President Biden’s lame answer on media border access

As the Erik Wemple Blog and others have reported, news organizations have been denied access to facilities that are accommodating unaccompanied children who arrive at the southwest border. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) manages Border Patrol stations, where, under U.S. law, children aren’t to stay longer than 72 hours. As of last week, a record 5,200 children were in these facilities, and hundreds have exceeded that three-day limit, according to NBC News. After three days, the children are supposed to be transferred to shelters managed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

A pool camera for several TV networks was allowed into an HHS facility on Wednesday, but as many noted, it wasn’t one of the overcrowded first-stop facilities to which news organizations are lobbying for access.

A group of government transparency organizations wrote to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday protesting the media’s lack of access. It declared “untenable” DHS’s invocation of pandemic safety as a justification for denying access to border facilities. “The First Amendment is not suspended during public emergencies and the coronavirus pandemic is no exception,” notes the letter, whose signatories include the Society of Professional Journalists. “The public’s need for timely, accurate information is even greater during emergencies, and both lawmakers and the public must have a full picture of the conditions at the border to hold the government accountable.”

At his news conference Thursday, Biden expressed far less urgency. When Welker asked if he’d commit to permitting access to the overcrowded facilities, the president responded, “I will commit when my plan very shortly is underway to let you have access to not just them, but to other facilities as well.”

That equivocal response prompted Welker to try again, noting that the media had been allowed inside one facility but not the ones where “children are packed together. … Will you commit to transparency on this issue?” At that, Biden provided a wordier version of his previous response. “I will commit to transparency, as soon as I am in a position to be able to implement what we’re doing right now,” he said. “One of the reasons I haven’t gone down, my chief folks have gone down, is I don’t want it to become the issue. I don’t want to be bringing all the Secret Service and everybody with me to get in the way. So this has being set up and you’ll have full access to everything once we get this thing moving.”

At least Biden was open about his opacity: He’ll let the media in just as soon as he can remedy the situation. Put another way: I’ll let you see the facilities once the crisis has passed. The president’s response was no more hopeful than that of White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who in Wednesday’s briefing said, “We also remain committed to transparency and we’ll continue to work with agencies on creating avenues for media access and visibility into these facilities.”

There’s no need to create “avenues” here; just open the doors. The situation at the border has been in the news for weeks, and media organizations have repeatedly appealed for access to border facilities.

Politico Playbook on Wednesday attempted to cast some perspective on the Biden border blockade against the media. “This is one instance where the media-bashing Trump was on the side of the press — and Biden, despite his supposed respect for the role of journalism, is not,” argued the newsletter. There were indeed moments when the Trump administration invited media organizations to tour border facilities, but reporters pounded Playbook with examples of Trump appointees hassling reporters on immigration stories. Playbook later ceded some ground: “We should have noted that although reporters were at times allowed to report from inside detention facilities, in other instances access was sharply limited or denied during Trump’s term.”

Comparisons between the Trump administration and normal administrations don’t work. Nor, in this case at least, do we need them: After running on an immigration policy that reflects “our highest values as a nation,” Biden is keeping the press from reporting on whether his administration is meeting that promise. And that’s an outrage.

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