The pending release of the new book on President Joe Biden poses an ethical problem for on-air news host Jake Tapper of CNN and Jen Psaki of MSNBC.
The dilemma each faces is their respective responsibilities to MSNBC and CNN viewers versus their choice to make more money by selling books or, in Psaki’s case, what she knew about revelations about Joe Biden during her tenure as White House press secretary for only one year, ending in May 2022. In Psaki’s case, her tenure overlaps the period covered in the book that details Biden’s physical and mental decline.
Tapper’s ethical problem is that, if he knew about Biden’s declining condition, why didn’t he turn it into a news story for CNN rather than wait for a book to be published about five
months after Biden left office? By waiting, did Tapper want to make money from the book versus doing his job as a paid CNN news host and reporter while Biden was president, or at least until the period before the book was published?
The book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, is based on more than 200 interviews, mostly with Democratic insiders. CNN reports that the book was primarily written after the 2024 election ended in November 2024. From that period until the book’s publication, Tapper was a full-time employee of CNN.
In the book, David Plouffe, a campaign aide to former Vice President Kamala Harris blames former President Biden for Harris’ loss, saying “it’s all Biden” in a new book about the former commander in chief’s apparent deterioration during the 2024 race.
“The perspective shared by David Plouffe, who worked on Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, underscores a frustration held by some Democrats: that Biden’s reluctance to remove himself earlier from the White House race sealed the fate of Harris’ election bid,” according to Politico.
As noted on this site many times before, Biden’s ego prevented him from stepping aside earlier in his term because he believed he was the only one capable of beating Trump. Instead, he succumbed to his ego and, with his wife’s and close aides’ support, refused to step aside.
At the time, Biden’s mental and physical decline was easily visible to everyone. This leads back to the ethical problems Psaki and Tapper now face: what did they know about Biden’s decline that they did not reveal to their viewers on CNN and MSNBC?
Did they hide what they knew? If so, why did they hide it? Didn’t they have a journalistic obligation to their employers (MSNBC and CNN) to air what they knew as paid employees?
Psaki Must Not Have Been An Insider
Psaki touts her experience as a political advisor who served under both the Obama and Biden administrations; she served the Biden administration as the 34th White House press secretary until May 2022. Psaki’s problem is that she allegedly
had extensive White House press contacts. Did she never hear about Biden’s physical and mental decline after she left the White House? If she did, was that tip ever passed on to the reporters at CNN, and if so, what did they do with that information?
This ethical question is another hit to Psaki, whose show, “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” is in a ratings tailspin only weeks after it was launched. The reasons are not hard to see. First, Psaki has no gravitas or apparent expertise in any policy area. Answering questions from trained reporters does not make you a reporter. Psaki was never a reporter, but she was a “political advisor,” whatever that means. Her “briefings” are just repetitions of the day’s news. She has few political insights.
Worse, she never reported on Biden’s declining mental state, even though she met with him regularly. If she did not want to reveal what she saw in the White House as an employee because she signed a confidentiality agreement, why did MSNBC hire her in the first place?
As a White House press secretary, a job held by the “Dancing with the Stars” San Spicer and by Trump’s paid liars Kayleigh McEnany and Karoline Leavitt, Psaki may not have known as much as her job title implied. In modern times, White House press secretaries typically serve only one year before using their connections to find a new career. For some reason, MSNBC chose Psaki even though she has weak or no journalism credentials.
For Tapper, the ethical problems are more obvious. Tapper is paid about $7 million annually to be a newsreader for CNN. Did he know about Biden’s situation before the book’s publication, and if so, did he ever air that news to his viewers? As a paid employee, didn’t Tapper have an obligation to report the Biden news before the book was published in a news story in a special report? If he never did this, does CNN management have an explanation about why they let a book break the Biden story rather than one of its own paid news staff?
While the book should be great reading, and if its claims are verified, a demining report on DNC’s ineptitude and Biden’s fatal ego problem, which dragged down the whole Democratic Party, it is not surprising. Biden is a timid leader who never knew or acknowledged the power of his enemy, the MAGA right with its Opus Dei wing in the Federalist Society and the right-wing evangelicals. Biden looks at Washington as if it is the 1960s or 1950s, when politicians focused on legislation, not on hardball, anti-government policies to enact social, not political, change.
Biden was the wrong man for the wrong time. Allegedly, Barack Obama tried to convince Biden not to run, citing his age. Buden refused the advice, which indicated that his ego trumped everything. That gave us the Trump regime, and it will be a decade or more before its authoritarian policies are reversed, if they are reversed at all.
This makes Tapper’s and Psaki’s ethical problems understandable. Now, it’s up to their employers to figure it out. In the meantime, the network’s viewers have suffered. Sadly, this will not enhance the credibility of either network.
