saying:
It’s the 51st and we’re still waiting for Joe Biden to schedule his first press conference.
One question for him: his press secretary said that you “are not in a hurry” to oppose China. Why? How long will we have to wait for you to face China?
– Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) March 11, 2021
It is difficult for Republicans to attack Biden on the merits now, given that even most Republican voters support the law he just signed. But it’s also important to note that it’s not just Fox.
On Thursday, for example, ABC published an article entitled: “Biden who has not yet given a press conference raises questions of responsibility.” And on March 3, CNN published an article with this read: “There are many ways to measure the accessibility of an American president. One way is by counting the press conferences. Now, by that count, President Biden seems invisible. “
But if the Trump era has taught us anything, it is that it is not the volume of communications that a presidential government has with the press that is important – it is its character and quality. Biden himself may even now be less accessible to the press than Trump, but given what the country endured during the Trump era and the mess Biden inherited, the American people don’t seem to care that he is focused on more urgent things so far .