White House says pub­lic needs ‘truth’ about Jan. 6 when asked about NBC tap­ping McDaniel

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden believes that the press plays a “crit­i­cal” role in pro­tect­ing democ­ra­cy, the White House said, when asked for the president’s reac­tion to NBC News hir­ing for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair­woman Ron­na McDaniel as a polit­i­cal ana­lyst.
Jour­nal­ists’ roles include ensur­ing the pub­lic “knows” the truth and facts about Jan. 6, per White House press sec­re­tary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“What he said is, ‘We need you, democ­ra­cy is at risk, and the Amer­i­can peo­ple need to know, in frac­tured times, they need a con­text and a per­spec­tive, they need sub­stance to match the enor­mi­ty of the task,’” Jean-Pierre told reporters Mon­day, quot­ing Biden’s speech at this month’s Grid­iron Din­ner with mem­bers of the media.
“It is a big task that jour­nal­ists have, and we under­stand that, and the facts and the truth are crit­i­cal here,” she said in her own words. “I’m not going to make any com­ments on a per­son­nel deci­sion, but, more broad­ly speak­ing, it is impor­tant. It is a bur­den on all of us here to be real­ly mind­ful about that.”
NBC and MSNBC reporters and anchors, includ­ing Chuck Todd on Sun­day and Morn­ing Joe hosts Joe Scar­bor­ough and Mika Brzezin­s­ki on Mon­day morn­ing, crit­i­cized the news organization’s deci­sion to hire McDaniel over h …