by JOHN KEREZY, eyeoncleveland.com founder
JULY 7, 2024 — Reporters and editors, especially the White House Press Corps, have put our nation in great peril. Let’s hope we don’t pay a grievous price for it.
More than 50 years ago, Senator Howard Baker Jr. (R-Tennessee) became well known by asking a two-part question during the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities hearings about Watergate. It went like this: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
It was relentless reporting by numerous reporters, namely Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, which exposed the criminality of the Nixon Administration, from President Nixon on down, in 1973. Journalism then was hailed as a profession critical to democracy for exposing wrong-doing and not simply taking “talking points” (as we call them today) from the White House and running them in the newspapers and in news broadcasts.
Ironically, Bernstein himself explained the danger just a week ago. He stated in a July 1 interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN that there are 15-20 incidents of Joe Biden “freezing up” (Bernstein’s words) at a variety of events over the past 12 months. Bernstein described the president’s health at one such event as “almost a kind of rigor mortis had set in…” Here’s a link to the story: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/video/carl-bernstein-biden-performance-presidential-debate-ac360-digvid
We now all know that the occupant of the Oval Office has severe physical and mental impairments while our nation has a fragile economy and a migrant invasion on its hands. Then add in threats from multiple wars (Russia in Ukraine, Hamas-Israel/Middle East) and other hostile nations such as China and North Korea. That’s where we are coming out of the July 4th holiday weekend in 2024.
Tragically, many in the public now have are asking Baker-type questions but are using a different subject in the sentence: What did the media know about Joe Biden’s mental competency, and when did it know?
As a result of the June 27 presidential debate – one which President Joe Biden insisted on having this early, and one with which President Biden got to choose the media (CNN) and time and place of the debate (9 p.m. Eastern Time, in Atlanta), much of the public now believes Joe Biden is not mentally competent. Surveys from virtually every major polling organization since the debate are indicating that about 75 of the public believe say President Biden is no longer fit for office.
This isn’t just AN issue in the 2024 Presidential election campaign. It is THE issue now.
If one of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land’s physical and mental health is so greatly diminished, why is the public just finding this out about four months before the election? Can voters no longer trust journalists?
And here is an even more critical question: How can we verify that the President of the United States is physically and mentally competent – right now — to discharge the duties of this office?
Today, 10 days after the debate debacle, Americans deserve answers to some fairly basic questions, such as:
- Why hasn’t the media reported on Joe Biden’s mental competency until now?
- What did reporters and correspondent know about Biden’s mental state?
- When did they first know it? And if it was six months, a year, or many years ago, how come we (the public, through watching a presidential debate and journalist reporting afterwards) are just finding out about it now?
- Has there been a concerted effort to cover-up the President’s health? If so, who’s behind it?
These are painful questions, but they are ones reporters themselves must answer if they seek to restore any degree of public faith and trust in the journalism profession.
Flunking the Tim Russert Test
The late Tim Russert was hard working, relentless about checking facts, and hyper vigilant against government lying to the public. Russert earned his education in Cleveland, receiving his bachelor’s degree at John Carroll University and a law degree from Cleveland State University.
Chief Washington correspondent for NBC News and moderator for “Meet The Press” from 1991 until 2008, Russert was highly skeptical of former President Bill Clinton’s claims in the “Monicagate” sex scandal. Then, he challenged the Bush (43) Administration’s declarations that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. Russert was senior vice president at NBC News when he died unexpectedly in June 2008.
PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES
“The primary responsibility of the media is accountability of government,” is one of many ‘Russertism’ expressions.
Many in the public believe that journalists have failed to hold the government accountable with respect to President Biden’s physical and mental state. More on this below, but if journalists participated in a cover-up, we the people have a right to know it.
Once ‘circle the wagons,’ now ‘CYA’ instead
It wasn’t long ago that anyone talking with a journalist about Joe Biden’s fitness to be president would be a subject of media derision. Those who merely suggested this were subject to media attacks. It seems as if journalists, especially those in Washington, were circling the wagons to protect President Biden.
The “poster child” example of this is an interview which Nikki Haley interview with GMA’s George Stephanopoulos just three months ago.
“How do you know Joe Biden isn’t going to finish his term? What is this based on?” Stephanopoulos asked, interrupting an answer which (then) Republican candidate for president Haley was giving on a Good Morning America program. “What evidence do you have that he’s not going to finish the term?” Stephanopoulos again asked, brusquely cutting off Haley.
Here’s the link to an excerpt from the interview: https://twitter.com/i/status/1808226070123929979
The debate changed all that. Public opinion mandates now that journalists actually ask tough questions of the president.
On July 5, Stephanopoulos himself asked Biden this: “Do you have the mental and physical capacity to do it for another four years?” Prior to this in the interview, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Biden if he would do a medical evaluation to reassure the public. “Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognitive tests, and release the results to the American people,” was the exact wording of the questions.
Biden refused to answer.
As a result of Biden’s debate debacle, CNN had to point out how badly the President did. It aired the debate. Others in the media have followed suit, just as ABC News did on Friday. What’s happening right now is called CYA journalism, or cover your a – – just in case the president drops out of the presidential campaign or leaves office.
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine is also calling out the ‘circle the wagons’ journalistic practice. “Biden imploded for 90 minutes on live television, and now they (the media) are like cockroaches scrambling to be out of the light that exposes their (the media’s) fakery,” she wrote. Here’s a link to her story:
https://nypost.com/2024/07/03/opinion/the-left-wing-media-has-seen-the-decline-of-joe-biden-for-years-and-now-its-out-of-the-open/
“Just two weeks ago, they (the media) were echoing White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s claims that videos of a seemingly disoriented president meandering around at the G7 (Summit) or having to be led off stage by Barack Obama were ‘cheap fakes,’ manipulated or deceptively cropped by right-wingers,” she added.
“The Washington Post fact-checker awarded ‘Four Pinocchios’ to the videos that it said were ‘especially pernicious’ and intended to create a false narrative that Biden is too old for the job.”
CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, its chief medical correspondent, is a prime example of CYA in action. In a column appearing on CNN’s website on Friday. he is now calling for President Biden to undergo detailed testing for cognitive and movement disorders, and to make the test results available to the public.
“For me as a brain specialist, it was concerning to watch President Joe Biden, and it quickly became clear that I was not alone in my reaction… From a neurological standpoint, we (medical colleagues) were concerned with his confused rambling, sudden loss of concentration in the middle of a sentence, halting speech, and absence of facial animation, resulting in a flat, open-mouthed expression…” Dr. Gupta wrote.
CYA journalism.
The Biden White House is trying to fight back, but it’s playing by some dishonest rules which shouldn’t apply anymore. We (the people) are learning that what had appeared to be Biden radio interviews this past week were actually sessions in which the questions were provided in advance by the White House to the radio interview hosts.
The Biden team was trying to set an agenda and prohibit the stations from doing any actual tough questions in the interview. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl commented on this on his “X” (Twitter) account on Saturday. “This is malpractice,” he said. “When you give the interviewer questions, it is no longer an interview. Why did the White House do this?”
Earlier today, one of those two radio stations, WURD in Philadelphia, announced that it has “parted ways” with Andrea Lawful-Sanders, one of the two hosts involved.
“WURD Radio remains an independent voice that our audience can trust will hold elected officials accountable,” Sarah Lomax, president and CEO of WURD, wrote on the station’s website. “As Pennsylvania’s only independent Black-owned talk radio station, WURD Radio has cultivated that trust with our audience over our 20-year history. This is something we take very seriously. Agreeing to a pre-determined set of questions jeopardizes that trust and is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy….”WURD is not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other administration.”
PREDICTION: We will be hearing about more examples of White House-provided questions for supposed Biden “interviews” in the near future. (Most about this in Part Two as well.)
In a similar vein, we do not yet know if ABC News sent Stephanopoulos’ questions to the White House in advance. I have not received a reply to emails I sent to ABC News producers about this subject (in part). It’s important to note that Stephanopoulos dealt with one issue and one issue only — Biden’s fitness to be president — in the July 5 interview.
What’s worse still is that many days after the debate, stories are appearing indicating that journalists knew about Biden’s condition for quite some time. Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine, wrote on Thursday that she began hearing stories about Biden’s cognitive decline six months ago. About 1500 words into her article, Nuzzi wrote this:
Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names. At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because, it was clear, he would not be able to make it through the reception. The guest wasn’t sure they could vote for Biden, since the guest was now open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all.
Immediate social media reaction to Nuzzi’s opinion piece went like this: If you knew about Biden’s decline six months ago, why wait until now to report it?
What did journalists know? When did they know it?
Of course, solid evidence of Biden’s diminished mental state has been around long before June 27. Political analyst Mark Halperin, who worked at ABC News for many years and is now with Newsmax, published a column on Fox News’ website on July 3. In it, he pointed out how he had witnessed Biden’s mental decline, first-hand, at a book-signing event seven years ago, in 2017.
Swap out, then ask for yourself
Swapping out means to replace or exchange something or someone with another thing or person. We’ve all done it. A remote control goes bad, so you swap out the battery with a fresh one and see if works again.
There should be a “swap out” test for journalists who are reporting today on President Biden. Suppose (as it seems likely) that the next occupant of the Oval Office is Donald Trump once again. If Trump’s physical and mental state were in a rapid decline, would reporters be writing and filing stories about it?
Or would they be complicit and quiet about it, as – obviously – they have done with Joe Biden?
Answers to that question will vary, of course. But the simple truth is that we need to pose this question now to working reporters and editors: Is there any fairness at all going on in the practice of journalism today, as it applies to the candidates for the office of President of the United States?
If not, why not?
FINALLY
President Biden seemed a bit confused about polling data in his interview with Stephanopoulos on Friday. For fact checking purposes, here are three screen shots on a compilation of polling data collected at the website http://www.realclearpolitics.com. They aggregate polling results, and report on results of polls as the come out at another website http://www.realclearpolling.com. These three snapshots are from July 6.
Kerezy is an associate professor of media and journalism studies at Cuyahoga Community College. He also spent 13 years as a high school speech and debate coach. The opinions expressed here are his alone, and not those of Cuyahoga Community College. You can reach Kerezy at john.kerezy@tri-c.edu or at 216-987-5040.
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eyeoncleveland 
Spot on!
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