Under stern questioning from a caller about the media obsession with Russian collusion on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on Tuesday, USA Today White House correspondent Joey Garrison and Bloomberg congressional reporter Jarrell Dillard insisted they try to hold all politicians accountable and don't have biased double standards. That's not exactly what we see on a regular basis from their outlets.
"Arnold from Virginia" brought the fire.
ARNOLD: This pretty much goes toward the media. I'm glad you have two gentlemen on who work for the media. So, for the past four years, the previous four years of the previous president, all I heard about was Russian collusion, Russian collusion, Russian collusion. Fraudulent elections, fraudulent elections. The American people did not forget about these things and that's all we heard about. And so, the first question I have for you guys is, and then I'm gonna follow up with a comment, is what happened to the Russian collusion? That was on the first page of your newspapers for the USA Times [sic], for Bloomberg. It was on the national news headlines as well. What happened to the Russian collusion?
The second question I have, the second statement I wanna have is, with the media today, do you guys recognize why people don’t trust you, or trust the media? Because of the inconsistencies that you guys present when it came to President Trump versus President Biden and just all of the catastrophic things that's going on today.
Garrison suggested nothing really happened with Russia, which didn't really rebut the caller, did it? They obsessed over Russian collusion for about three years, and then moved on to impeaching Trump over Hunter Biden's Ukrainian buck-raking.
GARRISON: Addressing his first question, regarding what happened to Russia, I’m not sure anything happened to it. There was a long investigation led by Mueller. There weren’t eventually any charges pressed for it. Eventually, shortly after that, six months maybe, there started to be an impeachment process on the Ukraine call that President Trump had at the time. I do think, I'm not sure what you mean by what happened to it? It was a story, and we moved on to other things.
In terms of the reputation of the press, all I can do is speak for myself, I try to hold every elected official accountable. I wasn’t a White House reporter during the Trump years, so I don't have any first-hand experience on that. But I can tell you for all my colleagues and myself included, we don’t try to have any difference in terms of our coverage when it comes to different politicians.
Some might say this reporter could do better at holding Biden accountable than stories like this.
Dillard seconded Garrison's emotion: "I would say the same thing, try to hold everyone accountable. I also was not a reporter either at the White House or on the Hill at the time. But in my work, I try to remain unbiased and hold every official accountable." Again, we would tell Dillard he could do better at unbiased coverage than stories like this.
It's nice to hear reporters expressed their intentions to remain unbiased. We just don't see that enough of it in the finished product on a daily basis.
