The Biden White House tried to pull a fast one over on Americans by deleting a heated exchange between White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre and a reporter from its official live stream.
Today News Africa correspondent Simon Ateba accused the White House of removing his tense conversation with Jean-Pierre, saying the Biden Administration has discriminated against him.
“The White House, under this administration, we’re committed to the freedom of the press. I want to be very clear about that,” Jean-Pierre declared.
“So are you going to take questions from me?… because you’ve been discriminating against me for the past nine months,” Ateba asked.
The back and forth continued when Jean-Pierre finally threatened the reporter that she would end the press briefing, calling Ateba “incredibly rude.”
The reporter took to Twitter to accuse the White House of violating Ateba’s First Amendment rights, claiming Jean-Pierre has avoided asking questions for him for the past nine months.
On what some are calling the so-called chaos at the White House today, I was just trying to ask a question. It's a pity what's going on. How can @PressSec Karine Jean-Pierre preach about the freedom of the press when she is violating the First Amendment many died to protect? May… pic.twitter.com/wOBsOv6GwI
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) June 26, 2023
Later that day, when the live stream was made available, Ateba noticed something off— the White House allegedly purposefully deleted the exchange.
However, the missing video portion was magically restored when Fox News Digital contacted the Biden Administration about the incident.
The White House blamed the “error” on an encoder that feeds the live stream to YouTube.
Ateba also accused the Democrat-run White House of blacklisting any reporter deemed “problematic.”
“They blacklist you. They don’t respond to your question; they don’t respond to your email. And they don’t allow you to ask questions in the background,” he told Fox News. “If you make the comfortable uncomfortable, what happens to you is they try and sideline you. And the other people will be afraid to even come near you because [they] don’t want to be seen close to you because then they won’t get questions at the next press briefing and won’t be invited to social events.”
Simon Ateba is back at it again in the press briefing. pic.twitter.com/4BXTT4gfbw
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 26, 2023
The White House has edited out every interaction between KJP and @simonateba from their YouTube livestream. pic.twitter.com/QxAgEWFItc
— Kevin McMahon (@Kevin__McMahon) June 26, 2023
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