On January 21, Jen Psaki, the new spokesperson for the White House, had expressed her “deep respect for the role of a free and independent press”. One of its missions? “Share precise information with the American people” and bring “truth and transparency to the briefing room”, where Donald Trump had taken to regularly attacking the media present and their “fake news”, had -she insured. But to believe The Daily Beast, those words could have been quickly forgotten by Joe Biden’s communications team.
On several occasions, she would have polled journalists to find out what questions they were going to ask Jen Psaki during the famous media briefings. “While it’s a relief to see briefings come back, especially with a commitment to factual information, the press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House sorts and chooses the issues it wants. It is not at all a free press, “asserts a correspondent at the White House questioned by the American media.
An assumed practice
This subject would have been raised in particular during an informal call between correspondents at the White House, anxious to preserve their freedom of speech. Journalists would thus have been advised to refuse to communicate the questions in advance to Joe Biden’s team, or to simply turn a deaf ear and not respond to this request. Contacted by Business Insider, Joe Biden’s communications team did not deny asking reporters for the questions they were going to ask. The aim here was to foster a better relationship and to communicate the best possible information to their possible requests.
“This two-way conversation is an important element in keeping the American people informed of how the government is serving them,” said a White House spokesperson to the Daily Beast. This practice is in any case not new for journalists accustomed to following American policy. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, if they wanted to interview cabinet secretaries, they already had to communicate the questions that were going to be asked, for example.
Despite the concerns related to this request, the first steps of Jen Psaki, former Director of Communications for the White House between December 2009 and September 2011, then between April 2015 and January 2017 under Barack Obama, were hailed by the media: for the Washington Post, Americans must thus prepare for press briefings “based on reality”.
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