Report: Biden’s Comms Team Asked Reporters For Questions In Advance

According to The Daily Wire, “The key here, it seems, is whether this process is being used to stage the briefings or simply to prepare for them,” said media critic Jeffrey McCall. the press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want,” one White House correspondent said. “That’s not really a free press at all.”

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According to The Daily Beast, President Biden’s communications team has asked reporters what questions they plan to ask White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki at press briefings.

The Daily Beast referenced “three sources with knowledge of the matter, as well as written communications reviewed by The Daily Beast” who intimated that the Biden communications had made the approaches to the reporters.

“One reporter raised the issue during an informal White House Correspondents Association Zoom call last Friday. According to multiple sources, leaders at the meeting advised print reporters to push back against requests by the White House press team to learn of questions in advance, or simply to not respond to the Biden team’s inquiries,” The Daily Beast asserted. . . .

The Daily Beast quoted a White House spokesperson who stated, “Our goal is to make the daily briefing as useful and informative as possible for both reporters and the public. Part of meeting that objective means regularly engaging with the reporters who will be in the briefing room to understand how the White House can be most helpful in getting them the information they need. That two-way conversation is an important part of keeping the American people updated about how government is serving them.” . . .

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, apparently stung by criticism that she had evaded answering certain questions in the past by stating she would “circle back” with an answer at a later date, targeted “conservative Twitter.”

“And last thing I want to do before I get to your questions: I often note I am going to circle back,” said Psaki. “I hate to disappoint conservative Twitter, but I am going to circle back on a number of things, as we often do directly.” . . .

The Daily Beast on Monday published a rather scathing piece about the new Biden White House and its press operation. . . .

According to Just the News,  “White House Reporters: Biden Team Wanted Our Questions in Advance,” blared the headline.

“If you’re a reporter with a tough question for the White House press secretary, Joe Biden’s staff wouldn’t mind knowing about it in advance,” said the lead. “According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, as well as written communications reviewed by The Daily Beast, the new president’s communications staff have already on occasion probed reporters to see what questions they plan on asking new White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki when called upon during briefings.” . . .

“The left demands 100 percent loyalty from the press, not the 99 percent they already get,” Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor told Fox News.

“In today’s cancel culture, journalists don’t dare be open in their criticism, so that’s why this story is all whispers,” said Gainor. . . .

Citing anonymous sources, the Beast said it was the latter. “[T]he press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want,” one White House correspondent told the website. “That’s not really a free press at all.”

Biden’s press team “did not deny that staffers had solicited questions from reporters,” said the Beast. “But the White House contended that it has tried to foster a better relationship with the press corps than the previous administration, and has tried to reach out to reporters directly in order to avoid appearing to dodge questions during briefings.”

. . .

While some liberal sites and networks ignored the Beast story, Fox News discussed it at length.

“I think there were two different sides of this,” Bret Baier, host of “Special Report,” said in a segment with John Roberts, a longtime White House correspondent. “One is if they’re asking for specific questions like, to the letter of what the reporter is going to ask.

“But John was chief White House correspondent, as was I, and they used to have a thing called the gaggle, where a press secretary would have everybody in there and say, ‘Hey what’s on your mind?’ so that the press secretary, by the time the briefing came around, was ready with answers instead of saying, ‘I’m going to circle back with you and get you answers.'”

“So there’s a difference between ‘What’s on your mind?’ and ‘Give me the verbatim of what you’re going to ask,'” Baier said.

“I’m not sure just exactly how nefarious this is,” Roberts said. “I’d like to know: Were people asked about specific questions? … But if they ask specific questions and included or excluded reporters as a result of that — which I don’t know that they’re doing — that would be bad.” . . .

In the end, DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall summed it up succinctly.

“Every press briefing is a risk situation for the White House, and Psaki should, indeed, want to be responsive and prepared for reporter questions,” he told Fox News. “The key here, it seems, is whether this process is being used to stage the briefings or simply to prepare for them.” . . .

NY Times Calls For Biden to Appoint “Reality Czar” to Fight “Misinformation”

According to Summit, “The New York Times has amplified claims by “experts” who are calling for Joe Biden to appoint a “reality czar,” prompting critics to compare the idea to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984.

In an article entitled ‘How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis’, the NYT’s Kevin Roose cites “experts” who are calling on “the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a “reality czar.”

The job of this “reality czar” would be to head up “a centralized task force could coordinate a single, strategic response” to things like COVID-related and election fraud “conspiracy theories.” . . .

“This task force could also meet regularly with tech platforms, and push for structural changes that could help those companies tackle their own extremism and misinformation problems. (For example, it could formulate “safe harbor” exemptions that would allow platforms to share data about QAnon and other conspiracy theory communities with researchers and government agencies without running afoul of privacy laws.) And it could become the tip of the spear for the federal government’s response to the reality crisis,” states the article.

“Ah, the Ministry of Truth. I’ve been waiting for this one,” responded Raheem Kassam. . . .

In the book, the Ministry of Truth decides what is “truth” in Oceania no matter what the actual truth may be, and exercises this monopoly over reality by falsifying the nature of historical events.

The Ministry of Truth also uses this power monopoly to redefine the very word “truth” under the rubric of Newspeak, so “truth” becomes whatever the government-approved version of events is in that moment. . . .

As we have exhaustively documented – the most harmful “conspiracy theories,” – such as Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMD’s and supporting “freedom fighters” who were actually jihadists in Libya and Syria – are always exclusively peddled by the mainstream media.

The corporate press pushing these two whoppers created the consensus for war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and an international migrant crisis.

The New York Times was one of the most prominent outlets that amplified both these damaging deceptions and yet they faced no consequences whatsoever. . . .

If there really was a truly independent “reality czar,” the media would be big trouble because its entire raison d’être is predicated around distorting reality.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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