Eric Boehlert: Biden beats the press

[babylonsister]

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wcmVzc3J1bi5tZWRpYS9mZWVkLw/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wcmVzc3J1bi5tZWRpYS9wL2JpZGVuLWJlYXRzLXRoZS1wcmVzcw


1 day ago
Biden beats the press


Deep into a five-minute, detailed policy answer about immigration on Thursday, President Joe Biden asked reporters at the White House press conference if he was wading too deeply into the weeds. Biden wanted to know if he was giving too many details and providing too much factual information.

Talk about a seismic shift from the Trump years, when the entirety of policy discussion could be squeezed onto the back of a matchbook. Back then, reporters were also lied to nonstop at press conferences, and personally denigrated in front of the cameras. As Biden now constantly does, he flipped the script. Affable and at times folksy, Biden was his usual self, offering a common sense outlook to practical governance: "I can’t guarantee we’re going to solve everything, but I can guarantee we can make everything better. We can change the lives of so many people."

Overall, Biden delivered a strong, one-hour performance during his inaugural press conference, which must have felt like a colossal letdown for the Beltway media. Journalists had spent weeks mindlessly hyping the idea that Biden was hiding from the press and its legions of truth-seekers. The unending desire by the media to turn Biden's press conference into two-week, navel-gazing “news” story was something to behold.

snip//

Here's the reality: Trump made news popular for four years, giving outlets across the country sizeable bumps in readership and viewership as Trump remained committed to creating news all day, every day with his cascade of lies, taunts, and erratic behavior. And Beltway journalists loved it — they loved being in the middle of the tumult and being the creators of the roiling content.

That's all gone now with Biden, who has made a conscious decision to avoid the spotlight and to not needlessly interject himself into every news cycle the way narcissist Trump did. By turning the temperature way down, by refusing to manufacture news where none exists in the name of partisan warfare and general chaos, Biden is denying journalists their professional momentum.

Add to that the fact that Biden slow-walked his way to his first press conference, as compared to his predecessors who held them sooner, and that D.C. journalists hold up pressers as the pinnacle form of presidential communication, and journalists get cranky. They want White House performances. That's why they tried to turn Biden's lack of a press conference into a national news story, when it's really just inside baseball chatter. Searching for a path forward in the post-Trump world, the Beltway press is frantically trying to generate controversy where none exists.

Biden’s modest, winning press conference confirmed all that.

[Kali]

1. most of them are NOT journalists

they are desperate purveyors of infotainment

[a kennedy]

2. Exactly......and the faux noise machine being SO UPSET JOE DIDN'T CALL ON ANY

Faux noise reporters, give me a fawking break. Journalists indeed....NOT.

[patricia92243]

3. k/r

[Native]

4. Damn I love me some Boehlert!

[tblue37]

5. Their foolish, empty questions proved that press conferences with such "journalists" are a

waste of the president's time.

[MrModerate]

6. We shouldn't refer to the Trump years as an aberration...

Or an anomaly, or a unicorn, or any such polite term.

It was an abomination, and decency demands we make sure it never happens again.

[Biophilic]

7. And we loved Biden for being that knowledgeable and controlled statesman. Awesome.

[ancianita]

8. Media are going to have to grow the hell up.

They'll have to become cause-effect and contextual, fact-based, not he-said/she-said; not problem floggers or flaw searchers.

They'll have to ask for information, not sound bites.

I doubt they'll get there, and that they even want to.

[Prof.Higgins]

9. Comedian at last WH Correspondents dinner upset this gaggle of infotainment

mongers by telling them the plain truth that they "secretly love Trump" because he gets them higher ratings, clicks, subscribers etc.

To enable Trump to be their gift that keeps on giving our malevolent and myopic MSM concocted coherent narratives out of Trump's rantings and egregious lies.

[alfredo]

10. They also knew they would become a target if they didn't kiss the ring.