According to Fox News, the White House blamed a "technical" for the removal of a tense exchange from the live stream of Monday's press briefing.

However, the reporter involved claims the real reason is that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was caught discriminating against him. 

Press secretary boasts that White House is "committed" to press freedom

Simon Ateba serves as chief White House correspondent for Today News Africa, and Fox News noted that he has long had a contentious relationship with the Biden administration.

That relationship heated up once again when Jean-Pierre boasted that "the White House, under this administration, we’re committed to the freedom of the press," adding, "I want to be very clear about that."

This led Ateba to ask, "So are you going to take questions from me?… because you’ve been discriminating against me for the past nine months."

"You’re incredibly rude. You’re being incredibly rude," Jean-Pierre shot back and then threatened to end the press conference before any questions had been asked.

Gap in livestream footage

"I’ve been in this briefing room," Ateba responded. "I’ve been trying to ask you one question when I am on. You're not giving freedom of the press."

Later, Ateba complained that his back-and-forth with Jean-Pierre had been removed from a recording of the live stream on YouTube.

The @WhiteHouse fraud continues. They have two versions of the briefing on YouTube. The first one where they edited me out during my exchange with @PressSec Karine Jean-Pierre and the second one where they restored it. Both versions are up. Here they are.

1-… pic.twitter.com/m3qWb1jT4y

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) June 28, 2023

Ateba tweeted about the controversy once again after Fox News drew attention to footage of his exchange being taken out.

It's so obvious that the @WhiteHouse lied. @FoxNews just made this their cover story. I am still shocked that I was edited out of the briefing by @JoeBiden and @PressSec Karine Jean-Pierre's team.https://t.co/lVk5bBhRvR pic.twitter.com/WIKxTXe1pA

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) June 28, 2023

Ateba says White House will "blacklist" certain reporters

When asked for comment, the White House told Fox News that the discrepancy "was caused by an error with the encoder that feeds the live stream to YouTube."

Ateba expressed skepticism over the claim, however, telling Fox News that the White House will "blacklist" reporters it sees as being too troublesome.

"They don't respond to your question, they don't respond to your email. And they don't allow you to ask questions in the background," he complained.