‘No matter how you cut it, the briefing room does not look, sound, or register to vote like America’

Bob Unruh
WND News Center

It isn’t hard to remember how abrasive the White House press corps was with President Trump, openly berating him, interrupting him, even calling him a liar, which eventually prompted him to call them the enemy.

And now that Joe Biden is in office, he’s been slammed with hard-hitting questions like what is his favorite flavor ice cream.

Now a report from The Federalist suggests that abrupt change in the media attitude is nothing more than what should have been expected.

Because Democrats in the corps outnumber Republicans 12-1.

The report explains the research was done for a new book, “Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong – And Just Doesn’t Care,” by Fox News contributor and former Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

“No matter how you cut it, the White House briefing room does not look, sound, or register to vote like America,” Fleischer explained.

He cited one single press briefing, on June 7, 2021, when the COVID distancing demands finally were ended.

“Every seat was filled for the first time in over a year as the social distancing rules resulting from the COVID pandemic were relaxed,” Fleischer shared with The Federalist. “By a ratio of 12:1, the seats were occupied by Democrats!”

Citing research from the Washington company called Delve, he explained, “I guess the good news is that the ratio wasn’t 24:0, like it was during my encounters with students at Columbia Journalism School. It was only 12:1.”

The Federalist report, by Tristan Justice, explained the conclusion was really no surprise to Towson University Professor Richard Vatz, “who specializes in political persuasion and rhetoric.”

“In major media survey after major media survey [1962-1996], journalists of ‘national media,’ ‘Washington Press Corps,’ etc., were found to be overwhelmingly liberal, and in poll after poll they voted for Democrats,” Vatz said.

Specifically, he cited a 1982 project by State University of California at Los Angeles that revealed a poll of 1,000 “journalists” from 50 dailies found only 25% voted for President Ronald Reagan.

Another assessment in 1995 found 89% of reporters voted for Bill Clinton.

“America would be well served to have a robust press corps representing different outlets, considerations, and, most of all, questions for the president on down,” Curtis Houck, the managing editor of Newsbusters at the Media Research Center, said in an interview with The Federalist.

“Having watched press briefings for the last six years, it’s no surprise that the White House press corps tilt left as, along with a built-in geographical bias living in a far-left city, they have zero perspective or belief that their mindset might be wrong and/or self-serving.”

The report explained the “partisan makeup” of the White House press “skews” the report that the nation hears.

“The effect on media coverage is that certain topics in major media do not even get covered if they rebound to Republican advantage, and when pro-conservative-interest topics do get covered, they are spun negatively,” Vatz said.

The report charged, “While Trump dealt with a hostile press corps that turned daily coronavirus press conferences into sparring matches over whether the term ‘Chinese coronavirus’ was racist, President Joe Biden has enjoyed far friendlier treatment. Biden’s rare press conferences have been full of soft-ball questions from pre-selected reporters who’ve given the White House little grief for keeping the president away from the media.”

It continued, “Data from the American Presidency Project show Biden is one of the least accessible presidents in modern American history, having conducted only 16 total press conferences since taking office last year, including nine alone and seven as joint affairs.”

Meanwhile, the report noted, Gallup shows trust in the “media” has plunged, with only 16% of Americans trusting “newspapers.”