Washington Post's Paul Farhi: The White House's media management practices have drawn quiet criticism from journalists in the past few weeks. Despite Obama's campaign pledge to be open with the media, members of the White House Correspondents' Association met with Gibbs recently to complain about limitations on their access. The group is mainly upset about the relatively few informal question-and-answer sessions Obama has held since taking office. Obama had 46 such encounters with the press during his first year, far fewer than Presidents George W. Bush (147) and Clinton (252) during their first years, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University. However, Obama gave many more media interviews (161) compared with Bush (50) and Clinton (53) in their first years. Kumar said Obama gave more formal news conferences in his first year (27) than Bush (19), but far fewer than Clinton (45).
News photographers have also been peeved by the White House's practice of barring photojournalists from events and offering its own pictures as a substitute, said Caren Bohan, a Reuters reporter and correspondents' association board member.
"We don't object to anything they want to do to get their message out," said Bohan. "If they want to use blogs, videos and other media to do that, that's great. We just don't want that to substitute for journalist access."
The message-control issue flared again this week when the White House posted its own video interview with Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, bypassing reporters who have been seeking to interview her.
White House officials deny that they are attempting to end-run reporters. In fact, they say such initiatives as "West Wing Week" are evidence of greater candor. "These videos are just one part of the president's effort to have the most transparent White House in history," said Nick Shapiro, a spokesman, who added that "West Wing Week" "is yet another way for people to get a better sense of what's happening at the White House and why."
The White House wouldn't make Chaudhary, the videographer, available for an interview. But in a statement issued through Shapiro, he said the videos are "written, produced and edited by me." Chaudhary, a former film professor at New York University who extensively documented Obama's presidential campaign, added: "As the official White House videographer it's my job to document the president's activities, in motion pictures, for history. Though not as extensive as the still picture record of the president's routine, I found that every week I had a lot of interesting clips that couldn't really stand on their own but did when collected together and shown in context of the president's schedule. West Wing Week is essentially the vehicle for these moments. It's almost as if our flickr site could talk."
Related: Chickaboomer's Obama: iBad
What do they care? They've found the way to bypass the mainstream media.
ReplyDeleteThis new technology is Richard Nixon's graveyard wet dream.