DISINFO: Biden was afraid of a joint press conference with Putin
SUMMARY
Now that the Geneva Summit is over, it is clear why Biden was afraid of holding a joint press conference with Putin. The 46th President of the US looked weak during the Geneva Summit. Unlike his American counterpart, whose press conference started with an 11-minute statement read from a teleprompter, the Russian President did not use a teleprompter at any point. While Biden took a self-defensive pose in front of journalists and only answered seven questions from pre-selected outlets, Putin answered more than a couple of dozen questions from random outlets, contradicting the misconstrued notion that media freedom is suppressed in Russia and cherished in the West.
RESPONSE
Disinformation about the President of the US Joe Biden. The article deliberately misrepresents an opinion piece on The Hill by a conservative columnist known for proliferating falsehoods about Biden as being news coverage. The article also attempts to distort the reality in regards to media freedom in Russia by making a false analogy to Putin’s press conference.
Biden’s reason for not holding a joint press conference with Putin was that he didn’t want the meeting to be about the public images of the two leaders and turn the summit into a “contest about who can do better in front of a press conference”.
Indeed, the relations between two large states with nuclear weapons is a serious matter and should not be reduced to a public relations competition, as Kremlin-controlled media have attempted. In this context, the subject of how many questions either President answered or whether they were helped by a teleprompter during their press conferences is a non-issue, especially compared to the actual substance of their answers. A case in point is the fact that Putin delivered several short answers during his press conference, which is available online, on questions of equality, democracy and justice, clearly demonstrating his anti-liberal and authoritarian views on a host of issues in the span of a few questions and just a couple of minutes.
The notion that Putin demonstrated that freedom of media in Russia is not suppressed by answering a couple of dozen questions from international media at a press conference at random, is a fallacy. Such claims are part of a wider and recurrent disinformation narrative claiming that media in Russia is not suppressed and that the opposite is true in the West. Moreover, autocrats such as Putin regularly stage media marathons which are used as a PR tactic and a meager sustitute insted of allowing for a daily-functioning free and critical press. As a matter of logic, there is no connection between Putin’s press conference in Geneva and the reality of the media landscape in Russia, where freedom of expression is under ever-increasing pressure by the authorities, state-run media networks and influential individuals with ties to the Kremlin, according to Freedom House.
The latest edition of the World Press Freedom Index for 2021 ranked Russia in 150 out of 180 places, placing it just below the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela. In contrast, the top three places belong to Norway, Finland and Sweden, while the United States is in position 44. As one reporter noted in her prelude to a question for Putin during his press conference in Geneva: “The list of your opponents who are dead, imprisoned or jailed is long”.
Contrary to the made claim, the fact that the US President answered questions from a pre-selected list of journalists is not evidence of media suppression. Whether or not either President used a pre-selected list of reporters bears no relation to media freedom or openness in either country, which requires comprehensive research and analysis to assess.
Read similar cases of disinformation in the database falsely claiming that Biden wanted to avoid direct questions after meeting with Putin, that Russia has always upheld the fundamental principles of freedom of expression, that Russian media is more independent than its American counterpart, and that Russia is the world champion of free speech, among others.