The Function of the White House Press Secretary
The Press Secretary and Press Briefing Room in conjunction with major corporate media outlets propagandize and deceive the American people about what the president and executive branch are doing
Can you imagine anything more absurd than there being a room in the White House where journalists and news reporters from the biggest corporate media outlets in America assemble to report on talking points from a political appointee of the current President of the United States? The relationship between the White House Press Briefing Room and the corporate media is symbiotic: The corporate media, whether adversarial or on the side of the current regime, gets content for its articles, columns, or tv shows, and the regime gets its propaganda proliferated to the American people en masse; neither side has any real interest in genuinely informing the public, despite that being the stated purpose for both groups.
The most current example of this is President Joe Biden pardoning his son, Hunter, “for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.” This was after the Biden regime repeatedly denied that they would ever issue a pardon for Hunter Biden for his many crimes. From The New York Times:
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeatedly said that Mr. Biden would not issue a pardon for his son, often chiding reporters for asking the question.
In the summer of 2023, she was asked whether there was “any possibility” that the president would end up pardoning his son. She answered simply, “No.” When the reporter tried to ask the question again, she cut the question short and said: “I just said no. I just answered.”
There you have the press secretary giving a clear, concise, direct answer, and it was an obvious and blatant lie. Karine Jean-Pierre told the corporate media and the American people that there is not even a possibility that President Biden would pardon his son, and now President Biden has pardoned his son. In fairness, it was more of an inevitability than a possibility, but we know what she meant. She meant that President Biden is too principled to use his presidential power to temper the hand of American justice and pardon his beloved son, but that, of course, only applied during the election and was always going to be thrown out the window when it was no longer politically convenient.
Jean-Pierre is not uniquely bad, however, as this has always been the role of the press secretary and always will be. If you have ever watched the British political satire, The Thick of It, then you know that the character Malcolm Tucker is the government’s spin-doctor for the press in the show. The press secretary in the United States performs the exact same function as Malcolm Tucker and with the same level of dishonesty. The corporate media should be ashamed to engage in these fake “press briefings,” and stop paying reporters to do the world’s most pointless job of writing down regime talking points. Maybe they would have more credibility if they actually tried to critically cover the U.S. government, but who needs credibility when you can get millions of dollars from the military-industrial-complex and influence with the ruling regime?