‘Night and day’: The Biden administration and the press – CPJ Press Freedom Online

President Joe Bidens approach to U.S. media is a stark contrast to Donald Trumps vicious rhetoric. However, one year into the Biden administration, press freedom advocates remain concerned about issues like the presidents limited availability to journalists, the administrations slow responses to requests for information, its planned extradition of Julian Assange, restrictions on media access at the U.S. southern border, and its limited assistance to Afghan journalists. A CPJ special report by Leonard Downie Jr.

Published January 13, 2022

The first year of the Biden administrations relationship with the U.S. press has been an almost complete reversal of the Trump administrations unprecedentedly pervasive and damaging hostility, which seriously damaged the news medias credibility and often spread misinformation around the world.

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In marked contrast, President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and administration officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of working with the news media to keep Americans informed. Reporters still have had issues with access to the president and some administration officials and information. But there have not been any vicious attackson journalists as enemies of the people or accusations of fake news.

The most obvious change is the change in rhetoric, University of Georgia media and law professor Jonathan Peters told me. Whats gone is rhetoric from the president or administration officials designed to delegitimize the news media.

Overall, reporters told me, there have been significant improvements in the day-to-day informational relationships with the news media. Regular briefings for the press have been restored at the White House and the State and Defense Departments essential elements for repairing the damage to press freedom in the U.S. and bolstering credibility when administration officials push for press freedom overseas.

At the Department of Justice, Attorney General Merrick Garland at Bidens direction has stopped federal subpoenas of reporters telephone and email records to find government sources of classified government information, an unprecedented number of whom were prosecuted and imprisoned during the Trump and Obama administrations. There have been no new federal prosecutions of such sources to date under Biden. Instead, the Justice Department is investigating and prosecuting people who physically attacked journalists during the violent, Trump-inspired invasion of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. And it is investigating abusive treatment of reporters by police in Minneapolis, Louisville, and Phoenix.

Biden has also restored the editorial independence of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, home of the Voice of America, which the Trump administration had tried to turn into a propaganda agency. The website of the Environmental Protection Agency, largely scrubbed under Trump of reliable information about climate change and other environmental issues, has reinstated those resources.

Not that everything has been to the news medias liking or to the publics benefit.

Although Biden and administration officials have mostly appeared to avoid the willful misinformation that characterized the Trump White House, news media fact-checkers have identified numerous misleading and false claims in both Bidens prepared and extemporaneous remarks. They were especially frequent in his explanations for and defenses of the chaotic U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan.

Some other issues were raised during my interviews with more than 30 journalists, academic news media observers, press freedom advocates, and Biden administration officials.

The Biden White House and the press

One key concern among White House reporters is their limited access to Biden. He has given far fewer press conferences and media interviews than either Barack Obama or Donald Trump in their first years in office, and he has responded to fewer impromptu questions from reporters at White House or public events.

Instead, Press Secretary Jen Psaki, or one of her deputies, have held daily televised press briefings for White House reporters after they had not occurred for months at a time in the Trump White House.

Psaki, a veteran spokesperson for Democratic presidential campaigns, the Obama White House, and the State Department, was well-prepared for her role, a striking contrast to Trumps four less-experienced, notably combative, press secretaries. In some ways, Psaki has become second only to Biden as a public face of his administration, even receiving attention like a favorable profile in Vogue magazine, in addition to her frequent interviews on television and radio.

Biden held just one full-scale solo press conference at the White House and four on foreign trips during his first year in office, according to authoritative records kept by political scientist Martha Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project during several administrations. By Kumars count, Biden had given just 22 interviewsas presidentto members of the news media by the end of 2021, a fraction of the 92 Trump had done, or the 150 that Obama had done during the same period in their presidencies.

Biden relies more on prepared remarks that he has read on television from a teleprompter, taking few or no questions from reporters kept some distance away, behind the teleprompter and the cameras. If he doesnt want to take more or any questions, Associated Press White House correspondent Zeke Miller told me, hell turn around and walk away.

While President Biden has taken questions more often at his events than his predecessors, he spends less time doing so, Kumar said. He provides short answers with few follow-ups when he takes questions at the end of a previously scheduled speech. He often takes one or two questions while his predecessors took more queries at fewer events.

Kumar believes that the White House staff works to minimize Bidens extemporaneous remarks because of his tendency to make mistakes, which he has had to correct later. Theyve been trying to button him up, said Kumar, who works out of a White House basement office. The president is more likely to make a mistake toward the end of a press conference.

When he cut off reporters questions after a televised speech at the White House about the nations Covid surge on December 21, Biden told them, Im not supposed to be having this press conference right now.

Tactics differ from administration to administration, Psaki told me. The president probably takes more questions overall. He does short question and answer sessions a couple times a week. He takes two to 10 questions each time. White House reporters might disagree with the larger number. We have an open conversation about that, Psaki added.

We need more access to Biden himself, said Jonathan Karl, ABC News White House correspondent and a past president of the White House Correspondents Association. Press access to him is so far very limited. Press conferences are few and far between. His people seem to wall him off from the press.

The White House press office also closely controls reporters access to administration officials. Too many briefings and conversations with senior administration officials, arranged by the White House and cabinet department press offices, are conducted only on deep background, meaning that the officials cannot be identified or quoted, except for any quotes that are approved by the press office before publication. They have been very tight for the most part, said Dan Balz, veteran chief political correspondent for The Washington Post. The early days of the administration have been very choreographed mostly scripted events.

That careful scripting extends to Bidens social media posts, a stark contrast to Trumps plethora of stream-of-conscious tweets. There is also far less leaking to the media of insider deliberations or disagreements than there was in the rivalrous Trump White House.

Biden aides are not at war with each other, Washington Post White House correspondent Ashley Parker told me. Very few go rogue. Its very much like the Obama administrations discipline, she added. They give you sanctioned White House details. They dont want to talk to you about disagreements.

Its night and day, ABCs Karl told me. Weve reverted to close to normal. In the late Trump days, you couldnt talk to any officials on the record.

Steve Coll, dean of the Columbia University Journalism School, says that Biden has moved to restore norms destroyed by the Trump administration. On matters dealing with traditional relationships between the White House and the press, this is a president who is old school, Coll told me.

The White House press office is a much more robust operation, said Miller, the APs veteran White House Correspondent. Many more people. More information on paper. More prepared.

When Biden selected her to be his press secretary, Psaki told me in an interview for this report, I had conversations with the president during the transition and discussed his understanding of the role of the press corps and the role of the White House briefing. What was most important to him was the right tone and providing as much information as possible.

Psaki offers authoritative, if carefully circumscribed, information in her briefings. She spars firmly but good-naturedly with reporters, sometimes challenging the underlying assumptions of their questions with a quick wit known on social media as #PsakiBomb. She has made a point of also calling on reporters from Fox News and other right-wing media critical of Biden. Recalling her discussions with Biden about the briefings, she told me, It was important to take questions from everyone.

Psaki deserves credit for holding daily briefings again and reducing sniping from the podium, Frank Sesno, former director of the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, told me. Its a respectful even though adversarial relationship.

There is still a very healthy distance, Miller said. Just because the temperature has cooled, there is still an underlying contentious relationship.

We have returned to some baseline of cooperation, even though members of the press are not always satisfied, Psaki said. That back and forth is healthy. I hope we have an open line of communication.

Miller added that Psaki is bringing into the briefing room cabinet secretaries and other officials on a regular basis for on-the-record briefings on administration actions and policies. Psaki told me, I am proud of bringing in administration experts and cabinet members on a frequent basis.

Other briefings and interviews with senior administration officials are offered on deep background, which means that reporters cannot identify or quote them.

Everything has to be on background, said Anita Kumar (no relation to Martha Kumar), a senior Politico editor who covered the White House for nine years. Constant background briefings with White House or agency officials.

Psaki says that decisions on background briefings depend on the comfort level of the person speaking to the reporter. Many of them are comfortable only speaking on background, she told me.

However, Politicos Kumar noted that reporters must ask the White House press office for quote approval for anything said in a background briefing or interview that they want to put on the record in their stories. Theyre approving content again for a second time, she said.

Parker told me that The Washington Posts team of White House reporters decided on their own to not allow White House officials to speak on background with on-the record quote approval. We still speak to sources on background when it makes sense. What we do not do, is speak to sources on background and then go after them and ask them to approve their quotes for on the record.

The press office controls access to senior officials, Parker said. You have to go through the press office. They ask questions about what you want to know in detail more like Obama. You pre-negotiate with the press office or the officials assistants on time and terms. Theyre often on the phone to control time.

If you place a call to someone on Bidens White House staff, or even a Biden ally outside the White House, said Karl of ABC News, you will frequently get a call back from the press office asking about what you want, what story you are pursuing. They usually will eventually get you in touch with the official supervised by the press office, somebody there in the interview.

Sometimes, officials want to know what the story is about, Psaki responded when I asked about this. They rely on the press office for context. Someone from the press office does often monitor interviews, she acknowledged, to better know what the story is about.

Miller, another past president of the White House Correspondents Association, told me that he doesnt go through the press office all the time for officials he knows. There are still some sources who will speak to you on an unscripted basis, he said. But they often will not talk on the record. The press office is still the gatekeeper for senior White House staff.

What would Miller change if he could? More substantive back and forth with the president to reveal what is on his mind, he said. And ditch the senior administration official label by putting more briefings and interviews on the record with officials names.

Like the Obama administration, the Biden press team wants to control the story, although it is not as argumentative as the Obama administration, whose press team was very thin-skinned, Karl told me. They argued vigorously with reporters. They didnt hesitate to call editors or executive producers when they didnt like a story. Not so much in the Biden administration.

When its important to them, they can argue, Politicos Anita Kumar said, adding that its very rare for the Biden press office not to respond to her even when they dont want to comment. Theres so much discipline in this White House, she added. They have a message they want to put out each day. They dont want to deviate from it.

White House and cabinet officials also promote that message more directly to voters with interviews with national and local news media around the country. By mid-summer, according to CNNs Reliable Sources, White House and cabinet officials, including Psaki, had done more than 1,000 interviews with local news outlets, mostly local television stations, from a studio in the Executive Office Building next to the White House.

There is less access with Biden than with Trump, The Posts Parker told me. A few shouted questions after his appearances and speeches, and when he is going to and from Marine One. Only a 12-person pool [of reporters] for meetings with the cabinet or visiting dignitaries, and it is escorted out quickly. Trump often let them in, and he took many questions on the way to Marine One.

Psakis response: If we were trying to prevent [Biden] from engaging with the press, we are not doing a very good job.

Beyond the White House

Reporters covering the Biden administrations cabinet departments and agencies similarly have found both improvements and limitations in their access to officials and information.

At the State Department, daily press briefings resumed after a long hiatus during the Trump administration. In contrast to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeos open, often angry hostility to reporters, Antony Blinken, Bidens secretary of state, declared, on his first day in office, that the news media are a cornerstone of our democracy and promised to cooperate with them.

Senior officials are encouraged to do background calls to explain issues, to do television interviews and to appear before reporters in the briefing room, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told me. Our disposition is to say yes whenever possible.

Its been quite an improvement for reporters covering the State Department, said Shaun Tandon of Agence France-Presse, president of the State Department Correspondents Association. We have good access to Secretary Blinken, who holds regular press briefings, plus informal access to him when hes traveling abroad.

However, reporters still must usually go through States press office to talk to other officials. The message is very heavily managed, Tandon told me, but the overall tone is positive. Its handled in a polite way. Theyre not cursing you out.

Washington Post State Department reporter John Hudson agreed. Theres a lot that were not being told about, so a lot of digging is required, he told me. They have done a good job of making officials available for briefings. The press office hasnt come down on people like a ton of bricks, although conversations can be tough at times.

At the Defense Department, after President Trumps first defense secretary, General James Mattis, was generally uncooperative with the news media, his successor Mark Esper significantly increased press access. So, the transition for Pentagon reporters was less noticeable with Bidens defense secretary, Lloyd Austin III. However, Missy Ryan, a Washington Post national security correspondent, said there was less tension and more access to information in Austins Pentagon.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby has talked to reporters daily and increased availability of officials and reversed restrictions on access to information, and will engage you when you go to them with stories, Ryan told me. Austin also has made himself more available to the press. However, to interview other civilian and military officials, they still want you always to go through the press offices, of which there are many at the Pentagon for the various services.

No part of the Trump administration was as combative and uncooperative with the press as the Environmental Protection Agency. It repeatedly issued press releases attacking individual reporters and news organizations for critical stories about the agency. EPAs website under Trump was scrubbed of information and resources about climate change and other environmental issues.

All that information and more is back up on the EPA website under Biden, and its press office is much more cooperative with reporters. Im cautiously optimistic, Sadie Babits, president of the Society of Environmental Reporters, told me. Its been pretty responsive, with most reporters having a more normal experience with the agency.

EPA and (Department of) Interior top press people for the most part have been extremely straightforward, said Juliet Eilperin, the Washington Posts veteran environmental reporter. EPA and Interior officials reached through the press offices are accessible to make sure stories are accurate, she added, although their insistence on anonymity continues to be a major problem.

A Society of Environmental Journalists internal survey of national news organizations environmental reporters found that most of them got what they wanted most of the time after getting no or little response during the Trump administration, said former SEJ president Tim Wheeler. Although the press office still insists on being an intermediary to get information or an interview, he added, it is more professional in its treatment of reporters and responses to requests for interviews with political appointees.

We really wanted to reset our relationship with the news media, Lindsay Hamilton, associate EPA administrator for public affairs, told me. We started by doing direct outreach to key reporters who cover us the most. We told them we wanted to have a positive professional relationship.

Hamilton said she conducted media training for the agencys subject matter experts, for whom dealing with reporters can be an uncomfortable experience at times. She added that we still ask that reporters coordinate with public affairs to speak to them. We determine how to handle each interview.

Compared to the Trump administration, reporting on the Department of Homeland Security and its role in dealing with the record number of migrants trying to cross the southern U.S. border has ironically been more difficult, if not as combative, during the first year of the Biden administration, according to Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff. The Trump DHS was less disciplined, so it was easier to develop sources and gain access to the border, he told me, even though they engaged in misinformation and retaliated for stories they didnt like.

Its been tough with the Biden administration, said Miroff. They have tightened up access to information and engaged in more professional message control. That leaves reporters at a disadvantage in informing the public. They are less transparent, although it isnt adversarial.

Reporters are frustrated with the lack of access at the border, Miroff added. When they were denied access to the huge encampment of Haitian migrants on the Mexico-Texas border in October, reporters had to go to Mexico and cross the Rio Grande with the Haitians.

Control by the press offices of cabinet departments and agencies over access to administration officials and restrictions on naming and quoting them in stories were primary concerns of reporters I interviewed for this report. Named sources and attributed quotes and information make news stories more credible. Their absence can be used for false charges of fake news.

Barriers to access to government documents and other information also continue to frustrate the press. Despite public commitments from both Biden and Attorney General Garland to increase government transparency, Freedom of Information Act experts have seen little improvement in the slow and often uncooperative response of government agencies to journalists FOIA requests for information. Formal letters to Biden and Garland from press freedom and civil society groups with specific proposals for improvements have gone unanswered. The administration has not announced any FOIA response directives.

In the Obama and Trump administrations, there had been backlogs and delays, fully redacted documents or nothing at all, University of Georgia professor Peters told me. Theres been a rise in pending FOIA legal cases, and they are taking longer to close. I would love for the Biden administration to change that. But there is not yet evidence of change.

I havent heard any indications of improvements for journalists, said Adam Marshall, senior staff attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who is involved in considerable news media FOIA litigation. Not a whole lot has changed from previous administrations delays and denials of FOIA requests by journalists, Marshall said. Its largely a continuation of what we had. There is no information on how FOIA would work in this administration.

Biden Justice Department and the press

President Biden made one of the most important press freedom decisions of his administrations first year in what had appeared to be an impromptu answer to a reporters question at the White House. Biden was asked on May 21 about the Justice Department subpoenas and seizures of journalists telephone and email records, as was frequently done during the Obama and Trump administrations.

Absolutely, positively its wrong, the President responded. Its simply, simply wrong.

So, you wont let your Justice Department do that? the reporter persisted.

I will not let that happen, Biden said.

The reporter asked because the Justice Department had recently informed three Washington Post reporters and the Pentagon correspondent for CNN that Justice, in the final days of the Trump administration, had secretly obtained their phone and email records in investigations of leaks of government information to them. Days after Bidens statements, Justice informed The New York Times that it also had secretly obtained phone records of four of its reporters. None of the records seizures had previously been revealed or reversed by Justice under Biden.

In mid-June, Attorney General Merrick Garland met with executives of the Post, the Times, and CNN. He agreed with them that the Department of Justice (DOJ) should establish strong durable rules to fulfill Bidens promise that reporters phone and email records would no longer be seized. On July 19, Garland released a memo to the nations federal prosecutors ordering that the practice be stopped.

The Justice Department will no longer use compulsory legal process for the purpose of obtaining information from or records of members of the news media acting within the scope of newsgathering activities, the Attorney General wrote. He said that Justice would revise its guidelines for federal prosecutors accordingly.

The memo made exceptions in cases of reporters being investigated for a crime unrelated to their coverage, or of reporters considered agents of foreign powers, or when it would be necessary to prevent an imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm, including terrorist attacks, kidnappings, specified offenses against a minor, or attacks on critical infrastructure. And the new prohibition does not affect the seizure of records of any government employee who has unlawfully disclosed government information.

The memo is a real change in policy, Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said approvingly. We loved what Biden did, he told me. We loved what DOJ did.

Brown added that he and a group of news media leaders and lawyers who had met with Garland before the memo was made public plan to meet with DOJ again to discuss how it will be translated into the guidelines for federal prosecutors. Brown said that they are particularly concerned about how narrowly the exemptions to the prohibition on the seizure of reporters records will be framed.

Justice Department public affairs director Anthony Coley confirmed to me that we will meet again with the news media dialogue group. He added that one big question is, how does one identify a reporter?

We dont know exactly what the revisions will be, University of Georgias Peters told me. There are holes in the Garland memo. What does engaged in newsgathering mean? Who is a member of the news media? DOJ has a lot of discretion. We hope that will be more particularized in the guidelines.

The Biden administration is not just stepping away from what Trump was doing, but also what Obama was doing, said Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. But, so far, its just words. It needs to be written into Justice Department guidelines. And Congress needs to take the words of Garland and write them into law.

During the Obama administration, the Justice Department prosecuted an unprecedented 10 government employees and contractors for leaking classified information to the news media, including Justice investigations begun under President George W. Bush. Reporters phone logs and email records were secretly subpoenaed and seized in several of those cases. Under Donald Trump, Justice prosecuted eight more government employees and contractors for leaks to the press. In addition, it indicted Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, with obtaining secret military and diplomatic documents and publishing them on the WikiLeaks website, making them accessible to news media around the world.

Under pressure from Trump, Justice also opened leak investigations that involved the secret seizures in 2020 of 2017 phone and email records of the Post, Times, and CNN reporters. The Biden-era Justice Department did not disclose the seizures until notifying the targeted reporters in May and June of 2021. While Garland took responsibility, Brown of the Reporters Committee said that the news media leaders and lawyers who met with Garland made clear there should be accountability within DOJ for the secrecy and delay in notifications.

Brown and other press freedom advocates also remain concerned about what the Biden Justice Department will do with the long-standing indictment of Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, which was used by both the Obama and Trump administrations for many of their prosecutions of government employees and contractors for leaking classified information to the press.

The Trump-era indictment charged Assange with conspiring with U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to acquire and publish classified military and diplomatic information on WikiLeaks.

In February 2021, the Justice Department filed a brief appealing a British court ruling that had blocked extradition of Assange from the U.K. We are continuing to seek extradition, Justice spokesperson Marc Raimondi said at the time. On December 10, Britains High Court ruled that Assange could be extradited after assurances from the Biden administration that, if convicted, Assange would not be sent to the highest-security U.S. prison or put into solitary confinement. Assanges lawyers said they would seek to make additional appeals on free speech and human rights grounds. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment further.

A coalition of press, civil liberties, and human rights groups have urged the Biden administration to drop its extradition efforts because they believe prosecution of Assange poses a grave danger to press freedom. Many organizations fear that successful prosecution of him could hamper investigative reporting around the world by labeling as espionage the ways that reporters often work in seeking information from government sources.

What is written in the indictment is a threat to journalists everywhere obtaining and publishing classified information, Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation told me. The Assange prosecution would make reporting on national security a crime. It could criminalize investigative reporting. The Biden administration should drop the charges.

Columbia Journalism Schools Coll agreed. The Assange case should be dropped, he told me. The indictment is full of misunderstandings about how reporting works very ordinary reporting.

Its really troubling that in the indictment was a characterization of basic reporting as part of a conspiracy, said University of Georgias Peters.

How does the administration square new protections for journalists with the actions it takes on Assange? asked Columbia Law Schools Professor Jameel Jaffer. The answer will shed light on the scope of those protections.

Other issues also linger in what remains of the toxic Trump-era anti-press environment. Among them are continuing aggressive actions against reporters by both law enforcement officials and members of the public. In 2021, 59 journalists were arrested or detained by police, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, after 142 such arrests in 2020. Another 142 journalists had been assaulted either by law enforcement officers or members of the public, a significant reduction from the 436 assaulted in 2020, but still a worrying sign of remaining hostility.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a coalition of 91 news media organizations asked Attorney General Garland on April 29 to investigate law enforcements treatment of the press as part of the Justice Departments new civil rights investigations of local police departments in Minneapolis, Louisville, and Phoenix during the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the nation after the murder of George Floyd.

In addition to the arrests of members of the news media covering demonstrations in American cities in 2020, the groups letter to Garland said, dozens more reporters were struck by less-lethal weapons, exposed to chemical munitions, or otherwise subjected to unwarranted force.

Coley at Justice told me that those investigations will include how the police departments treated reporters covering demonstrations in those cities. We have reached out to reporters groups for information, he said, and CNN is compiling information for Justices civil rights division. This is something the Attorney General cares deeply about, Coley added.

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'Night and day': The Biden administration and the press - CPJ Press Freedom Online