The White House plans to send a letter to top US news executives on Wednesday, urging them to intensify their scrutiny of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite having found no evidence of a crime.

“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, according to a draft copy obtained by CNN.

The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” will be sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.

  • @Fuzzy_Dunlop@lemm.ee
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    461 year ago

    This is pretty ridiculous. Every politician is full of shit to at least some degree, and our “reporters” are horribly biased and broken. If they really want to do something about it, they can discuss broadcasting standards or maybe consequences for deliberately deceptive journalism. No single group or issue should have its own standard.

    • @orrk@lemmy.world
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      211 year ago

      that would literally put the entire Murdoch empire out of business, you can’t do that!

    • @jonne@infosec.pub
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      -181 year ago

      Yeah, maybe the white house should do a better job of pushing back instead of trying to pressure news executives to change their reporting. It’s the same type of behaviour that made the Twitter files stuff so compelling, and this is only going to backfire.

      • @SCB@lemmy.world
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        -31 year ago

        If the White House pushes back, it is shrugged off as “of course they would.”

        If the press digs into the investigation and finds that the investigation itself is meaningless political theater, it has more credibility

        Moreover, the Biden admin is demonstrating their absolute confidence in having nothing to hide.

        • @Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          41 year ago

          It’s like that time the White House absolutely forcefully censored all social media. By asking that they take down unauthorized, pornographic pictures of the president’s son. Which would be illegal under any revenge porn laws at the very least. They were well within their right to do it and didn’t violate anyone’s rights in doing it. But the howling fascists went nuts.

          • @jonne@infosec.pub
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            1 year ago

            That wasn’t the White House, that was the Biden campaign (and yes, it’s ridiculous that Twitter had to be told directly instead of moderating a clear terms violation like this by themselves).

            More worrying was that the FBI was telling Twitter which accounts to ban, sometimes just for obvious jokes. And that was under both Trump and Biden.