How long will Joe Biden’s honeymoon with the media last?
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during an event in Wilmington, Del. on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Is most of the media that covers national politics happy that Joe Biden won the presidential election? If so, are they actually happy that Biden won or would it be more accurate to suggest that they are happy that Donald Trump did not?
There’s a difference.
After years of lying to the press and denigrating the media by calling it “fake news” and “the enemy of the people,” Trump and many in his administration (read: his press secretaries) won’t be missed by most of the news media.
And if that is true, it seems logical to predict that Biden will have a honeymoon period with the media simply because the new president isn’t the old president.
However, there’s this headline on the latest piece from Politico’s Jack Shafer: “The Biden Honeymoon Won’t Last.” Shafer says the rule of thumb when it comes to a presidential honeymoon is that it lasts about 100 days. For Biden, the fact that the media will be dealing with someone (anyone) other than Trump might buy him some more time. Then again, with the country in a tumultuous state because of COVID-19, the economy, racial tensions and political divisiveness, the honeymoon might end quickly.
Shafer writes, “It’s not that the press isn’t willing to take shots at a new administration, it’s that they’re busy lining up the shots they might want to take. Busy compiling dossiers on the president’s team and developing sources in the new administrations, reporters can’t devote as much time to scrutinize him as directly as they’d like. Besides, they just got done doing that during the campaign. We caught a glimpse of Biden’s poor press management skills at the end of the campaign as he snapped at being asked legitimate questions about court-packing and again when the subject was the New York Post piece on his son Hunter. Reporters don’t mind politicians with short fuses or being abused because that’s all part of the job, but at some point, the payback always comes.”
Biden is a political veteran, so he might be a bit more shrewd in how he deals with the press. But as Shafer alluded to, Biden has shown, at times, to be a little thin-skinned, short-tempered and occasionally secretive when dealing with the press.
Shafer writes, “As an administration matures, presidential staffers share forbidden information with reporters in attempts to win the internecine battles inside the White House. Inevitably, the honeymoon winds down, and trench warfare between the press and the president returns.”
Biden’s media diet
We all know what President Trump’s media diet is because he tweets what he digests. He watches One America News (OAN), Newsmax and Fox News and he reads conservative outlets. But what about Joe Biden? What does Biden consume as far as the media?
CNN’s Brian Stelter recently asked that of new CNN contributor Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Joe Biden: The Life, The Run, and What Matters Now.”
Osnos told Stelter, “The president-elect’s media diet is what we would call the classics. He relies on things like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. He reads some of The Economist and The New Yorker. A lot of it in print. He also relies on Apple News to help him get headlines from other reputable media sources. What he is not doing, of course, is reading things like Newsmax, he’s not watching One America News Network.”
Osnos also said that Biden reads columnists, mentioning The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman by name.
Meanwhile, Politico’s Daniel Lippman also chronicled Biden’s media consumption. Jay Carney, who was communications director to Biden when Biden was vice president, told Lippman, “Biden reads a lot, but doesn’t watch a lot of TV news. Can’t remember him ever watching TV in his office when I worked for him.”
However, Lippman reports that Biden does watch some TV, such as MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” as he gets ready for work. He also checks in on how Fox News covers him, and even tracks some of the viral late-night TV moments. And he will watch CNN occasionally.
Lippman also writes, “Like many other politicians, Biden gets a clips package at 9 a.m. On a busy day, it can run up to 50 pages. On a slower day, it is more in the 15- to 20-page range.”
Trump’s favorite outlets
One America News’ Chanel Rion, left, asks a question of President Donald Trump during a briefing earlier this year. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
A survey this week by Gallup and the Knight Foundation shows Newsmax and OAN are picking up some momentum — you would think largely in part to Trump trumpeting their coverage. The survey shows there has been an increase in those who list Newsmax and OAN among news sources they most rely upon.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake writes, “Many more still reference Fox News, but Newsmax in particular has risen significantly in the consciousness of American news consumers.”
That’s just one noticeable shift toward more conservative news outlets among many. Blake also writes, “Combined, Newsmax and OAN gained 11 total mentions per 100 people — up from just one combined in that July 2019 survey. Fox was mentioned by 27 out of 100 people, which is its second-lowest rate in 11 surveys, although not significantly different from previous ones. Other conservative outlets, including the Daily Wire, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh’s show and the Blaze were also mentioned as much or more than in previous surveys. If you combine them with Newsmax and OAN, they’ve risen from six mentions per 100 people in July 2019 and early 2020 to 19 in 100 people today.”
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