A Christian reporter revealed how President Joe Biden's Administration restricts media access to the White House while other members of the press speak out against its press policies that "favor the rich."
The Christian Post (CP) reported on Thursday that a Christian reporter and lead investigative journalist on Religious Freedom and anti-Semitism has joined a Playboy correspondent to protest against Biden's press policies, referring to InterMountain Christian News Publisher Dr. Matthew Anthony Harper and Playboy White House Correspondent Brian Karem.
In an interview with CP, Harper said that the restriction involved limiting his access to the White House grounds from daily during former President Donald Trump's administration to once a week.
He also cited that the new press policies included having journalists pay the cost of coronavirus testing, which is needed for their access. This is a "gross injustice putting a wall up for press access directly affecting our freedom of the press," Harper said.
According to CP, a diverse group of journalists including Harper and Karem have expressed in a letter their concerns against the press policies of Biden's administration. The letter, dated January 22, was led by Karem and given to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
Per CP, the letter expressed the journalists' concerns about having restricted access to the White House due to the pandemic. The White House limited entry to only 80 members of the press at any given time. Karem said Psaki gave a generic response to the letter.
Karem had a follow-up on the letter through an email on February 26 to Psaki where he raised that the said new press policies of the White House in line with members of the press shouldering the cost as "dangerous and wrong," CP noted. He then explained in a March 4 article that "independent reporters are being penalized by the Biden administration's new White House entry policies that favor wealthy corporate outlets."
"These restrictions punish independent reporters, foreign bureaus and freelancers, myself included. It is favoritism for the rich," Karem noted.
The letter said that the 80-person limit "solves a problem that doesn't exist" and is "arbitrary" because many people come and go in the White House for various editorial reasons such as to "simply shoot a standup or to type a story or meet a source and then leave" and thus the actual number people are "nowhere near 80 these days."
The other members of the press who signed the letter are national political reporter Hugo Lowell, Ami Magazine Chief Political Correspondent Jake Turx, The Daily Caller Senior White House Correspondent Christian Datoc, Politico Correspondent Andrew Feinberg, India America Today Foreign Correspondent Tejinder Singh, The Pavlovic Today Founder-Publisher Ksenija Pavlovic McAteer, and MVS Noticias White House Correspondent Bricio Segovia.
Segovia, being a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, talked about the policies in a series of tweets.
"Basically, the Biden Administration is preventing foreign journalists from taking part in the White House press briefings," he said.
Meanwhile, the only female signatory in the letter, McAteer, has pinned in her Twitter account an open letter to Psaki and Biden on the COVID-testing.
"I am writing to ask you to reconsider your new policy of charging members of the White House press for COVID testing [$170 per test]. By requiring reporters to pay for COVID testing as a condition of access discriminates against independent journalists as well as the foreign press," she said in her open letter.
McAteer pointed out the importance of "diversity of viewpoints" to democracy and that "America needs independent voices who do high-quality, original journalism" such as those of Martha Kumar and the likes "from both sides and center of the political spectrum." She stressed that the new policy opens the "door to 'pay to play' journalism."
CP cited an email sent by Psaki to the White House Correspondents' Association through its Executive Director Steven Thomma last February 26 that explained the "budgetary constraints" have limited the "government's ability to provide the daily COVID-19 testing that the White House requires for journalists on campus" and, as such passed the burden of paying the $170 per testing fee to the members of the press.
The said email also explained that the members of the press are being limited to be "physically on the campus at any time" because of the pandemic and to ensure social distancing protocols are followed. For this to be done fairly, "a lottery program has been instituted to ensure fair access for news organizations that are not in the daily pool." Yet, as per CP, it is the mainstream outlets are favored for this.
