White House Attempts To Bully Reporter Over Biden Questions

Posted by Dana Loesch Oct 25th 2011 at 9:27 am in Democrats/progressives, Featured Story, Obama, journalism 

Joe Biden has traveled across the country, threatening Americans with “rapes and murders” if congress didn’t pass Obama’s jobs bill, the same jobs bill that Democrats killed in the Senate (so are on the hook for said “rapes and murders?”). He didn’t like the questioning he received from Human Events’s Jason Mattera on the subject, so now the White House is taking aim at Mattera with an investigation.

Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill.

Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter.
[...]

Biden’s office has also contacted the standing committee of correspondents, which oversees the gallery, regarding whether Mattera broke the rules by ambushing him.

Heather Rothman, the chairwoman of the gallery’s standing committee, said the matter is under review.

“We’re aware of the concerns,” said Rothman, a reporter for BNA. “It’s being discussed.

“We’re aware this occurred and the vice president’s office [has made] contact,” she added, noting the standing committee itself hasn’t met to deliberate the issue.

The Hill says Biden was “lured” into the interview. No, he thought Mattera was another back-patting reporter with a satchel full of softballs, not an actual journalist who doesn’t trade principle for access like so many of today’s media. How difficult is it to answer why you’re fear-mongering with “rapes and murders” all week?

Mattera admits to using a pretext to momentarily disarm Biden, but argues his methods were justified.

“ABC and CBS have done undercover sting operations and have done them for decades. The fact that a conservative publication goes after a public official who was misrepresenting himself and a Senate bill to the public and tries to get an answer from him, that’s great,” he said in an interview Monday.

“The media should take notice that this is how you ask a question. If I had said, ‘Hey, Mr. Vice President, a question regarding your rape comments,’ he would shrug it off.

“He’s not going to take questions hostile to his agenda. I want to get him in that honest moment when he doesn’t have his talking points and isn’t prepared to spin,” Mattera added.

Mattera said his technique is “premised on looking to get the most honest reaction from politicians used to conning the media daily — and even their constituents.”

“You shouldn’t play patty-cake with politicians to gain access,” he said.
He said his request for a photo wasn’t a fabrication because someone had volunteered to snap his picture with the vice president, and noted in a follow-up email that he was wearing his press credentials.

It’s asinine that Biden has time to do this but doesn’t have time to press for investigations of Fast and Furious or Solyndra.

So now the administration is going to bar the presence of credentialed reporters who ask questions of which the President and Vice-President disapprove? Transparency, 2012.

Big Journalism