These fucking guys:
Members of the White House press pool lodged a complaint with the White House after British reporters but not American reporters were recognized for questions during President Biden’s meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday afternoon.
White House Correspondents’ Association President Steve Portnoy, who served as the radio pooler on Tuesday, said that the editorial component of the pool went to White House press secretary Jen Psaki to lodge a formal complaint on Tuesday about the lack of questions granted to American reporters.
Biden and Johnson each delivered brief remarks in the Oval Office. Johnson then granted questions to two British reporters, who asked about the case of Harry Dunn, the British teen killed in a crash in the United Kingdom (U.K.) two years ago, and trade. White House aides then ushered the press out of the Oval Office without Biden calling on American reporters.
In response to a shouted question from CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe about the situation at the U.S. southern border, Biden responded in part that “violence is not justified,” but the remainder of his comments were indecipherable over shouts from White House aides trying to get reporters out of the Oval Office.
Remember when there wasn’t a daily press briefing for two years and when Trump did answer questions all he did was scream “Fake News!” and then lie about some shit? This fucking idiot doesn’t:
Worth noting that Biden ran for office promising to restore democracy after 4 years of Trump. But today it was the British leader, NOT the American one, who spotlighted a key tenet of a flourishing democracy — respect for a free press — by taking questions from his press corps.
— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) September 21, 2021
Fuck these people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
trying to overturn an election and passing legislation to give state legislatures– where O where is Molly Ivins to describe the collection of ambitious and puffed up insurance agents, dentists and pettifogging real estate lawyers* who make up your average state lege– the power to reject popular votes in federal elections is just like not taking dumb questions about ‘optics’ and ‘process’
* I originally wrote car dealers, but I guess car dealers just sit back and write checks to the others
MattF
I believe we have a few inmates here who can comment knowledgeably about Boris Johnson’s ‘respect for a free press’…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It certainly looks like the MSM’s idea of “good government” is a politician who simply does nothing, takes no risk in office except gives press briefings. I noticed “(politician) does this, what a mistake because it might hurt his reelection chances!” is a theme they do over and over again.
lowtechcyclist
I could wax (w)roth, but I think I’ll just ignore Portnoy’s complaint.
Ohio Mom
Off topic: good luck with the structural engineer, John. I’ve been there and I’ll warn you that generally the consult is one fee and the blueprint plan showing what needs to be done is another, larger fee.
Another warning is that if drainage issues are the cause of the problems, well, structural engineers do not address them. That’s for a landscape architect.
You have all my sympathy, our basement has been an expense.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MattF: As Tony has pointed out Boris leads the British press around by the nose by pretending to be their friends and hamming it up for them. Biden just merely uses he DC press to get is current message out and otherwise treats them like the waste of time they are.
International Mikey
Isn’t Ashley Parker one of Brian Williams’ “big three” or “front line” who take care of the heavy hitting?
Kryptik
It’s not that they don’t remember the way Trump treated them. It’s that they desperately want that back. They have institutional Stockholm Syndrome that they don’t care that Trump actively drummed up violence and hate toward their entire industry and profession, and they only got spoonfed pablum. They got ‘access’, and that’s what they crave, even if it exposed them to violent mobbery.
MattF
@International Mikey: Yes. Often the lead author for WaPo articles.
Nicole
I would enjoy hearing Psaki’s response to their complaint. Reading the subject of the questions asked and the one shouted, I have scant hope the press bothered to listen to a word of the actual remarks.
Elizabelle
@International Mikey:
Yes. She is one of the tongue bath-ees. I wish BriWi would stop with the fawning and mention of Pulitzers, which are apparently being handed out like candy these days.
Along with Peter Baker (gag) and is it Jonathan Lemire? Of the three, he is the most accurate.
Miss Parker is getting ratioed in the twitter responses.
Betty
@Elizabelle: A well-deserved ratio too. “Doesn’t Biden know who I am?” Such self- importance.
VOR
Trump had a press secretary who did not have a single press briefing during her 9 month tenure. I mean, c’mon…
West of the Rockies
I think that decades of Republicans declaring at every available opportunity that the press was liberal and biased has had some effect. Hell, it lead to the mass rightwing news machine that’s been churning out lies and pollution since 1985 (Limbaugh). Some members of the press seem terrified now of challenging anything a RWNJ says for fear of being called out.
RaflW
Ashley Parker and so many like her are just so sad that they can’t be kicked around by Trump.
It’s incredibly fucked up.
RaflW
This was in response to a tweet about voting rights, but applies to virtually any issue.
I’d add, it’s probably democracy-destructive, too.
rikyrah
They are such whiners.
And, they think that we don’t remember how they acted during Dolt45’s term.
If 46 never talks to any of them, it will be too soon.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RaflW:Norm Ornstein and his frequent co-author Thomas Mann wrote a whole book about how it’s not both sides way back in 2012
Ornstein later wrote a piece about the non-reaction to the piece, which was at the time IIRC the most-viewed single article in the history of the digital Washington Post, that I can’t find at the moment, but as I recall he reported a conversation with Bob Schieffer, then of Face The Nation, who was reduced to spluttering incoherence by the very idea that Broderism was not a simple truth and fact of life.
Anoniminous
I’m sure the Yazidi girls kidnapped, sold into slavery, and raped because US journalists DIDN’T DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS are weeping at Biden ignoring shouted questions.
mrmoshpotato
Biden: Ashley, I’ll take questions in a minute, but first I have to know why all of you let the Kremlin’s orange fascist shitstain take a dump all over all of you for four years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Boris is one of them. Literally.
Mike in NC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bob Schieffer and his ilk are precisely the problem. He’s a good ole boy from Texas and probably would like nothing better than to golf with Greg Abbott, if Abbott could play golf.
zifnab25
I mean, I remember when he was running concentration camps on the border and everyone said they were very concerned.
Now a report tries to squeeze in a question and… we’re told to Remember Trump.
bnateAZ
Ouch, right in my access privilege!
Captain C
@mrmoshpotato: Ashley’s next post: “Today, President Biden kink-shamed all of us coprophiliacs in the press corps…”
PPCLI
The trouble is that Biden is far too kind and decent to stand up in front of the press corps and call Ashley Parker “nasty” and “stupid”, or bizarrely hiss at her like a snake, or engage in any of the other psychopathic behavior that the press corps lapped up when TFG was in town.
But I’m sure that the administration could get someone — I hear Rahm Emmanuel is looking for government work — to insult them for an hour or so every day. If it would make them happy, it’s a good solution.
Poe Larity
You know, a fascist takeover might have some silver lining. Getting to see these drama queens and Bobo dragged thru the streets by the Applebees salad bar crowd…
RaflW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, and the part where they virtually never get invited on the Sunday shows once they became apostate really confirms how brittle and shitty so much of the press corps(e) is.
James E Powell
@RaflW:
It’s not just the press/media, it’s the audience that’s fine with it. Stop watching cable, cancel your subscriptions. They are just giving you agita.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Omnes Omnibus: So was Trump, if you look at the MSM as entertainment.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
,.. about how Newsom sweep of the California recall shows Biden’s administration is failing and bring down the Democrats over all, or does Biden think he just a cry baby for morning his dead son. Yes, the press want to ask the tough, serious questions. That they do.
But the good old days of Trump and the press trading personal insults was so much more informative.
Amir Khalid
Having been a reporter myself, I do sympathise with the American reporters who, in a setting where they would expect to ask questions of Joe and Bojo, weren’t given a chance to do that whereas two British reportrs were. If they took any questions from foreign media they should have taken them from domestic media too. The American reporters had a job to do; and they felt that, unfairly and against normal practice, they had been thwarted in their work.
We jackals are often frustrated with the bias we perceive in what they ask, and in what they write afterwards. But if we don’t allow them opportunities to do better, at least once in a while, they can’t do better and they won’t.
laura
There’s a couple few really good journalists in the WHPC, but on balance, what a colossal High School Girl’s Bathroom this is. Bitchy gossips, backbiting and dooceying on the daily. Where do I go to lodge my complaint?
RaflW
@Amir Khalid: If the presser had gone on longer and there was an obvious shutout going on, okay. It was two questions.
In that circumstance, only three possibilities existed. 2B/0A. 1B/1A, or 0B/2A. Hard for me to really feel this one-off thing was a snubbing rather than a limited availability.
Zifnab25
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Huh?
What part of that is about Newsome?
Seems like he was more interested in this shit.
greenergood
Do you have any idea how many of us on the eastern side of the Pond cringe when we hear B. Johnson’s pronouncements? The incoherence, the blustering, the lack of any accuracy or any information – it’s excruciating – but most of the time we just have to endure it during either sycophantic BBC interviews or filmed Westminster Parliamentary debates. The fact that we have to see it on US television is so embarrassing – probably a bit like when TFG was portrayed on the BBC, but worse because the Westminster gov’t thinks it’s so superior to its US counterpart ALL THE TIME, being the colonial master.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amir Khalid: as a general rule, I think press availability is a good thing for presidents to do, I object to the hyperbolic, and self aggrandizing and dramatizing, comparison to trump
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The idea that “Americans love divided government” is related. Their idea of the ideal application of checks and balances is complete gridlock that accomplishes nothing, and they think the people want that–that most voters are literally switching party votes so that they can achieve that divided government and prevent government from ever doing anything.
But relatively few people do that. Mostly, divided government happens because of a divided population. Partisans turn out to vote against politicians in power that they don’t like.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I agree with you, in normal times and a reasonable press corp they should get equal time.
But this press corp is not normal and these are not normal times. They don’t ask questions, they try and guide the answers to accept the conservative/money view. It doesn’t work with Jen or President Biden but that’s not what gets written, what gets written is the point of view of the owners of a particular outlet. Which is their right of course, but it is not informative nor is it news, it’s politics in the guise of news and it isn’t informative or even what looks informative, it’s compost journalism. And once in a while snubbing them is the least that can/should be done. The real issue is that it creates the concept that President Biden is at fault for what they write or write about and that is false. IOW they are there to report on the news, not attempt to make the news about them.
The perspective is that the president is snubbing them, while the real story is that their questions are often a complete waste of time and it’s not like he doesn’t have his hands full trying to clean up a bit of a mess left by his predecessor.
Ruckus
@laura:
I think you do that by not purchasing their bosses news service compost.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
only good thing about Covid is how it forced these assholes to cancel their precious “nerd prom”
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I don’t recall the press ever insulting Dear Leader. I mean in 4 years he was only asked about illegally paying hush money to cover up his affair with a porn star once. Imagine if a Dem did they; he would be asked about it day and night.