After four years of the combative Donald Trump, covering the Biden White House is no longer an exciting assignment – so says an article in Politico that points out being a White House reporter used to be "a golden ticket" to stardom. An April 29 article titled "The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter," written by White House reporter Max Tani, says now that things are running so smoothly at the Biden White House, the job has become something of a bore. In fact, says the writer, compared to Trump, Joe Biden "has been a journalistic sedative."
Tani writes:
"… What is happening is the fulfillment of a central Biden promise. Running for office against Donald Trump – the most theatrical, attention-seeking, Beltway-panic-inducing president in living memory – he pledged to make Washington news boring again. And, well, mission accomplished sir."
Curtis Houck of Media Research Center says the article is a joke. "This Politico piece is the biggest unintentional self-own-and-tell that you'll ever see about the press. The jokes just wrote themselves," he tells AFN.
Houck says one has to be blind not to see some of the biggest scandals in U.S. history running rampant in the Biden administration. He cites a couple of examples: millions of illegals being essentially invited into the country; and the president and his son allegedly being in the pay of a foreign adversary. And what about the president himself perhaps slipping into dementia?
Journalists have to be either stupid or evil to miss so much, says Houck. "They really have that thick of a skull and live in that thick of a bubble that they don't believe they're doing anything wrong," he says of the White House press corps.
Tani's article did mention one reporter who seems to be making a name for himself: Fox News' Peter Doocy. But Politico calls Doocy's reporting about crime along the southern border and in big cities, alleged corruption within the Biden family, and the tanking American economy nothing more than "Fox News fodder."
"It's an indictment on how they live to represent themselves and not all Americans," Houck reacts. "This entire piece – all 2,900 words of it – is a massive billboard reminding the American people that our news media, by and large, speak truth for power – not to power."
And evidently there's some regret among the White House press corps, according to Politico's Tani, who wrote: "There is a sense that the main saga of American politics is taking place outside the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and that the journalists covering it … may reap the career rewards."
