Former President Barack Obama defended legacy corporate media outlets during a Monday appearance at an Arkansas art museum, claiming they get the facts right.
An article from The Wall Street Journal published late last year revealed that White House aides “insulated” Biden even from Cabinet members as his health declined, months after similar articles published by the outlet earlier in the year generated pushback from some media outlets.
Obama claimed that cable news outlets had “fallen prey” to “trying to make people feel angry and aggrieved” to generate attention and financial benefit after being asked by Olivia Walton, the chair of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, about which media outlets he relies on.
“I actually think — I actually think that the mainstream news still does a very good job of just presenting facts,” Obama claimed. “I think cable, regardless of the cable station, has fallen prey to the same economic imperatives that we’re seeing in every other type of news, which is, you are deliberately controversial, deliberately aggressive, deliberately trying to make people feel angry and aggrieved, because that attracts attention.”
Questions were raised about the White House’s truthfulness regarding Biden’s health during his term in office. Biden, on multiple occasions, said he spoke with people who had died, including claiming to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and former French President Francois Mitterrand, who passed away in 1996.
Barack Obama: “The mainstream news still does a very good job of just presenting facts.” pic.twitter.com/BLrkDPUtID
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 2, 2025
Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich told “America’s Newsroom” host Bill Hemmer in May 2025 that many reporters shied away from questioning Biden’s health.
“Well, you know, for about three years they would go like this: They don’t want to be associated,” Heinrich said, leaning away from Hemmer to demonstrate the reaction, prompting Hemmer to ask, “Who?”
“The rest of the press, because the White House was very effective in maligning anyone who was skeptical about the president’s age and abilities as a bad actor, as someone who is not a good journalist,” Heinrich said, later adding that the White House press office “abused” reporters who asked those questions “with sourcing.”
The White House debuted a feature on its website Friday that lambasted multiple media outlets over “fake news” coverage.
The British Broadcasting Corporation came under fire after The Telegraph obtained a dossier detailing how the network used spliced clips of Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech that were 54 minutes apart during a documentary to make it seem like he encouraged the riot at the Capitol building that took place that day. The BBC apologized to Trump in a Nov. 13 letter from chairman Samir Shah after two top officials at the company resigned following the dossier’s release, saying the documentary would not air again.
Trump also secured a $15 million settlement with ABC in December 2024 after he sued the outlet on March 19, 2024, for defamation over “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos falsely saying Trump was found “liable for rape.” In July, Paramount announced it had settled a $10 billion lawsuit filed by Trump over the editing of an October 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
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