OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
For the president who got the most votes in history one may think that there would be significant interest in a book about his wife, but that has not been the case.
A new book, a biography on the life of first lady Jill Biden titled “Jill: A Biography of the First Lady” penned by Associate Press reporters Julie Pace and Darlene Superville, has sold a humiliatingly low 250 copies, Politico reported.
The tidbit of information was in a story by Politico titled “The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter” that talked about how bored White House reporters are now that former President Donald Trump is not in the White House.
But during the age of Biden, a perch inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room has become something altogether different. It’s become a bore.
Some of those covering the most powerful office on the planet say that the storylines, while important, and substantive, can lack flair or be hard to get viewer attention. There is industry-wide acknowledgment that viewership is down. Television outlets have been quick to turn their attention to other stories and bolster other units. 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 — Donald Trump and the future of democracy — may reap the career rewards.
The Obama press room launched a whole cohort of journalists into media stardom. The Trump press room launched another. The Biden press room?
“I can’t think of any [stars],” a television news executive said to Politico. “I don’t really watch the briefings.”
“Jen [Psaki] is very good at her job, which is unfortunate,” one reporter said. “And the work is a lot less rewarding, because you’re no longer saving democracy from Sean Spicer and his Men’s Wearhouse suit. Jawing with Jen just makes you look like an a**hole.”
Imagine anyone thinking that these reporters are not partisan. They really believed that they were saving democracy.
“It’s not such a bad thing that there’s a new sense of sobriety in the White House briefing room,” said former Obama administration deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said. “The histrionics probably got out of control. It is serious business… It’s probably good for democracy for this to be less personality based and more about the work.”
“It’s a boring and difficult job. It’s tough to be a White House correspondent if you want to break news, they’re so airtight,” another reporter said. “There’s no Maggie [Haberman]. Who’s the Maggie of the Biden administration? It doesn’t exist.”
Apparently these people either have not seen Fox News White House correspondents Peter Doocy and Jaqui Heinrich or they are ignoring them.
This week, during a press briefing, Heinrich took White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to task over Biden Administration’s Disinformation Governance Board.
“Secretary Mayorkas said that part of its intention was to tackle misinformation in Hispanic communities especially. Can you give us an idea of what this board is going to be doing, what their authority would look like?” White House correspondent Jaqui Heinrich said.
“I really haven’t dug into this exactly. I mean, we, of course, support this effort, but let me see if I can get more specifics. We know that there has been a range of disinfo out there about a range of topics — I mean, including COVID, for example, and also elections and eligibility. But I will — I will check and see if there’s more specifics,” Psaki said.
“There’s been some criticism of the person who’s been chosen to oversee this board. She had previously called the Hunter Biden laptop a “Trump campaign product,” seeming to discredit its validity — or validity of reporting surrounding that.
Psaki seems very excited about Biden's new Ministry of Truth while simultaneously sounding completely clueless about everything pic.twitter.com/B9p9nRjKz1
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 28, 2022
“How can you assuage concerns of people who are looking at this person who’s been appointed to this position and wondering if she’s going to be able to accurately judge misinformation now that a lot of that reporting has been proven to be factual in some ways?” Heinrich argued.
“Well, I don’t have any comments on the laptop.
“But what I can tell you is that it sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities. I’m not sure who opposes that effort, and I don’t know who this individual is, so I have no comments on it specifically,” Psaki said.
