Years ago, there was widespread criticism of President George W. Bush for not holding enough press conferences, which was seen as evidence of the White House’s lack of transparency, yada, yada, yada. Later, the media that had criticized George W. Bush for not holding enough press conferences didn’t seem to appreciate Donald Trump’s willingness to make himself available to them, despite their frequently contentious and hostile questions.
When I read the New York Times report about Joe Biden’s infrequent press conferences, I wasn’t surprised to see that they seemed to be lauding his lack of transparency as some sort of brilliant strategy.
“In the 100 years since Calvin Coolidge took office, only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan held as few news conferences each year as the current occupant of the Oval Office,” New York Times White House correspondent Michael D. Shear wrote Friday. The paper noted that Biden has conducted only 54 interviews, the fewest since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, while Trump gave 202 interviews, and Obama gave 275.
The paper concluded that Biden’s “decision to keep the news media at arm’s length is part of a deliberate strategy,” and they don’t dare suggest it’s a bad one. In fact, despite Biden being unavailable to the press the same way his predecessors were, the New York Times figures that he’s still better than Trump. “Mr. Biden has not accused the news media of being ‘the enemy of the people,’ as his predecessor did,” wrote Shear.
Shear did warn that Biden is “accelerating the demise of traditions that have underpinned the relationship with the news media for decades,” and that he is gambling on the idea that “he can sidestep those traditions in a new media environment.”
Shear conceded that Biden’s unavailability to the press “is public evidence that Mr. Biden’s political strategists want to protect him from the unscripted exchanges that have often resulted in missteps and criticism.”
But then he launches into White House talking points, explaining how the White House claims it is bypassing traditional news outlets to reach audiences directly “where they are.” Which is a laughable excuse.
Related: John Fetterman Gives an Interview, and Well…
“Our ultimate goal is to reach the American people wherever and however they consume media, and that’s not just through the briefing room or Washington-based news outlets,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, told Shear. “The fracturing of the media and the changing nature of information consumption requires a communications strategy that adapts to reach Americans where they get the news.” To achieve this goal, the White House opts for safe conversations with celebrities or supportive online influencers as a way of generating positive publicity without having to answer anything but softball questions.
Imagine if any Republican president did the same.
Of course, the difference is that the mainstream media is openly hostile to Republicans, while it is generally supportive and helpful to Democrats. With this in mind, Biden’s strategy of avoiding the mainstream media makes little sense. But by being more available to alternative outlets like social media influencers, he can exploit the situation and establish terms for any interview that he can’t get away with through mainstream media outlets. Barack Obama employed a similar strategy during his re-election campaign, granting numerous interviews to local media outlets while keeping his interactions with national media to a minimum. This approach allowed him to establish specific ground rules for his local interviews, which he couldn’t do with the national press.
This isn’t transparency; this is evasion. And we all know why.
