How’s This for Transparency?
Friday 20 May 2011 - Filed under Uncategorized
A frustrated White House Press Corps chief says her members are “constantly fighting” for more access to the media-elusive President Obama — who hasn’t fielded questions from reporters since early April, despite an onslaught of major events, from the “birther” controversy and spiking gas prices to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Heavy-handed dealings with the press, limited access and strong efforts at message control are emerging as patterns in the Obama White House, journalists and media watchers say.
“We’re constantly reminding the White House that we would like to see more press conferences and more opportunities for reporters to ask questions of the president,” said Caren Bohan, vice president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “That’s a big concern for us.”
[. . .]
New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, who blogs at PressThink.com, called this week’s Herald ban “amateur hour,” adding the president should take more questions.
“The White House briefing room is getting increasingly absurd,” Rosen said. “With Obama, it seems more like indifference. He probably thinks he doesn’t need the correspondents but he should engage with them more because it’s a way of explaining yourself to the American people — which he should do much more.”
Mark Hemingway of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine said Obama went more than 300 days — from July 2009 to May 2010 — without holding a press conference. “When push comes to shove, at the end of the day, it’s all about control for them,” he said.
Nothing says “the most transparent administration in history” like tightly controlling the executive narrative and purposefully limiting press access to the president on a scale that has never been seen.
2011-05-20 » madlibertarianguy