January 1, Biden Administration Blames Poor Reputation on Media Coverage

Amid unrelenting low approval ratings, the Biden administration blames the media for its poor reputation.

Officials say news organizations are unfairly covering the White House and contributing to President Joe Biden’s flailing public standing.

“From the president coughing or what air-buds the vice president uses, there has been this barrage of, frankly, unimportant high-school tabloid-style garbage,” said Kurt Bardella, an adviser for multiple Democratic committees and a frequent guest on cable news programs. 

“All the while, the Republican Party is working every single day to literally end democracy as we know it,” he said.

Multiple administration officials shared a recent Washington Post column entitled “The media treats Biden as badly as — or worse than — Trump. Here’s proof.”

Dana Milbank, the opinion piece’s author, cited findings from an artificial intelligence software analysis of more than 200,000 articles from 65 different outlets that determined coverage of Biden has been as bad for the last few months as that of former President Donald Trump during the same time frame in 2020.

Officials also recently pushed back against an item in Politico that said Vice President Harris’s preference to use traditional wired headphones instead of Bluetooth devices over fears that the latest technology could come with certain security risks.

“The intrepid, substantive reporting on @VP continues,” White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher wrote on Twitter, attaching a photo of the newsletter along with his snark.

However, outside experts say the process should be more give and take. White House reporters have openly requested that Biden hold more press conferences and make himself more available for questions.

“Perhaps the Biden administration needs to make itself more available to the press and really try and facilitate dialogue instead of being in a defensive posture,” said media critic Victor Pickard, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.   

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White House points finger at the press