Comment While President Biden warned the nation about threats to democracy in a first-of-its-kind address Thursday, ABC aired a game show, “Press Your Luck.” As Biden railed against former President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” NBC aired a rerun of “Law & Order.” CBS skipped the speech to show a rerun of “Young Sheldon.” The networks’ rejection of Biden’s speech — delivered in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, lit dramatically in red as Marines stood guard — marked an unusual moment in the long-standing relationship between the White House and the nation’s most powerful broadcasters. Presidents rarely make speeches during primetime television and usually do so only to address a national crisis or a matter of extreme urgency. The networks, in turn, typically carry presidential speeches when the White House requests the time and after previewing the president’s remarks. However, they have transmitted speeches that were part of election rallies or events, or when the issue was deemed insufficiently important or newsworthy. The networks, for example, decided not to carry a speech on immigration reform by then-President Barack Obama in November 2014. The thin scene behind the January 6 hearings People involved in the negotiations for Thursday’s speech said the networks saw Biden’s remarks as “political” in nature and therefore decided not to televise them. Those people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions, cited criticism of the speech to Trump — Biden’s potential political opponent in 2024 — and the timing two months before the midterm elections. White House officials had earlier tried to play down the impression of partisanship, with one telling NBC News that it was “not a speech about a particular politician or even a particular political party.” In a speech Thursday night, Biden argued that Trump and his supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our democracy.” Using the acronym for Trump’s slogan Make America Great Again, he said: “The MAGA Republicans want to take America backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry you love.” He also referred to the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill, saying, “We can’t be pro-riot and pro-American. They’re incompatible.” Biden’s speech was carried live by CNN and MSNBC, but not on Fox News, the most popular of the cable news channels. Fox stuck with its usual 8pm Eastern time slot, a commentary show hosted by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. Spokesmen for the broadcast networks as well as the White House declined to comment for this story. The networks’ decision not to carry the speech, however, ensured that Biden’s remarks would reach a far smaller audience than the millions of viewers who typically watch live presidential speeches on ABC, CBS and NBC. Some commentators criticized the networks for refusing to air the speech. “Networks refusing to cover Biden’s speech (apparently because it was meant to be critical of Trump and/or not newsworthy enough) is exactly the problem” facing democracy, Dartmouth University political scientist Brendan Nyhan tweeted , in one of several tweets cautioning the networks’ decision. But George Washington University professor Frank Sesno, a former CNN anchor, said in an interview that the speech was “framed in very partisan, political terms, and while it may reflect reality, in strictly editorial terms, it makes it a narrow call on whether the networks should interrupt regular programming and give the White House 30 minutes of airtime.” Sesno added that while he personally believes all Americans should be concerned about “the influence of a people and a party who deny reality [and] seek to undermine the election,” also believes that networks should make coverage decisions “based on the newsworthiness of the speech and whether it is a true ‘address to the nation’ or primarily political in nature.” The non-coverage contrasts with the three networks’ decision in June to preempt their entertainment programming from airing the first hearing of the House Select Committee investigation into the rebellion on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. That hearing took place during primetime, just as Biden’s speech did on Thursday, and was billed as a news event, with the networks’ top anchors introducing and analyzing the proceedings. Fox News skipped the hearing, choosing instead to air its prime-time opinion programs.
