Far-right media complains about not getting enough attention from Biden

Two right-wing media outlets that repeatedly broadcast lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election are upset that President Joe Biden declined to call on their reporters during his first news conference on Thursday.

Newsmax TV’s White House correspondent Emerald Robinson, who has promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, lamented on-air that Biden did not call on her during the event.

“When I walked in, I saw the seating setup and I pretty quickly determined that I was unlikely to get a question,” she told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt.

On Fox News, White House correspondent Peter Doocy appeared several times on-air after the news conference to complain about being snubbed, toting a stack of papers he claimed were his planned questions for Biden, including what he said was one about the “origins of COVID.’

Media Matters for America noted that Doocy, apparently thinking Biden should have given reporters more time, said, “I just wish that maybe the schedule could have been done a little bit differently today, so we could have the president for longer. But he’s the president, and he was off to do something that the leader of the free world has to do — 3 o’clock on a Thursday.”

The networks whose reporters Biden didn’t call on during the first news conference of his presidency have a history of presenting distortions and falsehoods about, among other things, the handling and results of the very election that put Biden in office, and that approach has not slowed since he was inaugurated.

Doocy has previously been taken to task by press secretary Jen Psaki for asking questions during the daily White House briefing based on deliberately distorted and incomplete information.

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to President Biden, Newsmax and Fox News both promoted conspiracy theories about the outcome of the race.

Newsmax advanced the false idea that voting machine companies changed ballots to favor Biden. The network only backed off the charges after being threatened with legal action.

Fox News and several of its hosts, along with hosts on its sister network, Fox Business, repeatedly aired election conspiracy theories. They are the basis of a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against the network by Dominion Voting Machines, which has accused it of creating a “forest fire” with its multiple falsehoods.

Fox News on Jan. 19 fired politics editor Chris Stirewalt, who projected on-air that Biden had won Arizona on election night, after criticism from Donald Trump and other conspiracy theorists.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.