<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1654807037543,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b2-d172-a563-4ffafb0a0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1654807037543,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b2-d172-a563-4ffafb0a0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_54788932", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1029137"} }); ","_id":"00000181-4a2f-d702-a3cf-4fef80260000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedPresident Joe Biden is griping about his press coverage as he struggles to break through back-to-back negative news cycles before the 2022 midterm elections.
But complaining about the news media is unlikely to help Biden or congressional Democrats before November as Biden’s job approval numbers plummet into former President Donald Trump territory.
SOUTH CAROLINA PROVIDES NEXT TEST OF TRUMP’S ENDORSEMENT POWER
Biden campaigned, in part, to normalize press relations after his predecessor, Trump, slammed the news media as “the enemy of the people.” But public officials have the tendency to “lash out” at journalists and reporters when they encounter “political turbulence,” according to former Republican staffer-turned-Claremont McKenna College politics professor John Pitney.
“In most cases, the bad coverage is a symptom of their woes, not the cause,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner.
Rutgers University history, journalism, and media studies professor David Greenberg agreed that negative coverage “is usually a sign that something else is not going right.”
“When an administration — or anyone — says it has a ‘communications problem,’ it usually means it’s not looking hard enough at the real problems,” he said.
Biden appears particularly frustrated with the lack of focus on potentially promising economic data, such as low unemployment rates, affecting consumer confidence. But as Pitney contended, “there is also bad economic news.”
“And the public is reacting to it,” he said. “Real disposable income per capita has dropped in the past year. When that happens, the party in power will take a hit in the polls.”
And Biden has. The president is averaging 41% approval and 54% disapproval, according to FiveThirtyEight. Those figures are worse than those of Trump at a similar point in his administration. In addition, only 22% of poll respondents on average are convinced Biden is taking the country in the right direction, RealClearPolitics found. Seventy-one percent consider the country to be on the wrong track.
Although Biden does not often grant on-the-record interviews or convene press conferences on U.S. soil, he does routinely answer shouted questions, according to the White House. But those exchanges, which frequently unfold over the din of an East Room crowd or the almost deafening Marine One on the South Lawn, rarely include follow-up inquiries.
The White House has been needled, for instance, on why Biden is not holding a press conference at the conclusion of the Summit of the Americas. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has already condemned some Latin American countries at the U.S.-hosted Western Hemisphere gathering for infringing upon First Amendment-esque rights at home.
“It’d be hard to argue that he hasn’t taken many, many questions from the press,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Air Force One en route to Los Angeles for the confab. “By the end of this, you can be pretty confident that he will be displaying — putting on full display America’s raucous democracy in all of its wonderful and attractive forms.”
That has not prevented reporters, such as Fox News’s Jacqui Heinrich, grumbling about Biden’s inaccessibility before and after the president’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“For the 2nd time this week, the WH will only allow still cameras into a Biden event – no video,” she tweeted, using an abbreviation for the White House. “Tonight, only stills for a spray of the Biden/Kimmel taping. Earlier this week, only stills were brought to the South Lawn for his mtg with Sen Murphy – TV was told about it afterward,” she added, shortening the word “meeting.”
https://twitter.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/1534665597786607616?s=20&t=OnihMV6P8pWYUoaqNinE9gBiden referenced the trouble he has experienced, conveying what he perceives as accomplishments to the public in a disjointed response to Kimmel during the president’s second late-night sit-down. Biden has not extended that courtesy to a journalist since February, 100-odd days ago, despite wanting to travel the country and talk with voters.
“Even with notable exceptions, even the really good reporters, they have to get a number of clicks on the nightly news,” he said. “So instead of asking a question … Anyway, it just … Everything gets sensationalized.”
Biden’s comments coincide with a Politico West Wing newsletter account of what the president believed was an off-the-record discussion between him and journalists on Air Force One for a recent West Coast trip.
“He used much of his time with reporters to criticize the quality and tenor of press coverage of his administration,” authors Max Tani and Alex Thompson wrote.
But the news media observations Biden made during Kimmel’s show were “well-reasoned” and amplify commentary from some journalists themselves, according to former President Barack Obama’s White House spokesman Eric Schultz.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Writers like Margaret Sullivan, James Fallows, Jonathan Alter, Perry Bacon, Jackie Calmes, Dana Milbank, Ezra Klein have all urged newsrooms to rethink political coverage,” he said. “Reporters would do themselves a service with more introspection, less defensiveness.”
