Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck hadn't had Peter Doocy to man-crush over for a while, so when he returned to Fox News after a month of paternity leave, Houck was ready for some serious Doocy-fluffing in the writeup for the March 1 White House press briefing:
Though he had been back for a few weeks since the February 1 birth of his daughter with wife and Fox Business correspondent Hillary Vaughn, Wednesday marked Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy’s first White House briefing since January 27. Not surprisingly, he was still prepared as he grilled the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on whether President Biden is “afraid of China.”
Doocy started with that very question: “Why is President Biden afraid of China?” Jean-Pierre insisted that he’s not and her evidence was comical as she invoked Biden’s visit to Ukraine.
“Look, this is not a President who's afraid of anything. It was a historic trip that many of you said was brave, so clearly, this is a president that's not afraid to go to a war zone,” she said, arguing that Doocy’s question was bunk because...journalists loved Biden in Ukraine?
Doocy countered that, along with China being allowed to fly “spycraft over the U.S.” and nothing happened to them, Biden hasn’t shown a willingness to punish them when they “may have created something that has killed more 1.1 million people in this country”.
Jean-Pierre said a whole lot of nothing as, on the balloon, Biden “did take that down...collected information from it...protected on national security information on the ground, and “protected the American people.”
Houck then gushed that Doocy "dropped the hammer" with a question about the origins of COVID, then whined that "A meandering essay later about Biden’s “leadership” ensuring “the economy is growing again” and “tak[ing] on COVID” and Biden showing leadership by having “the intelligence community” discuss amongst themselves, she moved on."
Houck was still fanboying over Doocy's return in a second post on that day's briefing:
Along with the return of Fox’s Peter Doocy on Wednesday to the White House Press Briefing Room and some tough questions for the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on TikTok, there were a host of other topics that piqued our interests, including Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) revoking Disney’s self-governance status, the D.C. City Council attempting to rewrite their criminal code, the murder of a Catholic bishop, and the alleged bigotry from the Richmond, Virginia FBI field office.
Then Houck got lazy again, summing up several succeeding briefings in a single March 7 post:
With briefings on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has had a lot of camera time as of late and the liberal media came at her with questions of substance and activism. Most notably, they’ve hit her from the left on the D.C. crime bill, Florida and Texas addressing the Biden border crisis, illegal immigration, Tennessee passing legislation to protect children from graphic sexual content, and Tucker Carlson.
Thankfully, others showed up with questions about the anti-cop riot in Atlanta, energy independence, green technology hypocrisy, government surveillance, and Russian sanctions.
Below are the five worst and then the five best questions from the last four briefings. Each category is presented in chronological order.
Needless to say, the "best" questions advanced right-wing narratives and the "worst" questions didn't. and the top "best" question is from Doocy.
Kevin Tober popped up to once again smear Jean-Pierre as an incompetent diversity hire in a March 12 post for the sin of not speaking as glibly as he demands:
On Friday night, President Biden’s thoroughly unqualified diversity hire press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appeared on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes for a wide-ranging interview. While to any competent Democrat press secretary, this would be an easy interview to get through, but as she has proven before, that is not the case with Jean-Pierre who even on her best day is seemingly incapable of putting a coherent sentence together.
Due to recent reports that have been circulating in the press that the Biden administration is considering a return to the Trump-era migrant detention policies, Hayes simply asked for a confirmation of whether these reports have any merit.
The result was a meandering, incoherent response that barely sounded like English: "So, what I want to be very clear here and I've answered this question, as you know Chris many times in the briefing room, and we as a administration has as well."
[...]
You have to wonder if this somehow is a second language for her. She is in way over her head and should never have been hired for this job. If the Biden regime wasn’t so obsessed with diversity, she wouldn’t be the Press Secretary.
Houck then trotted over to Fox News to slag Jean-Pierre some more for a March 19 TV hit:
With the topic in his wheelhouse, NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck was back on the Fox News Channel late Friday/early Saturday forFox News @ Night to sound off on the latest antics from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the White House’s purposeful restricting of press access to President Biden amid a litany of domestic and foreign crises.
Reacting to a mini-skirmish from Thursday’s briefing in which even friendly liberal journalists blasted Jean-Pierre and her team for keeping Biden from even traditional press conferences with foreign leaders, Houck said the issue “shouldn’t be partisan” and certainly at a time when people “want to hear from the President.”
Oddly, Houck didn't find the Jean-Pierre "antics" he described so egregious that he could be bothered to write about that for his employer.
