White House reporters have launched a formal objection after President Joe Biden refused to take any questions while holding a meeting with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the White House.

Prime Minister Johnson took three questions from the travelling press pack, but the White House stepped in to stop President Biden taking any questions from reporters who had gathered to watch the two leaders meet in the Oval office.

Many reporters criticised the Biden administration for its lack of transparency.

“Worth noting that Biden ran for office promising to restore democracy after 4 years of Trump,” Washington Post reporter Ashley Parker wrote on Twitter.

“But today it was the British leader, NOT the American one, who spotlighted a key tenet of a flourishing democracy — respect for a free press — by taking questions from his press corps.”

White House Correspondents’ Association President Steven Portnoy said in a statement that he filed a formal complaint over President Biden’s refusal to take any questions to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

“The entire editorial component of the US pool went immediately into Jen Psaki’s office to register a formal complaint that no American reporters were recognized for questions in the president’s Oval Office, and that wranglers loudly shouted over the president as he seemed to give an answer to Ed O’Keefe’s question about the situation at the Southern Border,” the statement said.