We have been discussing the embarrassing failure of the media to ask President-elect Joe Biden any difficult questions throughout the campaign and creating a type of protective journalistic cocoon around him. That pattern has continued after the election with pre-selected reporters asking laughingly soft ball questions to Biden while continuing a virtual blackout on such stories as the Hunter Biden influence peddling controversy. Then something bizarre happened yesterday. A reporter actually asked Biden a real question. CBS News reporter Bo Erickson asked Biden about whether he would support the CDC rather than the teacher’s union on closing schools. Biden’s response was a personal attack on the reporter. This is simply not done and will not be tolerated. After all, think of the chaos: the entire press corps would be expected to ask questions and Biden would be expected to answer them.
Bo Erickson previously drew a rebuke from Biden when he asked for a response to the Hunter Biden scandal. He simply asked ‘Mr. Biden, what is your response to the New York Post story about your son, sir?’ Biden’s response was again a personal attack: “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.”
Biden also blew up at a question that referred by the scandal by a NBC reporter and at a Fox reporter who asked about his son. Those are the only known cases where the cone of silence was violated around Biden . . . until yesterday.
Erickson asked Biden a question on the way out of the room where Biden was meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: “Mr Biden, the COVID task force said it’s safe for children to be back in class.”
That would be an important and reasonable question. The CDC is not recommending the closure of schools since studies show an exceptionally low risk for such children. There are serious costs to such closures for both children and their parents ranging from the loss of educational advancement, depression, employment problems, and other issues.
Yet, for the public and press corp, the appearance of a reporter asking an actual substantive question of Biden was like watching Big Foot riding the Lock Ness Monster through conference room. The only evidence that it was real and not a mirage was Biden’s swift rebuke.
It is the type of question that you would expect the president-elect to answer when he is holding forth on his plan for dealing with Covid-19. Biden however again attacked Erickson personally for breaking the unwritten rule against substantive questions: “Why are you the only guy that always shouts out questions?”
That question sums up the situation perfectly. We should all want to know why Erickson is the only guy (other than Peter Doocy) who is asking such questions. Most of the media was openly in the bag for Biden during the campaign. The hope however was that, once he was elected, the media would rediscover a modicum of independence and integrity in their approach to Biden. That will not happen so long as Biden can accurately ask why the Erickson is “the only guy” asking questions.
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