Dodging the Cameras: Joe Biden on Pace to Become Most Evasive President Ever

Former US President Woodrow Wilson held what is commonly considered the first presidential news conference in 1913. The practice continued with every consecutive president but it was ex-Commander-in-Chief John F. Kennedy who increased their popularity tenfold by airing them live on national television.

President Joe Biden is on pace to hold fewer news conferences than any US president since Ronald Reagan left office, and is on pace for the third-least number of conferences behind Regan and Richard Nixon.

Counting only solo news conferences - appearances not shared with another world leader or government official, Biden is on pace to be the least accessible president of the modern age, including Reagan, Nixon and Trump.

According to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbra, Biden has given 11 solo press conferences during his first two years in office and none in 2023 so far. He has also been a part of ten joint conferences since his time in office, including one so far in 2023.

Assuming Biden’s pace continues in 2024, he will have given 22 solo conferences and 18 joint appearances by the time his first term expires; however, that is not a sure bet.

Trump was on pace to easily beat the record for the least number of solo press conferences, only giving nine press conferences in his first three years in office, but that changed in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the nation and prompted Trump to start using his near daily briefings as de facto campaign speeches.

Trump had an adversarial relationship with the press, referring to the media as “the enemy of the people.” Trump was commonly referred to as the most adversarial president in regards to the press since at least Nixon - if not in history. Biden, by contrast, promised a “media reset” and described journalists as “indispensable to the functioning of democracy.” Still, when you include joint press conferences, even Trump’s pace through his first two years nearly doubles Biden’s.

The problem is not simply the number of press conferences. Biden also gives fewer sit-down interviews than his predecessors. While Reagan quickly scaled back his press appearances after being shot during a failed assassination attempt, he did 59 interviews with the press in his first year. Biden gave 22 in his first year and 19 in 2022, but four of the 2022 interviews came from celebrities like Ryan Seacrest, Drew Barrymore, or Jay Leno - not news reporters.

Biden has reasons to avoid the press. According to David E. Clementson, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia, modern politicians may be avoiding the press because there are very few advantages for politicians to interact with the press and a lot of disadvantages.

Clementson’s research shows that voters are likely to think politicians from another party are being evasive or dishonest, even when they are not. Each time in front of the camera also holds the risk of doing or saying something that could turn off voters on both sides of the political aisle, a risk likely heightened by Biden’s penchant for gaffes seemingly every time he is seen in public.

The US has come a long way since Kennedy used live press conferences to great effect. Then, the American public found it refreshing, entertaining and informative to hear their president speak live. But Trump proved social media could be a more effective way to speak to your base than answering questions from sometimes hostile reporters trying to get a bombastic quote.

"The more a politician’s words inevitably diverge from voters’ feelings and experiences, the less presidential he will seem to them," says Clementson.

But just because there is no political advantage for Biden to engage with the press, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t do it. Voters installed Biden into arguably the most powerful position in the world. He has his finger on a button that could end all life on the planet, and the US has grown closer to that button being pressed than it has ever been in history. Biden, and all elected officials, have a moral and dutiful responsibility to take hard questions and not, as Trump was often accused of, govern by tweets.

“Of course, if what the president is aiming for is not strategic expediency but simply fulfilling an obligation to be held accountable in his role,” Clementson writes, “then the country wins when he holds a press conference – and in that way he does, too."