The mainstream media's failure to swiftly cover former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline was again a topic of conversation this week, after Axios reporter Alex Thompson gently chided fellow journalists during his remarks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
The 2025 dinner, which I attended, was a muted affair when compared with previous years: The evening's preplanned entertainment, comedian Amber Ruffin, was canceled in advance, and President Donald Trump declined to participate. Thompson thus attracted most of the headlines; accepting an award for his own reporting, he conceded that the press corp was far too deferential to Biden's inner circle on the topic of the president's fitness for office.
"President Biden's decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception," said Thompson. "We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And some people trust us less because of it."
