{"id":1461247,"date":"2022-05-03T07:45:07","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T11:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1461247"},"modified":"2022-05-03T07:45:09","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T11:45:09","slug":"psaki-lies-to-reporters-about-covid-spending-only-one-calls-her-out-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/psaki-lies-to-reporters-about-covid-spending-only-one-calls-her-out-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Psaki Lies to Reporters About COVID Spending, Only One Calls Her Out for It"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpsaki-lies-to-reporters-about-covid-spending-only-one-calls-her-out-for-it%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1461247&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>If ever one day and one incident explained the problem with the elite media in Washington, April 6 seems as good as any. On that day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/GettyImages-1389948728-1600x900.jpg\">brandished a binder<\/a> at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefing-room\/press-briefings\/2022\/04\/06\/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-april-6-2022\/\">daily press briefing<\/a>, claiming it contained information regarding Covid spending that the Biden administration had provided to Congress:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>This is 385 pages of information we have given to Capitol Hill and briefed them on how COVID funding has been spent, what we need, what the needs are.\u00a0These are the kind of details we have provided and constantly briefed members on the Hill to make clear to them what the impact will be if we do not get this funding.\u00a0You can have access to this for a prop if you would like it as well.\u00a0We\u2019ll make copies for you.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Want to take a guess how many \u201creporters\u201d bothered to ask Psaki for the information she theatrically waved around? A grand total of one.<\/p>\n<p>Therein lies the relationship between this administration and press corps: The White House pretends to offer information to reporters, and the press pretends to scrutinize it\u2014while in reality both care more about promoting themselves than actual transparency and accountability in government.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Hiding Access to Information<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The sole reporter who requested copies of information Psaki claimed she would provide, Rachel Cohrs of Stat news, deserves credit for her diligence. Cohrs\u2019s efforts seem all the more remarkable given the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2022\/04\/25\/white-houses-jen-psaki-offered-a-binder-full-of-covid-spending-details-taking-a-peek-was-a-process\/\">conditions she encountered<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>When <em>Stat<\/em> took the White House up on the offer, officials refused to make copies of the binder. In fact, it wouldn\u2019t even let <em>Stat<\/em> take photographs of the contents. Instead, the administration gave this reporter one hour to look through the nearly 400 pages of budget tables and congressional correspondence. White House officials offered the review in a small conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the White House, under the supervision of a budget office employee.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The fact that Psaki made her comments on April 6, yet Cohrs did not publish her story for nearly three weeks, also implies it took a certain degree of persistence, follow-up, and pestering of administration press officials to get even the limited access that she did. So much for \u201cwe\u2019ll make copies for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Cohrs\u2019s notes from the brief time she could view the documents\u2014because the White House would not let her make copies, as Psaki publicly pledged\u2014the binder contained some noteworthy omissions:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>While the White House included documents in the binder that could be embarrassing for Republicans, documents that could have better illuminated the White House\u2019s spending strategy were left out. There were none of the documents that would have explained how White House officials\u00a0chose to move around money\u00a0between accounts, which they did\u00a0repeatedly. Those documents would indicate that the funding wasn\u2019t spent\u00a0exactly how Congress intended. The Biden administration was also supposed to send Congress plans for how to spend Covid-19 relief every two months, but those documents weren\u2019t included either.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, even when the administration provided the press with access to some documents\u2014albeit on a much more restricted basis than Psaki claimed it would in front of the cameras\u2014it still played \u201chide the ball\u201d by refusing to disclose important information as to many of the specifics regarding COVID spending.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Different Presidents, Different Standards<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Just as a thought experiment, substitute the phrase \u201cTrump tax returns\u201d for \u201cspreadsheets regarding Covid funding\u201d in the story described above. Does anyone believe that only one reporter would bother to request copies of this information after a press secretary promised to make it available? <\/p>\n<p>Just as important, does anyone believe that the entire White House press corps would not become consumed with (self-)righteous indignation when the administration failed to make the information available on the terms the press secretary publicly promised?<\/p>\n<p>The questions practically answer themselves. If anyone had any doubt, he need only recall the fact that the press <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/09\/10\/politico-published-20-stories-about-trumps-taxes-and-only-1-about-joe-bidens\/\">continues to ignore<\/a> the ways Joe Biden <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/04\/18\/tax-records-show-that-in-2021-joe-biden-didnt-pay-his-fair-share-in-taxes-again\/\">illegally dodged taxes himself<\/a>, while remaining obsessed with what is or is not in former President Trump\u2019s returns.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Reporters, Do Your Jobs!<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>A gentler interpretation of the above might allow for the facts that an administration can swamp reporters in paperwork, much of it useless, and that journalists only have so many hours in a day to scrutinize a president\u2019s actions. However, that argument breaks down when one recalls that only one reporter, Cohrs, even showed enough interest to ask Psaki for the information she said she would provide.<\/p>\n<p>Some reporters take the time and effort to dig into a story. For instance, I spoke with The New York Times\u2019 late, great Robert Pear at all hours of the day and night. He called me as I entered my office around 8 a.m., and during lunch at a downtown restaurant on a Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>When I returned his call one evening after a work trip, expecting to leave a voicemail, Pear answered the phone, still plugging away at his desk. Pear even called to ask for a copy of a lengthy document I had compiled, because he wanted to review my footnotes and sources. <em>That<\/em> is called thorough journalism\u2014and it warms my heart to think about it.<\/p>\n<p>The example of Pear seems particularly relevant as Washington returned this last weekend to the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner, a.k.a, the \u201cNerd Prom.\u201d An entire cavalcade of events before and after the main banquet on April 30 led <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/newsletters\/playbook\/2022\/04\/25\/groundhog-day-on-the-hill-hangover-week-in-washington-00027439\">one publication<\/a> to call the event \u201cHangover Week in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Maybe, just maybe, instead of spending time guzzling champagne, preening in front of Hollywood celebrities, and acting self-important, journalists should spend that time focused on actual journalism. It would make them look far better, to say nothing of more useful, in the eyes of the American people.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/chrisjacobshc\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>. Previously he was a senior health policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation\u2019s Center for Health Policy Studies, and a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee\u2019s Senate Republican staff. During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, Jacobs was a policy adviser for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence. In the first two years of the law\u2019s implementation, he was a health policy analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Jacobs got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern for then-Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). He holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in political science and history from American University, where he is a part-time teacher of health policy. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If ever one day and one incident explained the problem with the elite media in Washington, April 6 seems as good as any. On that day, White House Press Secretary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1461247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}