The Biden Administration took a major step toward a fully controlled state-run media that mirrors China’s after demanding members of the White House Press Corps gain approval before publishing quotes and statements. The largest problem is not necessary that Joe Biden’s handlers are taking a page from the communist’s playbook. What’s frightening about this attack on freedom of the press is that the establishment media is going along to get along.
The recent policy restricts members of the press from publishing background information or direct quotes unless Biden’s handlers review and edit them in advance. In effect, what Americans now read as direct quotes are no longer correct. They are revised versions that echo precisely what the administration would like you to hear, not what was actually said on the record. White House Press Secretary “Circle Back” Jen Psaki defended the policy.
“(W)e make policy experts available in a range of formats to ensure context and substantive detail is available for stories,” Psaki said. “If outlets are not comfortable with that attribution for those officials, they, of course, don’t need to utilize those voices.”
Biden’s mouthpiece makes an unmistakable implied threat with that statement. The weak so-called “journalists” in the press corps understand that government officials could suddenly be banned from communicating with them if they push back against Biden’s violation of the First Amendment.
“The rule treats them like coddled Capitol Hill pages and that’s not who they are or the protections they deserve,” one reporter said off the record. “The only way the press has the power to push back against this is if we all band together.”
To date, the same press corps that aggressively attacked the Trump Administration bent the knee to the fascists now running the White House. An emboldened Psaki recently took another giant step toward a state-controlled media by leveling another subtle threat to stop using anonymous sources.
She reportedly told at least Politico Biden’s handlers “would welcome any outlet banning the use of anonymous background quotes that attack people personally or speak to internal processes from people who don’t even work in the Administration.”
Establishment and fake news outlets have all but confessed they lit the fuse that burned down the power of the (formerly) free press. In an effort to have greater “transparency” and harmony with their Democrat colleagues, reporters and editors apparently started touching base with Biden’s handlers before making reports available to the public. The unanticipated consequence has been an unprecedented muzzling of the media.
“What started out as an effort by reporters to get more transparency, to get people on the record more, to use fewer blind quotes, then got taken by the White House, each successive White House, as a way of taking control of your story,” New York Times employee Peter Baker reportedly said. “So instead of transparency, suddenly, the White House realized: ‘Hey, this quote approval thing is a cool thing. We can now control what is in their stories by refusing to allow them to use anything without our approval.’”
Baker insists this amounts to “a pernicious, insidious, awful practice that reporters should resist.” However, no one in the fake news media has effectively pushed back. It’s not as if the media mob would publish true facts about the gross failures of a Democrat administration anyway.
