Report: Biden Demands MSM Fall Into Line

Three senior White House officials have embarked on a campaign to persuade newsroom executives to be more favorable in their coverage of President Joe Biden, according to The Daily Mail Tuesday night.

The trio - National Economic Council Deputy Directors David Kamin and Bharat Ramamurti, along with Ports Envoy John Porcari - have been 'briefing major newsrooms over the past week,' according to CNN's media correspondent, Oliver Darcy.

Darcy, in his newsletter, said that their outreach was sparked by concern that Biden was not being treated fairly.

Darcy wrote: 'The officials have been discussing with newsrooms trends pertaining to job creation, economic growth, supply chains, and more.

'The basic argument that has been made: That the country's economy is in much better shape than it was last year.

'I'm told the conversations have been productive, with anchors and reporters and producers getting to talk with the officials.'

Their lobbying came as, on December 3, a Washington Post columnist called Dana Bash wrote an op ed entitled: 'The media treats Biden as badly as — or worse than — Trump. Here's proof.'

Milbank said that he had grown suspicious about the torrent of negative headlines about Biden, and commissioned a study.

He asked Forge.ai, a data analytics unit of the information company FiscalNote, to look at 65 news websites ranging from newspapers to wire services and political publications, and do a 'sentiment analysis' of the 200,000 articles by searching for adjectives.

Milbank said Forge.ai's data showed the media was treating Biden worse than it had Donald Trump.

'My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy,' he wrote. 

On Monday, Milbank appeared on CNN to defend his theory.

.@washingtonpost columnist Dana @Milbank says the media treats Biden as badly, or worse, than Trump.

We challenge his case. pic.twitter.com/HJrIqsP4Js

— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) December 6, 2021

'August was the turning point,' he told host Brianna Keilar. 

'Biden's coverage was more favorable than Trump's before then. There was that honeymoon. 

Even as things have generally improved since then, the coverage has not improved.' 

Milbank added: 'It's not bias. It's the actual words we're using. 

'So we are as negative as a collective media on Joe Biden, if not more so than we were to Donald Trump at a time when he was trying to overthrow democracy. 

Milbank said journalists working in the U.S. needed 'to do soul searching and see what we are delivering to people'.