Biden duplicitously continues trump's war on the press

President Biden will never call the press the "enemy of the people." He won't whine about "nasty" media "witch hunts" or taunt reporters as "fake

news." He won't praise political allies if they physically assault journalists on the campaign trail. That does not mean he is the champion of press freedom he makes himself out to

be. Biden came to office following an administration with uniquely antagonistic rhetoric toward the media. Former President Donald Trump deeply needed press attention, but he also needed to

posture as an opponent of the press — which, handily, tended to get him even more press attention. His animosity was frequent and noxious enough that some anticipated Trump-inspired

violence or even covert state assassination of journalists. SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE

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morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. Biden rejects all this, of course, exactly as you'd expect a

Democratic president of his ilk to do. He vehemently condemns assaults on press freedom abroad and lauds reporters' bravery and honesty at length. Journalists "are indispensable to

the functioning of democracy," he's said, declaring it "incumbent on all of us to counter ... threats to a free and independent media." Last month, Biden denounced

Trump-era Department of Justice subpoenas of journalists' phone and email records, calling the secretive practice "simply, simply wrong" and promising the same would not

happen on his watch. But just as Trump's vicious words belied his more mundane and tangible threats to the press, so do Biden's plaudits. While attention focused on Trump's

harsh language, his administration continued a long presidential tradition of spying on members of the media, coercing revelation of reporters' sources, and punishing whistleblowers.

Trump continued "the aggressive crackdown on journalists" that is a little-remembered part of former President Barack Obama's legacy, as reporter James Risen (who was targeted

by Obama and George W. Bush before him) wrote at _The New York Times_ in 2016: This is the exact tradition Biden now prolongs, picking up where Trump left off. The Biden Justice Department

did not immediately stop those Trump-era subpoenas, it turns out. Rather, as _Washington Post_ publisher Fred Ryan wrote Monday, "the department continued to pursue subpoenas for

reporters' email logs issued to Google, which operates the _New York Times_' email systems, _and_ it obtained a gag order compelling a _Times_ attorney to keep silent about the

fact that federal authorities were seeking to seize his colleagues' records." The Biden DOJ "finally back[ed] down in the face of reporting about its conduct," Ryan

notes. But it has yet to respond to information requests from the _Post_, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki "released a statement disavowing White House knowledge of the actions

that appear to have continued for several months during Biden's presidency." Then there's a strange story from _USA Today_ last week. In April, the FBI "demanded the

production of records containing IP addresses and other identifying information 'for computers and other electronic devices' that accessed" a _USA Today_ story about a Florida

shootout involving FBI agents "during a 35-minute time frame starting at 8:03 p.m. on the day of the shooting." The FBI withdrew the subpoena after the newspaper fought it in

court, arguing it was unconstitutional and a violation of the Biden "Justice Department's guidelines on the 'narrow circumstances' in which the government can subpoena

reporters. Those arguments don't seem to have won the day, however. The FBI retreated because it found the person it sought in the reader records "through other means," _not_

because it realized the error in its ways of overstepping First Amendment bounds. It's early days yet for this administration, and the federal government is a large and unwieldly

bureaucracy. It does not pivot on a dime. Yet if Biden's praise of the press is anything more than a partisan mirror of Trump's attacks, he'll need to effect a pivot on press

freedom, and not only when he gets caught or risks a loss in court. Asking congressional Democrats to act on the _Post_ and _Times_ editorial calls for new legislative protections for

journalists — not executive orders or departmental policies, which are fairly easily reversed — would be a good place to start. Explore More Joe Biden Donald Trump