Some anonymous media are complaining about how the Biden* Administration is trying to manipulate them by asking for daily press briefing questions ahead of time. Hardly. The Biden* Administration, like the Obama Administration before it, is trying to control the propaganda narrative that the American people hear. The press corps covering the White House are just all too willing to comply because they do not see the left-leaning Biden* Administration as a threat to their brand of socialist democracy. Nonetheless, the information you—the United States citizen—is receiving from the government is only what the government wants you to hear because the news media is too lazy and dumbed down to do its job.
This is a danger to freedom, but it has become common place when leftists in the media and the government have a cozy relationship. In one sense, the news media was extraordinarily and unfairly hostile to President Trump, and now it has admittedly changed coverage because it is in agreement with the politics of the Biden* Administration. For example, CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was extremely hostile to Trump, told the Atlantic in a December 2020 article, “I don’t think the press should be trying to whip up the Biden presidency and turn it into must-see TV in a contrived way.” CNN reporter Daniel Dale, in the same article, stated that his job would “not be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to fact-check Biden” because “the simple reality is that Biden doesn’t lie nearly as often as Trump does.”
Now some media are allegedly complaining because Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki is requiring the “pre-screening” of questions before press briefings. The left-leaning Daily Beast reports a White House spokesperson said the primary goal remains to “make the daily briefing as useful and informative as possible for both reporters and the public…Part of meeting that objective means regularly engaging with the reporters who will be in the briefing room to understand how the White House can be most helpful in getting them the information they need.” The spokesman said that “two-way communication” as an “important part of keeping the American people updated about how government is serving them.” Translated, this means getting the questions ahead of time allows for answers fitting a predetermined narrative—propaganda.
In February 2013, Politico wrote about how the Obama White House controlled the messages it gave to the news media in generating “content” [translate: propaganda] for the general public. Biden is just repeating the protocols. The “press” is supposed to be the “Fourth Estate”–that non-governmental branch of the nation holding the government accountable, the watchdog of the people, not a lapdog of the government. When the media doesn’t do its job, people turn to alternative news sources, which without discernment, has its own propaganda. We are living in a post-truth world, where propaganda threatens our freedom of speech and worship. Advice: 2 Timothy 2:15, “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Discern the truth to remain free.
