Biden White House ‘Increasingly Irritated’ With Fox News’ Bill Melugin: Politico
The Biden White House reportedly has been “increasingly irritated” with Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin over his reporting from the Southern Border.
Melugin has mainly covered the border crisis since moving to Fox News last year from Fox O&O KTTV in Los Angeles.
“In recent days, several current and former White House and administration officials expressed to West Wing Playbook their increasing frustration with his on-air coverage, arguing that there is an alarmist quality to it, designed to feed political narratives rather than illuminate the actual issues feeding the migrant flow,” according to Politico’s West Wing Playbook, written by Maxwell Tani and Alex Thompson, on Tuesday.
Tani and Thompson noted that Fox News has consistently covered the issue of immigration and what’s happening at the Southern Border, “stoking fears about caravans of immigrants.”
The newsletter went on to note the way the network has been covering the border – “on on-the-ground reporting augmented by soaring aerial drone footage of migrants crossing the border.”
According to Politico, “as Melugin has become an increasingly visible figure on the network, his coverage has caught the attention of the White House, which has become increasingly irritated by his reporting.”
Additionally, according to Tani and Thompson:
One administration official who used to work on immigration issues told West Wing Playbook that the Biden team has complained about the lack of nuance in the network’s coverage of the topic, which focuses more on the number of migrants rather than explaining the root causes of the situation. Another administration official believes that the conservative network amps up border coverage whenever there are bad headlines for conservatives in the news.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has blasted Govs. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Ron DeSantis (R-FL) of “alerting Fox News” as opposed to officials and others who deal with migrants in response to the governors sending migrants to liberal places including Washington, D.C., Chicago and Martha’s Vineyard.
