‘No Different Than Donald Trump’: White House Reporters Grouse About Limited Access To Biden

President Joe Biden and his team vowed to be far more transparent than their predecessor, but that hasn’t exactly happened.

From limiting who comes into the White House press briefing room to picking and choosing the reporters allowed to cover presidential events, the Biden White House has systematically limited transparency at nearly every turn.

In one recent event held in the 3,000-square-foot White House East Room, “his staff selects which reporters attend, citing ‘spacing constraints’ for why they exclude most White House correspondents,” the New York Post reported.

“[R]eporters interested in attending one of the semi-regular Biden forums must RSVP electronically and then White House staff pick a small number who are allowed to attend alongside the rotating daily press pool,” said the paper.

“This is all baloney. There is no space issue,” reporter Brian Karem, who has covered the White House since the Reagan administration, told the Post. Karem said he has tried to get into each of the eight East Room events held so far, but has been denied. “This is unprecedented territory. It has never been as restrictive,” he said.

“This president has never made himself available to the open press in an open atmosphere, and the East Room is where those usually occur. This administration is being disingenuous in telling us that there’s limited availability and therefore we can’t get in,” Karem said.

Karem, who has worked for Playboy and been a freelance journalist, said the situation is at least as bad and maybe worse than that under Trump.

“This is no different than Donald Trump trying to keep people from getting their press pass. They’re just a little more subtle about it. This administration has created another level of access without any type of transparency as to how this is being done,” Karem said. “It’s inconsistent with the ideals of a free press. They cannot pick and choose who they want to cover them.”

White House Correspondents’ Association President Steven Portnoy, a CBS News Radio reporter, openly urged Biden to improve transparency during a July 15 joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“We’re looking forward to the day we can have even more reporters all the way to the back of the room,” Portnoy told Biden.

Meanwhile, longtime veteran Peter Baker of The New York Times said he doesn’t understand the limits placed on East Room attendees.

“In the old days (Clinton and Bush 43 for sure, and I think Obama too), any reporter who was in the briefing room when they did the escort could go up” to East Room events, Baker said in an email to the Post. “The East Room hasn’t shrunk in recent years so it’s hard to imagine why space constraints would suddenly require restricting the number of journalists who cover events there.”

“And it raises the question of what they base these decisions on — is it first-come, first-serve, or are they picking and choosing among reporters or news organizations based on some other criteria? If it’s the latter, that would be potentially troubling.”

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