President Joe Biden will hold a formal press conference on Wednesday 19 January at the White House.
Scheduled for 4pm ET on Wednesday, this is Mr Biden’s first press conference of 2022 and will occur on the eve of the anniversary of his inauguration.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki made the announcement on Friday, saying: “The president looks forward to speaking directly to the American people.”
The press conference will be the seventh time the president has appeared solo in front of reporters to answer questions, though he has also done three joint press conferences with other world leaders.
Different presidents have different approaches to speaking with the press. Only Ronald Reagan had fewer formal press conferences in his first year and spent some of that time recovering from an assassination attempt.
Mr Biden’s critics have called for more formal events in which he takes questions from the press, noting that he has also conducted just 22 formal interviews in his first year in office.
By comparison, in their first years, President Donald Trump and President Barack Obama had given 22 and 27 press conferences, respectively, and 92 and 156 interviews.
The White House argues that Mr Biden makes himself more available to informal question and answer sessions, clocking up 216 of those — only eclipsed by Bill Clinton with 245 Q&As.
Though critics argue these, usually occurring after a scripted speech, are not ideal given the brevity of most answers and the lack of follow-up questions.
The administration also conducts daily briefings of the press led by Ms Psaki in which she answers questions from the media and schedules other administration officials with time in front of White House correspondents.
The Independent will cover the presidential press conference live as it happens on Wednesday afternoon.
