“Journalists uncover the truth, check the abuse of power, and demand transparency from those in power. They are indispensable. And, at a time when the truth is increasingly under attack, our need for accurate, fact-based reporting, open public conversation, and accountability has never been greater.”
That was President Biden in a statement on National Press Day not long after taking office in 2021. Hard to argue with the sentiment: Journalists are indispensable to a functioning democracy. The need for accountability has never been greater.
But, as we’re learning when it comes to so many things regarding the 46th president, words and deeds are two very different things. Joe Biden has been anything but transparent. And journalists seeking to uncover the truth have been shunned and ignored by this president.
It began during the 2020 campaign, when Biden did all he could to avoid the press. But candidate Biden is now President Biden. And that kind of power requires facing the hard and pertinent questions, for example, from journalists in sit-down interviews.
Accountability doesn’t get to hide in the basement. But that appears to be the strategy from the president’s handlers, who seem not to want him anywhere near this kind of setting before the midterms and likely even after.
Regardless of what you thought about former President Trump and his verbal treatment of the press, he was extremely accessible, sometimes to his own determent.
For comparison, Biden had held 17 press conferences and done 22 media interviews in his first 20 months in office, while Trump held 36 press conferences in his first 20 months.
So, the question is: If Biden has all the momentum many in the media have been saying he has, and if he has such a winning message that is turning everything around for Democrats heading into the midterms, why hasn’t he sat down for a TV interview in more than 210 days?
You read that correctly. The last time the president of the United States did a real TV interview was with NBC’s Lester Holt on Super Bowl Sunday in February.
“Is he dodging us?” RealClearPolitics correspondent Phil Wegmann asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“The president loves talking to you all. He takes your questions all the time,” she replied. “He took [Fox News White House Correspondent] Peter [Doocy]’s question last Friday. I’m sure Peter was excited about that.”
How condescending.
Oh, and don’t bother making the argument that his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! counts as a TV interview. That was a foot massage by a supporter with a studio audience, not an actual Q&A.
“There’s a lot of major things we’ve done,” Biden told Kimmel at one point. “But what we haven’t done is we haven’t been able to communicate it.”
“Look at how the press has changed,” the president added. “With notable exceptions, even the really good reporters, they have to get a number of clicks on the nightly news. So instead of asking a question … it’s just, everything gets sensationalized.”
The hubris is something to behold. So, Biden, who refuses to speak to reporters one-on-one, is frustrated about not being able to share all the good things he says the administration has done. And he also says really good reporters are slaves to clicks so must sensationalize everything, so therefore he isn’t going to talk to them.
It is also noteworthy that Biden has not done an interview with journalists at any major print newspapers since taking office. (That’s nearly600 days.) The president did do a June interview with the Associated Press, but that’s a wire service.
Axios’s Jonathan Swan, who sat down with then-President Trump in August 2020, just three months before a presidential election, explained why Biden’s handlers will never agree for him to be challenged in a one-on-one interview.
“I say this as somebody who has tried repeatedly to get a one-on-one interview with Joe Biden. He won’t do it,” Swan tweeted in July. “And there’s no convening power on planet earth that could compel him to do an interview that his advisers deem to be unsafe. This is of course true of many politicians.”
What happened to the transparency Biden promised?
Perhaps the president’s handlers are so petrified because if Biden sat down with a decent journalist, it’s certain he would be asked how he plans on paying for this trillion-dollar student loan forgiveness program. Or how the $750 billion Inflation Reduction will actually reduce inflation. Or why he refuses to visit the U.S. Southern border as millions of migrants continue enter the country illegally, along with fentanyl, which is killing Americans at an alarming rate.
Or – and this is a long shot given how little this is discussed and scrutinized by traditional media – about his son Hunter and the damning contents of his laptop showing alleged influence peddling-for-profit that launched a federal investigation into his dealings in China and Ukraine. That certainly would not go well.
It’s been 210 days since Biden’s last interview. There are people who have walked across the entire continental United States in less time. Seven months is a very long time.
Almost all news outlets would be up in arms if a Republican administration stiff-armed the press so blatantly. But a Republican administration isn’t in power.
Free passes are all the rage, especially when it comes to Team Biden, which talks a good game about press freedom while squashing it.
Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.