The overlong Super Bowl pregame festivities will once again unfold without an interview with President Joe Biden. Pundits are asking: Why would Biden forgo this massive audience as he runs for reelection? It's not like CBS would pound him with hardballs. Scott Pelley is about as tough as a Biden granddaughter. Gayle King vacationed with the Obamas and donated to Barack Obama.
Fox News media reporter Joseph Wulfsohn made an important point out as this news broke. Special counsel Robert Hur -- a man the media have mostly ignored for a year -- was expected to put out his report on Biden's improper handling of classified documents. That would be a reason to skip any inconvenient interviews.
Then Hur's report came out, and it grew worse. The report said a jury would find Biden to be a sympathetic figure and "a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." How poor a memory? "He did not remember when he was vice president" and "He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died."
This is amazing, since the Bidens can't seem to stop talking about Beau's death, as the president routinely says Beau "died in Iraq" (false) and probably got cancer from exposure to burn pits there (fact- checkers said no).
The Hur report underlines why Team Biden is hiding the president. Days before, CNN's Oliver Darcy repeated all the Bidenite talking points. They wanted the public to get a break from politics during the big game. They are being "more creative" in their media strategy. "We are being less traditional because less people get their news from traditional mediums than ever before," they claimed.
This is ridiculous, since you can't argue "less people" watch the Super Bowl if you're seeking a broad audience -- voters old and young, white and black and everything else. They're hiding because Biden is prone to bumble -- just as he's imagined himself in recent days talking in 2021 to deceased French Prime Minister Francois Mitterrand (died in 1996) and deceased German chancellor Helmut Kohl (died in 2017).
For many years, the pro-Biden press has avoided the vast majority of gaffes and then excused a few as beloved Uncle Joe having a tiny lapse, God love him. That won't fly anymore.
They also keep Biden from journalists because when he gets mildly challenging questions, he can blow his stack, like the time he insulted Fox reporter Peter Doocy as a "stupid son of a b---h."
The liberal media are never bothered when Biden turns down interview requests. They have no self-respect. They'll take lame excuses from the White House and just quote them like Darcy did. They lie down like climate protesters on the highway.
When Donald Trump was president, he granted wide access to a press corps that sought to ruin him at every turn. Joe Biden is now granting very stingy access to a press corps that treats him like they're protective nurses at a memory care facility.
Nobody really tunes into the Super Bowl for the presidential interview. It won't be missed. But what no one should miss is that our media elite have been aerobically hypocritical about how it's their job to hold powerful people accountable. From the Clintons to the Obamas to the Bidens, these "news" people have acted like a journalistic Secret Service. That's why Republicans and independents tell pollsters they don't find them to be reliable sources of information.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.