Washington Post reporter:
After nearly 45 minutes of introducing his national security team, Biden walks off the stage without taking any questions from reporters.
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 24, 2020
You know what else Biden didn’t do? Infect reporters with COVID, tell dozens of lies, and talk about his love affair with a couple of dictators.
It’s a simple fact of the media business that outlets like the Post, Times and the rest will see a decrease in traffic during the Biden Administration. They will struggle with this, and pressure for clicks will drive them to look for some nontroversies. They also fetishize the rituals of the White House Press Corpse, and after Trump stomped all over them, they’re looking to re-assert some authority and relevance, since the Trump Administration made clear how little they really had. The right response to this has already been modeled by Jill Biden:
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, shut down a question Sunday from CNN’s Jake Tapper about any “gaffe” her husband may make.
“Oh, you can’t even go there,” Jill Biden told the “State of the Union” host when he led into a question by noting that the former vice president “has been known to make the occasional gaffe.”
“After Donald Trump, you cannot even say the word gaffe,” she said.
“I can’t even say the word gaffe?” Tapper asked.
“Nope. Done. It’s gone,” she responded.
“Over, so over,” she added.
Also, there’s no law that every pre-Trump press ritual should be restored in the Biden Administration. Is the daily briefing helping Biden get his message out? Then keep it. Is it turning into a “Why did Joe wear a brown suit in the Oval Office” circle jerk? Close it down. Don’t attend the White House Correspondents Dinner. I’m sure you all can think of many other examples of empty rituals best left in the past.
Open Thread: Biden Live on Foreign Policy Posts
JPL
I watched the episode of Jill tko’s Jake, and it was a pleasure to behold.
piratedan
when the Press is ready and willing to ask actual questions about policy and procedure and protocol once again instead of placing every-fucking-thing in the frame of the GOP talking point, sure… answer the question. The bad faith that has gone on hasn’t totally just been on the side of the GOP, the fact that the media faithfully reprinted his statements sans context in order to generate clickbait can certainly be up for review and anyone who knows better doesn’t have to continue to play the bad faith game.
NotMax
Journamalism 101: The difference between an announcement and a press conference.
MattF
Media are already pitching the Biden Administration as an Obama Restoration Era. That’s a NO THANK YOU.
patroclus
Oh, I don’t know about this. Joe’s gaffes actually humanize him, much the way Reagan’s did. I certainly voted for him, and I’m overjoyed that he won, but I’m not planning on joining any Biden personality cult. If/when he makes a gaffe, I’m planning on making fun of it. Try and stop me Jill.
Another Scott
Good for Joe for not taking questions. There’s a time and a place for Q&A with the press, and it’s not every time he’s seen by a press person. His job isn’t to give them images and copy every minute of the day.
The national press will actually have to work for a living for a change.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
Yes, let’s build back better.
J R in WV
Aw, I see that John Cole took a nap with Steve.
I took a nap with Punkin, and CooCoo too.
Before I got to the bed, CooCoo was sleeping where I sleep, and made it so really warm!!!
As I slept, first Punkin crept up onto my pillow, where I skritched her chin and fell back asleep. Then the bed moved a little bit when CooCoo jumped up on the other side — he weighs nearly 50 pounds, but is athletic enough not to just leap up. Then we all slept for nearly another hour. So cozy.
You all be jealous, now!
FYI: WaterGirl and I added a picture of our tiny ranch’s little house in the Dragoon Mtns to the bottom of this morning’s ORT post of a Tucson cactus garden, for those interested in that, since it came up in the comments.
Good view of the Dragoons looming west and south of the camp, also.
ETA: I like Jill’s new White House Correspondent rule “No Gaffes — None! That’s Over!!”
Quaker in a Basement
So here’s a question for the reporter: What did you want to ask?
Arclite
Jill Biden, kicking ass. Nice.
Brachiator
The press wants to return to normal, too. For them, normal is being stupid and trivial.
pamelabrown53
New Rule: When WH press is covering a joint press conference with a foreign leader-either here or abroad-they actually have to address the reason for the meeting by asking pertinent questions.
No “former president Trump says” (fill in the feces) questions.
dmsilev
The actual current President also gave a press briefing today in which he took no questions. He also only spoke for about one minute. That was a stream of consciousness, using the word very loosely, about the sacred nature of a 30,000 Dow Jones.
And yet it is Biden they complain about.
Searcher
I propose that an aide be delegated to stand behind Biden (or his press secretary, once he has one) with a scoreboard for each of the news agencies in the audience. Every time they as a useful question, they get a point. Every time they ask a meaningless time-wasting question, they lose a point. At the end of the year, they compile an infographic of every question asked by each news agency.
J R in WV
@patroclus:
Yeah, me too. Funny is, after all, funny!
But so far as we know, neither of us is a member of the White House Reporting teams… That’s who the rule is for!!
Jeffro
@Another Scott:
Yes, yes, yes, and hell yes.
I think every Wednesday should be “hey reporters, here’s questions you should have been asking trumpov & Co for the past four years” day at the White House. The WH spokesperson would start with ‘good afternoon’ and then have at it.
Maybe limit it to just 3 questions per Wednesday…you wouldn’t want to read dozens of questions each time
ETA: I see Searcher and Quaker are thinking along similar lines!
Brachiator
@patroclus:
Hearing Biden make a gaffe maybe humanizes him. Having the press make a big deal about it is a waste of time. And this is for anyone, not just Biden.
And Fox News will be looking for gaffes as a sign of Biden’s lack of fitness.
Baud
I agree about being suspicious, but I can’t tell if that tweet is being critical or just trying to be being factual. Are reporters complaining like they did when Biden left them to go to church?
Major Major Major Major
@MattF:
Wasn’t that a central premise of the Biden campaign?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hear, hear. From what I’ve seen of Seung Min Kim, she’s usually pretty good, and I do think politicians should talk to reporters, but we have three months of decisions being made by wounded, enraged humanoid beast making decisions about a country in the midst of a widely and wildly spreading pandemic.
Meanwhile, Josh Gerstein of Politico is tweeting like a 22 year old acolyte of David Sirota. Lots of people asking if he has mentioned “kill lists” once in the last four years. I hope someone with a blue check mark does it so he has to answer.
Linskey tweeted back: “fair point”
(edited to change ‘drunken’ to ‘enraged’ because trump doesn’t drink)
pamelabrown53
@Another Scott:
Exactly, re: time and place. President-Elect Biden was informing the country and it wasn’t appropriate to take the press corps’ inane questions allowing them to detract and deflect.
@Another Scott:
Alison Rose
There are times I really wish the press weren’t mentioned specifically in the Constitution, because it’s apparently given them all egos the size of Jupiter.
NotMax
@pamelabrown53
“Is that a fancy-schmancy elite mustard stain on your tie?”
//
PsiFighter37
The reporter is getting dragged on Twitter. Good. The media is definitely going to go back to their useless fucking selves as carrying water for GOP talking points on January 20th.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Gerstein doesn’t even seem to have a point. Just naked cynicism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: sneering pseudo-savvy
(sometimes I like alliteration)
Major Major Major Major
@PsiFighter37: I think a lot of reporters assume that if they’re getting dragged on twitter by liberals and CJR, they’re doing something right :-/
mad citizen
I really second the motion of not attending the WH correspondents’ dinner. It was one thing when it was not televised/reported on, etc; I assume it was “off the record”. But it became a D.C slobberfest. I hope Joe really thinks about it’s usefulness. Joe, why spend a Saturday night doing that? Instead do something nice for yourself and family, or other citizens.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This is dumb. Yes, you SHOULD want basic humanity and empathy represented as part of the “kill-list” or any other national security process.
Our media, awful fuckwits.
...now I try to be amused
The coming investigations and prosecutions of Donald Trump and his crowd should make up the shortfall of news from the White House.
MattF
@Major Major Major Major: As a message to voters that they can stop being screwed by Trump and go back to honest government, yes. But not as a message to the media that they can now go back all the stupid things they did then.
zhena gogolia
I’m almost enjoying that Biden kind of stumbles when he speaks. He’s really into working, not orating. That’s what we need right now.
narya
The thing is, they could GET the clicks if they spent the time to dig into topics, explain things to folks, help some of the newly awakend electorate STAY awake and informed. E.g.: So, here’s what DeJoy et al. broke at the post office; here are the steps being taken to fix that; here’s how it affects service in cities, small towns, etc. Here’s some detail about climate change and the steps we can take–individually and as a nation or a city or whatever–to do our part. The breathless both-siderism and horserace-ology just drives folks away.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: Gotcha.
PJ
@…now I try to be amused: With a few notable exceptions (Fahrenthold, Eichenwald, and, I hate to say it, the NYT on Trump’s taxes), the media has not been very interested in investigating Trump’s crimes prior to becoming President and while President, so I don’t see any reason why they would particularly be interested in the investigation and prosecution of Trump after he leaves office.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You think trump will ever figure out that Putin despises him for the useful idiot he was?
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Is there a well-produced video digest of the top 100 Trump gaffes? Needs to be spammed in response to any mention of Biden gaffes, forever more.
mrmoshpotato
Math and science me, mates!
Via David Simon
terraformer
Yup, we need to prepare ourselves for the about-face, sudden need to find needles in haystacks to stir things up. I’m not sure what, if anything, can be done about it in an environment where clicks = $$.
An informed populace, designed to be made so via press freedom and an involved citizenry, hits a hard wall in our current and particular flavor of capitalism where the structure needed must operate under a profit motive.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Those are good lines! The Ruskies must be getting their information about American politics from Twitter.
zhena gogolia
@Bill Arnold:
“Yo, Semites!”
mrmoshpotato
@terraformer: Things might change if some of these assclowns were given a thrashing with their own tibias.
I would find it humerus.
zhena gogolia
I’m just now watching the natsec team introduce themselves. They are so fantastic!
mrmoshpotato
@Bill Arnold: How about a compilation of the traitorous orange Soviet shitpile mobster conman sucking dictators’ asses?
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Nat-i-on-al P-ark
Old Dan and Little Ann
Who gives a fuck about this tweet? I sure as shit don’t.
Librarian
Not going to the WH correspondents dinner was one of the few good things Trump did. I really hope Biden continues it.
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
This. And that it has to be pointed out is maddening.
MisterForkbeard
@Librarian: Oh, I’d love it if Biden went there and then dragged the fucking press for their behavior, noting that they only started stating the obvious about Trump when it looked like he would lose.
Of course, the media would then start making up shit about Biden “He LIED about x” saying that Biden needed to be held up to his own example.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m 50-50 on that. Dump definitely knows he’s a LOSER now. And he knows what trains are speeding towards his fat, orange, fascist, money-laundering ass that’s stuck on the tracks.
zhena gogolia
@MisterForkbeard:
That isn’t his style.
Aleta
Let’s be fair. It’s terribly arrogant of Biden not to accommodate the press as gracefully as the covid task force and Pence did last week to warn about the virus’ aggressive community spread, travel risks and hospital capac— Well, OK but Biden’s off to an elitist start anyway. Just look at how educated and experienced his national security team seems to be.
zhena gogolia
Very soothing to hear Kerry again. He would have been a great president.
M31
I think you mean “Every time they ask a meaningless time-wasting question, they get whacked in the groin with a ball-peen hammer.”
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
And they can be as gassy.
Gin & Tonic
@Searcher:
An extremely challenging math course I took way back when would have exams where you get 10 points for a correct answer, -10 for an incorrect answer, and 0 for leaving the answer blank.
Salty Sam
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Alliteration always appropriate…
narya
@Gin & Tonic: I’m sorta fascinated by that.
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: No. Build Back Better is the slogan and I’m starting to think he may mean it. Coming out first after being declared the winner with the transgender statements, hiring Symone Sanders for the campaign, and nominating a Latino immigrant to DHS seems to send a signal, to me at least, that Uncle Joe is going to try to be more progressive than Obama was able to be.
Also Janet Yellin at Treasury is a big Biden deal – she’s not some MOTU coming out of Wall Street. He took stuff from Liz Warren’s and Bernie’s position too.
Another Scott
Fly on the wall of a future job interview with one of Donnie’s minions…
Image
It’s funny ’cause it’s true!!
(via comment at Wonkette)
Cheers,
Scott.
ns
The previous hour he tweeted:
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Trump came out, spoke briefly about the Dow topping 30K, left almost as quickly as he entered. No questions.</p>— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) <a href=”https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1331290319795654657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>November 24, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
There’s nothing to see here except confirmation bias. This is a statement of fact routinely appended to public remarks by public officials, not a comment implying that he should have taken questions but didn’t so let’s make a news story out of it. All that narrative has been superimposed.
My statement of fact will surely be incorrectly interpreted as meaning that I endorse everything the media has ever done and desire a return to false neutrality and bothsiderism. That is false. That I feel compelled to preemptively point this out is further evidence that the internet is turning everyone’s brains to mush.
Being soft on Republican sedition over the years has been a problem. The solution to that problem should not include fawning coverage of Biden. All presidencies deserve a skeptical, nitpicky press. Trump’s deserved that, but also to be ignored when it became obvious that reporting/debunking his lies was simply spreading them around more. The failure of the press to turn away from the Presidency for the first time in 80 years was disappointing, but that’s on the editors and publishers, not the reporters.
J R in WV
@mrmoshpotato:
But… it isn’t IN the constitution. It’s in the First Amendment to the constitution. Called the Bill of Rights, but not part of the original Constitution.
Steeplejack (phone)
@ns:
You need to be in text mode to embed a tweet. Click the “Text” tab at the top right of the comment box.
Alison Rose
@J R in WV: Congrats, you win the gold medal in pedantry and condescension. You knew what I meant.
Uncle Cosmo
@mrmoshpotato: McTier needed to capitalize Old Bay – it’s the name of a specific spice mix that originated in Baltimore and is now made and marketed by McCormick’s. (I’m pretty damn sure David Simon wouldn’t have made that mistake.)
(ETA: I’m half-surprised no one has suggested using Old Bay to catalyze a fusion reaction. Energy too cheap to meter!)
jonas
Shorter WH correspondents: “We’ll believe Biden has grown into the presidency when he calls us a bunch of felonious traitors, doxxes our children at their schools, and forces us into hiding due to death threats from radical antifa militia members. Anything less is almost a sign of disrespect…”
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: Ha ha
ETA: And yet, how many of these grifters would be able to boast that they *actually lasted* four years in the Trump Administration??