Brittany Bernstein writes for National Review Online about an interesting admission from a member of the White House media.
While accepting an award at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, Axios reporter Alex Thompson acknowledged that he and other members of the mainstream media failed to properly report on President Biden’s declining mental acuity.
“Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves,” Thompson said as he accepted the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story.”
“President Biden’s decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” he added.
“Some people trust us less because of it,” he said. “We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it.”
“We should have done better,” he concluded.
While Republicans had been sounding the alarm over Biden’s health for years, Democrats and members of the media downplayed those concerns until the then-president’s disastrous debate performance brought renewed scrutiny on his mental state. Questions about his health and age ultimately led the octogenarian president to drop out of the presidential race just months before Election Day.
While Thompson offered a reflection on the media’s mistakes, WHCA president Eugene Daniels was defiant in his defense of the press corps’ work, telling the audience, “We are not the enemy of the state.”
“Our responsibility is not to align with any one party or any one of gender, but to serve the people of this country with integrity and dedication,” he said. “We care deeply about accuracy and take seriously the heavy responsibility of being stewards of the public’s trust. What we are not is the opposition.”
