Picking Favorites
Last Monday, President Biden had one public event on his schedule…a joint appearance with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announcing proposed sanctions against airlines for flight delays.
No one from the New York Post was there in person to cover it. Not their fault, they applied for credentials for the event, which was held next to the White House at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building; that’s where some time ago, officials created a set of a “fake White House” that you’ve seen in news coverage of similar events.
The set has 50 theater-style seats for reporters, but before you think the Post being rejected has to do with space, about 20 of those seats were empty Monday.
The media request was made in a timely fashion, so that’s not the reason for the denial.
If it’s not because of lack of space, or failure to follow the rules for applying for credentials, what could the reason be?
Perhaps it’s because the Post failed to follow other rules…the ones that so many in the formerly mainstream media subscribe to, the ones that protect the Biden family from critical coverage.
Recall that it was the Post that broke the Hunter Biden laptop story…and with rumors swirling about an imminent indictment of the son of the president, apparently there just wasn’t room for a Post reporter. The Post itself noted that in that same “fake White House” room this past February, Biden chose to answer a Post reporter’s question about whether his family’s links to China compromised his ability to steer U.S. policy by complaining about the lack of “polite” reporters and storming out.
This is not new; President Obama tried to have Fox News reporters blocked from the White House briefing room because they did not really do news at Fox.
For what it’s worth, the New York Post has the fourth-most read web site of news organizations, it’s the second most-read newspaper online, and as of last year had the fifth-largest print circulation in the country.
You probably didn’t hear much about last week’s snub of the New York Post. But if that had been a certain other president who blocked a media outlet, you’d have heard plenty.
No, none of it is a surprise. But we should also not let it go unmentioned, or else we become complicit through our acquiescence.
