News/Commentary

Biden, White House try to interfere with free press, send letter to CNN, NY Times, media outlets telling how to spin inquiry story

September 13, 2023 | | Print Article

In response to Republicans launching an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, the president’s administration has submitted letters to its sycophantic media allies ordering them to call out the GOP’s alleged “lies.”

According to CNN sycophant Oliver Darcy, who dutifully broke the story on behalf of the admin, the letter is specifically addressed to CNN, The New York Times, CBS News, the Associated Press, Fox News, and others.

“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” White House Counsel’s Office spokesperson Ian Sams said in the letter.

He added that the inquiry should “set off alarm bells for news organizations.”

“Covering impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” he wrote.

“And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth,” he added.

Darcy dutifully echoed the administration’s talking points, claiming in his write-up that Republicans have “found no evidence of a crime” and slamming Republicans for having “long sought to baselessly portray Biden as a corrupt, crime-ridden politician engaged in sinister activities.”

As a reminder, Darcy was a staunch advocate of the Russian collusion delusion conspiracy theory and hoax.

“While news organizations have published innumerable fact checks on the matter, they have also often failed to robustly call out the mis- and disinformation peddled by Republicans in their coverage, frustrating officials in the Biden White House who believe that the news media should be doing more to dispel lies that saturate the public discourse,” Darcy wrote in his write-up.

See how he rushed to slam the media for not calling out Republicans’ alleged “mis- and disinformation”? The obvious assumption here is that everything Republicans claim is bull. Never mind all the bull coming from the Democrat Party and the White House in particular.

The only good news is that real journalists, of which there are so few, are calling out the administration. Take Matthew Keys, who previously worked at Reuters.

“This is not okay. The White House should not be encouraging, influencing or interfering in the editorial strategies of America’s newsrooms, including CNN and the New York Times,” he tweeted after CNN’s report was published.

Look:

It is indeed highly inappropriate and anathema to how the relationship between the U.S. government and the news media is supposed to function. But the Biden administration doesn’t appear to care. In fact, the administration has repeatedly violated norms in a way that would have caused controversy had its predecessor, a  Republican administration, done the same.

The admin has forced vaccine mandates down people’s throats, ordered the media to be their lapdogs, tried to force social media networks to censor content they dislike, and more.

But because the media are so beholden to the administration, the admin has faced very little, if any, pushback from the press — which has instead dedicated its efforts to calling out and “fact-checking” Republicans ad nauseam.

Vivek Saxena
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