Beltway reporters were forced to reckon with their coverage of Joe Biden’s mental decline at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner after honoring a maverick reporter who worked to expose the ex-president’s problems, despite pushback.
Star Axios reporter Alex Thompson tore into the Biden administration — and fellow journalists — after receiving the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence Saturday for his coverage of Biden’s age and acuity at a time when other media outlets were turning a blind eye.
“President Biden’s decline and its coverup by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” Thompson said.
“But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.”
Thompson was a rare, deeply sourced reporter who frequently wrote about the lengths the Biden White House went through to accommodate the elderly president, 82, before the disastrous presidential debate last June forced the media to finally own up to the problem.
This included pieces about top White House aides around Biden privately believing that the then-president was slipping and how they tried to keep his decline under wraps.
“I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it,” Thompson reflected. “We should have done better.”
“I believe our mission is vital in a world where people are struggling to figure out what’s true, and people with power are not telling the truth,” he added. “I also believe that this association has been, is, and will continue to be critical to that mission.”
Thompson is slated to release a book titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” with CNN’s Jake Tapper on May 20, which does a deep dive into the 46th president’s cognitive issues.
In a stark departure from past WHCA dinners, this year’s meal did not feature a headliner comedian. The WHCA canceled its plans to have late-night host Amber Ruffin provide entertainment after she wanted to rip into the Trump administration as a “bunch of murderers.”
Tensions between the WHCA and the White House are high. President Trump’s team has been influencing the selection of White House pool reporters that get access to White House events.
The WHCA used to exclusively make those decisions.
Trump and his top lieutenants skipped the dinner, which is usually attended by the sitting president.
WHCA President Eugene Daniels acknowledged the friction with the White House.
“We journalists are a lot of things. We are competitive and pushy. We are impatient and sometimes we think we know everything,” Daniels said. “What we are not is the opposition. What we are not is the enemy of people. What we are not is the enemy of the state.”
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