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If it seemed like the White House Press Corps was trying to make sure that Joe Biden lost the election, it was because some of them wanted Biden gone.
When The Columbia Journalism Review talked to White House reporters, they came back with something that they called a surprising feeling among some of the reporters:
But for a surprising number of people on the daily White House beat, that concern is mixed with another, more privately expressed emotion: relief at finally being rid of the Joe Biden press operation.
“I think it’s important for people to understand the context, that we’re coming out of four years of Biden and things haven’t been great,” one White House print reporter told CJR. “There’ve been fewer eyeballs on the press briefings and less attention than under Trump, so people just don’t understand some of the very frustrating things that we’ve dealt with and that we hope are going to be rolled back.”
Among those frustrations: the Biden press office largely kept reporters at a remove from the president, who—as Cameron Joseph noted here last year—had agreed to far fewer formal interviews than any president before him…Inside the briefing room, reporters who didn’t hold coveted front-row seats felt they got much less opportunity to ask questions.
“For a lot of people, what was the point in even going?” said a veteran White House reporter.
Why should a White House reporter go to the briefings even if they don’t get to ask a question?
For starters, it is their job that they are being paid to do. The reporters also have a duty to the American people to report on what their government is doing.