No, Joe Biden didn’t ban 440 reporters from the White House
Trump and his allies cited a Biden-era press policy to defend the White House’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW. The comparison doesn’t hold up.
After President Donald Trump announced Sept. 18 on Truth Social that he was banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House because they write “fake news,” many of his supporters defended the move by pointing to actions by former President Joe Biden’s administration.
A TikTok video with 72,000 views said, “Biden changed the White House press pool and CUT OFF 440 reporters’ credentials, yet got ZERO outrage from the fake news media.”
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
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