After Fox News’ White House correspondent asked press secretary Jen Psaki a series of questions on social media censorship during Friday’s briefing, establishment media rushed to slam Doocy for his line of questioning.
Doocy pressed Psaki for her comments that the White House would flag “misinformation” to Facebook, as well as her claim that someone who is banned from one social media platform should be banned on all platforms. Psaki dodged the questions and said that the White House was not the one taking down posts deemed to be misinformation.
Doocy asked if something the White House flagged as “misinformation” could be proven accurate later. When people raised questions about whether the novel coronavirus could have originated in a lab, Doocy said, they were flagged for peddling misinformation. Although, later on, the lab leak theory eventually proved to be a strong possibility.
“We don’t take anything down, we don’t block anything,” Psaki responded. “Facebook and any private sector company makes decisions about what information should be on their platform.”
Establishment media quickly stepped to slam Doocy. (RELATED: ‘I Don’t Think Anything About This Is Funny’: Doocy Presses Psaki On Texas Democrats Fleeing State)
Peter Doocy challenges @PressSec on the White House flagging “misinformation” to Facebook:
“Our biggest concern here — is the number of people dying around the country because they are getting misinformation that is leading them to not take a vaccine.” pic.twitter.com/6pWhkPsgoH
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 16, 2021
Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake wrote that Doocy made an “embarrassing blunder” in the briefing room and called out his “poorly conceived” effort to get Psaki to discuss culture war issues.
Blake said that Doocy asking about the White House snooping into Americans’ Facebook pages was a question “based upon nothing but innuendo and a dumbfoundingly apparent lack of research.”
“Doocy’s claim that the stat Psaki cited was proof of yet more supposed spying is just nonsensical, as he might have found had he done even the slightest bit of due diligence,” he wrote. “But at least another spying conspiracy theory that can be turned into cable news segments has now been seeded.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper also claimed that Doocy’s question was “premised on a lie.” Tapper repeated the White House’s claim that they were not spying on Americans’ private Facebook pages as Doocy had suggested.
“It’s not true,” Tapper said. “But once again we see another example of just lies making their way into the airwaves,” Tapper said. He added that Doocy “has every right to lie.”
Vanity Fair wrote an article with a headline that seemed to imply Doocy was a bully for asking the questions. The headline said, “White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Stuffs Fox News’ Peter Doocy In Another Locker.”
In another part of the exchange, Doocy questioned Psaki about the Texas Democrats who fled the state in an effort to avoid voting on the Republicans’ election integrity bill, and Vanity Fair’s scathing piece called out Doocy for asking about it.
The outlet began by calling Doocy an “intern” and claimed that he asked, “an inane question.” They added, that it was “a sad attempt to suggest that elected officials trying to prevent millions of people from being disenfranchised are somehow in the wrong.”
“All too used to Doocy’s particular brand of ‘journalism,’ Psaki responded with a look that said, ‘Ugh, you again,’ before answering,” the Vanity Fair article read. They also included a tweet from Scott Dwork, the co-founder and executive director of the Democratic Coalition, who said that “Psaki made Doocy look like the fool he is.”