Latest news with #AldoBeckmanAward
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Axios reporter pushes back on Biden's denial of mental decline, saying White House insiders disagree
Axios reporter Alex Thompson remarked Thursday that members of the Biden White House would "disagree" with President Joe Biden's assertion that claims about his mental decline were false. During an interview on "The View," President Joe Biden and his wife Jill were asked about new books from Democratic sources that claimed there was a "dramatic decline" in the president's mental faculties during the later part of his term. "They are wrong," Joe Biden responded. "There's nothing to sustain that." Jill Biden added, "One of the things, I think, is that the people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us. And they didn't see how hard Joe worked every single day. I mean, he'd get up. He'd put in a full day, and then at night he would — I'd be in bed, you know, reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings. Working with staff. I mean, it was nonstop." Axios Reporter Shoots Down Excuses For Biden's Debate Performance: 'I'm Not Sure If There's A Good One' CNN host Boris Sanchez asked Thompson on "CNN News Central" later that day to respond to Biden's comments, leading the Axios reporter to insist there was not only a decline but a cover-up as well. Read On The Fox News App "Well, I'd say, our reporting shows that many people inside the Biden White House disagree, and they do believe that there was a significant decline and a cover-up of that, especially in 2023 and 2024," Thompson said. Thompson recently accepted the White House Correspondents' Association's Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. His reporting closely documented Biden's disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump, the events leading up to it, and Biden's eventual decision to exit the race. During his acceptance speech, he called out the mainstream media for largely ignoring signs of Biden's decline until it couldn't be denied anymore. Click Here For More Coverage Of Media And Culture "President Biden's decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception," Thompson said. "Some people trust [the media] less because of it," he said. "We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it." Thompson concluded, "We should have done better."Original article source: Axios reporter pushes back on Biden's denial of mental decline, saying White House insiders disagree
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
White House reporters respond after being called out for weak coverage of Biden's decline at WHCD
The speech made by Axios correspondent Alex Thompson at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last weekend calling out the media's weak coverage of Joe Biden continues to make waves in Washington, D.C. "Alex's speech was the best part of an otherwise tedious night and the only real olive branch extended toward the Trump administration," one White House reporter told Fox News Digital. "But it's telling that this award is granted after Biden's already out of power. Less than a year ago, most major outlets in that room ran with White House talking points on 'cheap fakes.'" Last Saturday, Thompson accepted the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage for his reporting that shed light on Biden's cognitive decline long before his now-infamous presidential debate performance that led to his ousting from the 2024 race. Shielding Biden: Journalists Shed Light On The Media's Cover-up Of A Weakened President "Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. And some people trust us less because of it," Thompson told his peers at the dinner. "We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows." "I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it. We should've done better," Thompson added. Read On The Fox News App Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olahan told Fox News Digital, "It needed to be said." "Most of the White House press still pretends that they fairly covered the Biden White House," Olahan said, adding that the media "acted as members of the Biden comms shop for the past four years." Whca President Opens Dinner Highlighting Trump's Absence And 'Extremely Difficult' Year For The Press However, another White House correspondent, who called Thompson a "terrific journalist" and said he was rightly honored for his work, seemed to push back at the Axios reporter's assertion that the media failed in its job while covering the Biden presidency. "There was a lot of good reporting in a variety of outlets on this in the months and years leading up to the debate," the correspondent told Fox News Digital. "But it's fair to say that no story had the impact of tens of millions of people watching the debate on national television with their own eyes." Few journalists in the Beltway dug into the severity of Biden's cognitive decline. Thompson's reporting in 2023 for example, revealed Biden's short temper behind the scenes and the extreme lengths the White House took to prevent him from tripping in front of the cameras. Looking Back On 2024: Liberal Media Insisted Biden Was Still Sharp Until Debate Debacle Exposed Him The Wall Street Journal and its reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes were viciously attacked by Democrats and Biden's allies in the media for their bombshell reporting alleging Biden was showing "signs of slipping" behind the scenes, in a piece published weeks before his ill-fated debate. Meanwhile, numerous outlets ran with the White House's talking points that accused conservatives of peddling "cheap fakes" when moments that showed Biden wandering or freezing up went viral. Biden has been at the center of the turmoil within the Democratic Party ever since President Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election. Many Democrats have blamed Biden for not withdrawing from the presidential race sooner and allowing time for an open primary to select a new Democratic nominee rather than rallying behind then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the final months of the campaign. Since Biden left office, he has also been the subject of multiple books about how his cognitive decline was strongly apparent behind the scenes among his staffers, long before his disastrous debate performance. Fox News' David Rutz contributed to this report. Original article source: White House reporters respond after being called out for weak coverage of Biden's decline at WHCD
Fox News
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
White House reporters respond after being called out for weak coverage of Biden's decline at WHCD
The speech made by Axios correspondent Alex Thompson at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last weekend calling out the media's weak coverage of Joe Biden continues to make waves in Washington, D.C. "Alex's speech was the best part of an otherwise tedious night and the only real olive branch extended toward the Trump administration," one White House reporter told Fox News Digital. "But it's telling that this award is granted after Biden's already out of power. Less than a year ago, most major outlets in that room ran with White House talking points on 'cheap fakes.'" Last Saturday, Thompson accepted the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage for his reporting that shed light on Biden's cognitive decline long before his now-infamous presidential debate performance that led to his ousting from the 2024 race. "Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. And some people trust us less because of it," Thompson told his peers at the dinner. "We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows." "I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it. We should've done better," Thompson added. Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olahan told Fox News Digital, "It needed to be said." "Most of the White House press still pretends that they fairly covered the Biden White House," Olahan said, adding that the media "acted as members of the Biden comms shop for the past four years." However, another White House correspondent, who called Thompson a "terrific journalist" and said he was rightly honored for his work, seemed to push back at the Axios reporter's assertion that the media failed in its job while covering the Biden presidency. "There was a lot of good reporting in a variety of outlets on this in the months and years leading up to the debate," the correspondent told Fox News Digital. "But it's fair to say that no story had the impact of tens of millions of people watching the debate on national television with their own eyes." Few journalists in the Beltway dug into the severity of Biden's cognitive decline. Thompson's reporting in 2023 for example, revealed Biden's short temper behind the scenes and the extreme lengths the White House took to prevent him from tripping in front of the cameras. The Wall Street Journal and its reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes were viciously attacked by Democrats and Biden's allies in the media for their bombshell reporting alleging Biden was showing "signs of slipping" behind the scenes, in a piece published weeks before his ill-fated debate. Meanwhile, numerous outlets ran with the White House's talking points that accused conservatives of peddling "cheap fakes" when moments that showed Biden wandering or freezing up went viral. Biden has been at the center of the turmoil within the Democratic Party ever since President Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election. Many Democrats have blamed Biden for not withdrawing from the presidential race sooner and allowing time for an open primary to select a new Democratic nominee rather than rallying behind then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the final months of the campaign. Since Biden left office, he has also been the subject of multiple books about how his cognitive decline was strongly apparent behind the scenes among his staffers, long before his disastrous debate performance.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: Why It Still Matters That the Mainstream Media Missed the Big Biden Story
At this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner, Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson won the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. Which is fine. (I am generally against reporters giving each other prizes, but that's a separate issue.) What's important is what Thompson said in receiving the award: President Biden's decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception. But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust and being defensive about them further erodes it. We should have done better. Yes to all of that. First, I am now utterly convinced—based on conversations and reporting over the last few months—that Thompson is right to use the word 'cover-up' when describing how President Biden's inner circle treated his health, age and declining abilities. The narrative that the Biden team tried to sell in the immediate aftermath of the president's June debate performance was that he was just plain old sick. That he had a bad cold. Of course, all of us have had a cold. Even a bad one. The reality is that you can power through it. You might not be your best self, but you definitely wouldn't look and sound like Biden did. Then the excuse became that his scheduler had screwed him. Biden had made two transatlantic trips in the two weeks prior to the debate—he was exhausted! Then it was that the makeup people had done Biden dirty. And then it was that some of his senior advisers hadn't pushed him hard enough in debate prep. The truth, we now know, is that the debate wasn't the first time that Biden's inner circle had seen him in bad shape. Seemingly lost. Clearly impaired. And that is a scandal. Because it explains all of the efforts to keep Biden from giving media interviews and, largely, from appearing in public. While they publicly insisted that everything was totally fine with Biden—and that he was outworking even 20-something staffers—his team knew that this was, in a word, bulls--t. Which brings me to the second thing I have come to believe about the Biden health cover-up: I do not think that the media was actively complicit. But that doesn't mean we are blameless—or unbiased. I have not seen proof that reporters knew—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that Biden was declining and ignored it. This was not, to my knowledge, a repeat of how the White House press corps treated John F. Kennedy, for example. Those reporters very clearly knew that JFK was cheating on his wife. They knew he was, at times in the White House, very ill. And they reported none of it. They agreed to shield the less-savory qualities of the president from the public. There are those—on the Republican side of the aisle mainly—who say 'JUST LOOK AT BIDEN, OF COURSE THEY KNEW!!!' To that, I would say that the bar for declaring that a sitting president is mentally declining is very high. As it should be. Most reporters aren't doctors, and diagnosing a president from afar isn't something we should be doing. (I would note that the same holds true for Donald Trump. Lots of people on the left insist that the current president has dementia. Or is 'crazy.' Or mentally incapacitated in some critical way.) But this is not to let me—or the media more generally—off the hook on the Biden health story. Here's why: The way that we all could have gotten more clarity on Biden's condition was to push harder. Dig deeper. Not take the assertions from the White House that 'everything is great!' at face value. Not allow ourselves—as I did—to be shamed by the Biden team into thinking that, by asking questions about the president's health, I was some sort of ageist. Because there is no question that Biden often didn't pass the eye test. If you watched him move and speak, there was reason to suspect that he was struggling. And certainly cause to ask lots more questions. But the bulk of the media establishment was willing to take Bidenworld's word for it—believing, I think, that surely a Democratic administration wouldn't engage in a massive cover-up of a president's health. I do not think that the same benefit of the doubt would be given to a Republican president—especially not Donald Trump. That is a problem. A big one. And Alex Thompson was right when he said on Saturday night that journalists 'bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.' This Biden health episode wasn't the start of distrust in the media—especially among Republicans. It has been brewing for a very long time. But it has provided jet fuel to that distrust. Saying 'sorry' isn't easy to do in life. Because to genuinely be sorry is to admit you were wrong. You made a mistake. But, to my mind, the only way we begin to restore trust in the media is to do just that. When we screw up, admit it. Explain why we did it—even if it makes us look bad. And then do everything we can to not make that same mistake again. Want more ball and strike calling—no matter what uniform the batter at the plate is wearing? Check out Chris Cillizza's Substack and YouTube channel.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Reporter calls out media for coverage of Biden's cognitive decline at dinner honoring journalists
WASHINGTON — In an acceptance speech for his coverage on the Biden administration, White House reporter Alex Thompson called out his fellow journalists for failing to document President Joe Biden's cognitive decline during the final stretch of his term. At the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday, an event intended to celebrate journalists and the First Amendment, Thompson acknowledged that he and many in the White House press corps did not properly report on former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline during a crucial moment in history. His remarks left a somber tone at the high-profile dinner filled with hundreds of journalists from major outlets as well as prominent political figures. 'Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story,' Thompson said as he accepted the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. 'President Biden's decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception.' Thompson, a reporter for Axios, was largely chosen for the award because of his reporting on Biden's disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump last summer. During that matchup, Biden struggled over his words and spoke with a raspy voice — prompting widespread concerns about his overall health. Thompson later uncovered crucial details leading up to the debate as well as Biden's decision to ultimately drop out of the race. Many of those details are expected to be released in Thompson's forthcoming book 'Original Sin' written with CNN's Jake Tapper. The authors of the book say they will tell 'the full, unsettling truth' for the first time, including conversations with key players such as White House staffers, congressional lawmakers, Cabinet members, governors and Hollywood donors — all who knew about the problems inside the White House. However, Thompson acknowledged that reporters failed to investigate the signs of Biden's cognitive health sooner, which he said has led to a distrust of the media. 'Some people trust us less because of it,' Thompson said. 'We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust and being defensive about them further erodes it.' Trust in the media hit historic lows in October, with a Gallup poll showing only 31% of Americans with a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media. Comparatively, 33% said they had 'not very much' trust in the media. Those sentiments are especially true of Republican voters, as a majority of the party (59%) say they have no trust in the media at all, according to Gallup. That number has risen since President Donald Trump took office the first time in 2016. At the time Trump took control of the White House in his first term, only 38% of Republicans said they had no trust in the media. That surged over the next four years, reaching 50% for the first time in 2020 at the height of the presidential election and COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, only 6% of Democrats say they have no trust in the media as of October 2024. Thompson's comments come as several journalists have sought to take responsibility for lack of coverage in some areas that Trump and top White House officials have used to accuse mainstream media of being biased against conservatives. For example, NPR CEO Katherine Maher testified before the House Oversight Committee earlier this year acknowledging that the station did not do enough to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election cycle. Maher even went so far as to call those judgment calls 'a mistake.' Thompson's speech made headlines at an otherwise lowkey event. The annual dinner is known for its glitz and glamor, although this year it took on a quieter tone amid high tensions between the Trump administration and the press corps. Trump himself chose not to attend the dinner, breaking with tradition for the president to be welcomed as a guest of honor and offer some remarks. Trump did not attend any of the four dinners hosted during his first term.
