5 Ways Joe Biden Ducks The Press

President Joe Biden has a love-hate relationship with the media: They love his administration, his policies, and his party, but his overly secretive administration rejects the openness necessary to let the public scrutinize his policies. As recent polls show, a growing number of Americans believe President Biden is implementing an unpopular agenda in a halting and  incompetent manner.

So, although the Biden administration received more positive media coverage during its first 60 days than any president in the last three decades, the administration has cloistered the president away from the press and attempted to control the narrative through a number of easily identifiable tools. Here are five of them:

1. Holding the fewest number of press briefings of any recent president

Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign — which consisted largely of hiding in his basement — proved so successful that he extended it to his presidency. After being elected president, Biden waited longer than any president in 100 years before holding his first press conference, 64 days.

Since then, he has largely taken a powder at the podium. President Biden has held a grand total of seven press conferences thus far in the first year of his presidency, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California Santa Barbara. That includes four solo press conferences and three joint conferences with other world leaders.

Seven press conferences is one of the lowest numbers of media availabilities of any president since the 1920s. President Ronald Reagan held only six events in his first year — although he was hospitalized part of the time due to an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. (who was recently granted release). President Gerald Ford also had six press conferences in his first year in office — but his first year began when Richard Nixon retired on August 8, 1974, so Ford held more than one press conference a month.

If you can’t ask the president a question, you can’t make him admit that he has no answers.

2. Pre-screening questions

Before the Biden administration will answer any questions, it would really like to see them in advance. The source is unimpeachable: The nation’s leading reporters broke this story themselves during a White House Correspondents Association Zoom call in February. The Daily Beast quoted one such journalist:

“While it’s a relief to see briefings return, particularly with a commitment to factual information, the press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House

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