”It wasn’t just that the media didn’t know and perhaps should have. It was that the media could see all the things we were seeing and it was very obviously a problem,” says journalist Drew Holden in an interview with Bulletin.

He runs the Substack Holden Court newsletter, which examines and reports on American media and has extensively written about how media actively participated in concealing former US President Joe Biden’s mental decline.

According to Drew Holden, established media not only acted passively but actively worked to conceal signs of Biden’s deteriorating condition. He particularly points to The Washington Post, which two weeks before the decisive presidential debate between Biden and Trump described videos of Biden’s confused behavior as ”cheap fakes.”

”The Washington Post article unfortunately summarizes what many in the media were saying at the time. The headline read ’Cheap fake Biden videos captivate right-wing media but deeply mislead.’ They went on to describe this as a political attack, a hatchet job,” says Drew Holden.

He explains that many news outlets labeled evidence of Biden’s deterioration as misleading and manipulated.

”They said the video was misleading, manipulated, taken out of context. But it was landing with people. The Washington Post did a fact check on this and gave it four Pinocchios, their highest level for egregious lies,” continues Drew Holden.

Swedish major daily Dagens Nyheter did the same thing. On June 19, 2024, they portrayed the accusations against Biden about behaving confusedly at a ceremony with NATO leaders as a conspiracy to cast suspicion on Biden. In their article, Dagens Nyheter, incredulously, used The Washington Post’s ”fact check” as a source.

What do you see as the most egregious examples of media’s cover-up of Biden’s condition?

”That Washington Post article is quite good and by good, I mean horrifying. The Post then went on to describe this in their conclusion as ’especially pernicious examples of manipulated video.’ One of the reasons why they said, ’we know this video is manipulated’—and I’m quoting here—is that ’Biden, as he did in his 2009 Associated Press interview, has often said he doesn’t dance.’ Those were the facts they were truly grabbing at any branch on the way down to try and say, ’No, no, no. There’s nothing to see here. There’s no problem,’” explains Drew Holden.

Drew Holden has documented media behavior in extensive threads on X. He shows how several major media outlets, including the Associated Press, participated in the cover-up.

”One of the pieces that I just simply can’t get past is the Associated Press wrote a headline that said ’Seeing is believing, not always when it comes to Biden’,” says Drew Holden.

It wasn’t just isolated media outlets that participated in the cover-up. Drew Holden has documented how news organizations like CBS News, NBC News, and ABC News were all complicit.

Media’s Motives

When asked why journalists participated in the cover-up when the problems were obvious to many, Drew Holden believes fear of Donald Trump was the driving force.

”I think up until the moment of the debate, the media assumed that there was still viability in Biden’s campaign for reelection. I think they were really hyper aware of this being a huge asset to Donald Trump as the election was approaching and they didn’t want to do anything that could lead to strengthening Trump’s case,” says Drew Holden.

He argues that the media then became trapped in their own narrative.

”Once they started down this path and Republicans came back with a lot of fire and fury and said the guy who holds the nuclear codes is actually losing his marbles, then I think the media was pot committed and so they were on the other side. They had said these things. They had made this point. They had defended the president. They were going to defend him till the hilt,” says Drew Holden.

How would you describe the media’s actions after the decisive debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

”After the debate, the media facade suddenly gave way. I put together a thread that had the side-by-sides of what they were saying before versus what they were saying after. One of the ones that I still think about is there was an ABC piece that went up in July that reported about an event in June before the debate. White House guests and ambassadors were deeply troubled about some of Biden’s ’senior moments’ and how he would freeze up. All of that happened in June. They didn’t report on it until July,” says Drew Holden.

Drew Holden points out that post-election revelations have confirmed his analysis. A new book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, who interviewed over 200 Democratic insiders, shows that White House staff actively worked to conceal the president’s condition.

”Even trying to give journalists the benefit of the doubt, it is beyond belief that as this whole story around Biden’s decline was unfolding, they weren’t aware of what was happening. I think they were locked into their position and felt they had to stop Trump.”

Herd Mentality Among Journalists

Drew Holden points out that journalists, despite their self-image as truth-tellers, often fall into groupthink.

Many Swedish journalists also fall into the trap of groupthink in my experience. What causes this in your view?

”There is a lot of that herd mentality because a big part of being a journalist in Washington DC, where I live, is access. And so the last thing you want to do is to write an incorrect story, cast aspersions at the president and be locked out of the White House forever,” says Drew Holden.

So it’s also about social conformity among journalists?

”Yes, that’s right. Journalists are friends. They go to the White House correspondents dinner and they all chitchat and have a great time talking together about this craft that they care about,” explains Drew Holden.

Consequences for Media Credibility

Drew Holden is concerned about the long-term consequences for public trust in the media.

”I mean, I think it means that their blows against Trump don’t land. I think what they’ve essentially done is they’ve neutered their effectiveness because people don’t trust them. And the reason people don’t trust them is because people see for good reason that they are actively promoting political narratives when it’s convenient for them to do so.”

He refers to current opinion polls showing record-low trust in the media.

”There was a poll from Pew (an opinion research institute, editor’s note) maybe a couple months ago that every couple of months the trust in the media is at an all-time low yet again. There are still a lot of Democrats who have had faith and confidence in the media. I think beyond Democrats, the trust in the media is at rock bottom and will continue to be at rock bottom until they start to own up to some of this stuff,” says Drew Holden.

He believes that one partial explanation for why new media in the US are growing rapidly, such as The Free Press, Megyn Kelly, Mark Halperin and others, is related to the public’s lack of trust in established media.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.

Do you see any signs that established media are trying to be accountable for their mistakes here?

”Not really, to be honest with you. I think you see some people who are former members of corporate media who are now writing for Substack where they don’t have an editor above them who tells them, ’No, no, no, you can’t run this piece.’ They seem a lot more comfortable talking about it. And I want to give credit to Alex Thompson, Tapper’s co-author on this book, he probably covered it about as straight and accurate as anyone in the mainstream media did. That’s not a high bar, but I think it’s worth calling out.”

According to Drew Holden, media can only restore their credibility by acknowledging their role in the cover-up.

”The early signs are not encouraging. They don’t acknowledge their role in the cover-up of Biden. They pretend as if they didn’t see what was happening in front of everyone’s eyes on C-SPAN,” concludes Drew Holden.