WH Reporters Complain About ‘Aggressive’ Saudi PR Effort During Biden Trip – That Reporters and Networks Completely Fell For
White Houe reporters complained to Politico about an “aggressive” Saudi PR effort during President Joe Biden‘s visit — one which was rewarded by multiple reporters and networks.
Coverage of President Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia was dominated by a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at which the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was raised (shortly following the Fist Bump Heard ‘Round the World).
According to Politico’s West Wing Playbook, White House reporters have complained about an “aggressive” PR effort by Nicolla Hewitt to get the Saudi side of the story out there:
Several White House reporters staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to cover President JOE BIDEN’s highly-scrutinized visit were peppered by repeated calls to their hotel landlines, sometimes at odd hours.
The person on the other end wasn’t a hotel staffer offering room service or a late checkout. It was a highly-aggressive PR flack working on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government eager to shape the narrative of Biden’s trip to the kingdom.
The flack was NICOLLA HEWITT. She’s a longtime American PR expert who has worked for television networks, the Clinton Global Initiative, and media and business figures such as KATIE COURIC and RICHARD BRANSON. More recently, she was retained by the Saudis.
Biden gave his own firsthand account of the meeting, at which he confronted MBS about the murder, and the prince’s responsibility for it. The Saudis pushed back through anonymous quotes, as well as on-the-record interviews by secondhand sources who pushed back in vague fashion.
Saudi Minister Of State For Foreign Affairs Adel Al-jubeir said in one interview “I didn’t hear that particular phrase” when asked about Biden saying MBS was “responsible” for the murder, and gave his side of the story in other interviews as well.
According to Politico, this was part of Hewitt’s effort:
Hewitt and others helped top Saudi officials get on Americans news airwaves all that week: Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia ABDEL AL-JUBEIR sat down for high-profile interviews with PBS, CNBC and Fox News, while CNN interviewed Saudi Foreign Minister Prince FAISAL BIN FARHAN. As Fox’s JACQUI HEINRICH noted in a tweet, after Biden left the country, the foreign minister agreed to a second interview just two days later to push back on the president’s comments about confronting the Saudis over Khashoggi’s murder.
The Saudi side of the story was, in turn, shopped to the president, who stood by his account of the meeting. Ironically, one key spoke in the Saudi pushback — an anonymous single-sourced report claiming MBS “hit back” at Biden during the meeting — was co-authored by CNN White House correspondent Phil Mattingly.
