We all know what President Donald Trump’s media diet is because he tweets what he digests. He watches One America News (OAN), Newsmax and Fox News and he reads conservative outlets.
But what about Joe Biden? What does Biden consume as far as the media?
CNN’s Brian Stelter recently asked that of new CNN contributor Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Joe Biden: The Life, The Run, and What Matters Now.”
Osnos told Stelter, “The president-elect’s media diet is what we would call the classics. He relies on things like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. He reads some of The Economist and The New Yorker. A lot of it in print. He also relies on Apple News to help him get headlines from other reputable media sources. What he is not doing, of course, is reading things like Newsmax, he’s not watching One America News Network.”
Osnos also said that Biden reads columnists, mentioning The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman by name.
Meanwhile, Politico’s Daniel Lippman also chronicled Biden’s media consumption. Jay Carney, who was communications director to Biden when Biden was vice president, told Lippman, “Biden reads a lot, but doesn’t watch a lot of TV news. Can’t remember him ever watching TV in his office when I worked for him.”
However, Lippman reports that Biden does watch some TV, such as MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” as he gets ready for work. He also checks in on how Fox News covers him, and even tracks some of the viral late-night TV moments. And he will watch CNN occasionally.
Lippman also writes, “Like many other politicians, Biden gets a clips package at 9 a.m. On a busy day, it can run up to 50 pages. On a slower day, it is more in the 15- to 20-page range.”
This piece originally appeared in The Poynter Report, our daily newsletter for everyone who cares about the media. Subscribe to The Poynter Report here.
