http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36454.html

 

Obama and the media actually have a surprisingly hostile relationship — as contentious on a day-to-day basis as any between press and president in the past decade, reporters who cover the White House say.

 

Reporters say the White House is thin-skinned, controlling, eager to go over their heads and stingy with even basic information. All White Houses try to control the message. But this White House has pledged to be more open than its predecessors, and reporters feel it doesn’t live up to that pledge in several key areas:

 

Day-to-day interaction with Obama is almost nonexistent, and he talks to the press corps far less often than Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush did. Clinton took questions nearly every weekday, on average. Obama barely does it once a week.

 

— The ferocity of pushback is intense. A routine press query can draw a string of vitriolic e-mails. A negative story can draw a profane high-decibel phone call or worse. Some reporters feel like they’ve been frozen out after crossing the White House.

 

— And at the very moment many reporters feel shut out, one paper — The New York Times — enjoys a favoritism from Obama and his staff that makes competitors fume, with gift-wrapped scoops and loads of presidential face time.

 

“They seem to want to close the book on the highly secretive years of the Bush administration. However, in their relationship with the press, I think they’re doing what they think succeeded in helping Obama get elected,” said The New Yorker’s George Packer.

 

“I don’t think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim,” Packer said.

 

Much of the criticism is off the record, both out of fear of retaliation and from worry about appearing whiny. But those views were voiced by a cross section of the television, newspaper and magazine journalists who cover the White House

 

The correspondents association recently met with Gibbs to discuss, in the words of Bloomberg's Ed Chen, "a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press.”

 

A few days later, Gibbs said at one of his briefings, “This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country.”

 

Peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room.

 

The numbers speak for themselves: During his first year in office, President Bill Clinton did 252 such Q & A sessions — an average of one every weekday. Bush did 147. Obama did 46, according to Towson University professor Martha Kumar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And just what happens when you upset the White House?

 

Among White House reporters, tales abound of an offhand criticism or passing claim low in an unremarkable story setting off an avalanche of hostile e-mail and voice-mail messages.

 

“It’s not unusual to have shouting matches or the e-mail equivalent of that. It’s very, very aggressive behavior, taking issue with a thing you’ve written, an individual word, all sorts of things,” said one White House reporter.

 

“It’s a natural outgrowth of campaigning, where control of the message is everything and where a very tight circle controls the flow of information,” The New Yorker’s Packer said. “I just think it is a mistake to transfer that model to governing. Governing is so much more complicated and is all about implementation — not just message.”

 

One of the most irritating practices of the Obama White House is when aides ignore inquiries or explicitly refuse to cooperate with an unwelcome story — only to come out with both guns blazing when it takes a skeptical view of their motives or success.

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36454_Page5.html#ixzz0mThsf8AB

While some reporters note improvements since the Bush era, like more informed deputy press secretaries and assistants, others complain of a rigid image control pervading the government. “The access is much poorer than in the Bush administration,” one national newspaper reporter who regularly covers the White House said. “This is wider than just the White House. I feel like the political appointees in a variety of agencies are more difficult to get to. There are people ... you could reach in the Bush administration that now say, ‘That position does not speak to the press. We do not give background. We do not give anything.’’’

 

Compton said that if the Obama White House’s sense of being besieged by the press is authentic, it bespeaks a kind of innocence born from a candidate and a president who has never confronted a full-on Washington feeding frenzy.

 

“They ain’t seen nothing yet,” the longtime ABC reporter said. “Wait till they have to start really circling the wagons when someone in the administration is under attack, wait till there’s a scandal, wait till someone screws up, then it’ll get hostile.”

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36454_Page6.html#ixzz0mTi8HcfQ

The likening to MSNBC and FOX to professional wrestling is funny.

 

http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/04/28/get-rid-of-the-white-house-press-corps.html

President Obama hasn't held a single press conference since July, and when Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about it, Gibbs seemed dismissive, calling press conferences "an arbitrary Washington measure" of the media's access to the president. In that same interview, he also took a slap at questions from White House television reporters: "I know when somebody thinks they have a good question, because when I walk in they've already got their makeup on." He went on to single out Fox News and MSNBC for criticism, comparing them to "world-wide wrestling" on the issues.

 

the president recently giving the slip to the rotating pool of reporters who cover him when he leaves the White House, and the administration's hiring its own photographers and bloggers to relay news.

 

Two weeks ago, the White House Correspondents Association requested a meeting with Gibbs to try to work things out. Ed Chen, the association's president and a Bloomberg News correspondent, told Politico: "Rarely have I sensed such a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press." It doesn't sound like Gibbs was very accommodating; at the meeting he told reporters, "This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country." Considering all the closed-door, back-room dealmaking by the administration on healthcare, that's a pretty amazing statement.

 

As Chuck Todd, the NBC White House correspondent, pointed out recently, when the White House picks fights with the press, it diminishes itself. Going after Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News may have been part of a political strategy to try to tie the Republican party to extremism, but it wasn't a good media strategy to go after specific reporters or commentators. It made the White House look as if it were "punching down," as Todd put it.

I'll believe that the White House press core is hostile to this president when they start writing articles that are hostile to this president. Until then they're still the sycophants they've always been. It's just now they are unhappy sycophants.

The bloom is off the rose? So soon?

Ah, you spend enough time in bed with someone and it's bound to happen.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36454.html

 

Obama and the media actually have a surprisingly hostile relationship — as contentious on a day-to-day basis as any between press and president in the past decade, reporters who cover the White House say.

 

Reporters say the White House is thin-skinned, controlling, eager to go over their heads and stingy with even basic information. All White Houses try to control the message. But this White House has pledged to be more open than its predecessors, and reporters feel it doesn’t live up to that pledge in several key areas:

 

Day-to-day interaction with Obama is almost nonexistent, and he talks to the press corps far less often than Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush did. Clinton took questions nearly every weekday, on average. Obama barely does it once a week.

 

— The ferocity of pushback is intense. A routine press query can draw a string of vitriolic e-mails. A negative story can draw a profane high-decibel phone call or worse. Some reporters feel like they’ve been frozen out after crossing the White House.

 

— And at the very moment many reporters feel shut out, one paper — The New York Times — enjoys a favoritism from Obama and his staff that makes competitors fume, with gift-wrapped scoops and loads of presidential face time.

 

“They seem to want to close the book on the highly secretive years of the Bush administration. However, in their relationship with the press, I think they’re doing what they think succeeded in helping Obama get elected,” said The New Yorker’s George Packer.

 

“I don’t think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim,” Packer said.

 

Much of the criticism is off the record, both out of fear of retaliation and from worry about appearing whiny. But those views were voiced by a cross section of the television, newspaper and magazine journalists who cover the White House

 

The correspondents association recently met with Gibbs to discuss, in the words of Bloomberg's Ed Chen, "a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press.”

 

A few days later, Gibbs said at one of his briefings, “This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country.”

 

Peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room.

 

The numbers speak for themselves: During his first year in office, President Bill Clinton did 252 such Q & A sessions — an average of one every weekday. Bush did 147. Obama did 46, according to Towson University professor Martha Kumar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to old-time Chicago politics at the national level. At least so far they only send the non-compliant media members nasty e-mails?? Wonder if Chris Matthews still has that "tingle" moving up his leg when Obama speaks??

We'll see what happens come the next election. I'll bet O'bama and the press will kiss and make up by then.:ohbrother:

The President and the press don't get along? Say it ain't so. :lol:

Does it lower the prestige of the office when the President continues to attack the media from his pulpit?

 

http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0510/media_lecture_a4e43552-1138-4040-a7a5-4d35ddc398b4.html

President Barack Obama served up the latest installment of his running lecture on Internet distractions and the chattering peril posed by cable-TV news during a commencement address Sunday at Hampton University.

 

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter,” said Obama, who’s been critical of high-velocity news outlets, including POLITICO, CNN and Fox News, which administration officials have long accused of tilting right.

I have yet to understand the President's strategy to go after the media. I believe the only thing he has done is legitimize even more these organizations he and Gibbs weekly go after.

I have yet to understand the President's strategy to go after the media. I believe the only thing he has done is legitimize even more these organizations he and Gibbs weekly go after.

 

I don't think it is a strategy. I think he's thin-skinned and cannot rise above the fray at times to conduct himself as a president should, IMO.

 

I also believe he was spoiled by some of the media during his campaign and doesn't take it well when those same people criticize him for some of his decisions.

 

That's just a guess.

 

I assume pretty much all presidents have their spats with the media, and take a shot at them from time to time in some form or fashion, but Obama seems to obsess over it at times. That's my criticism. Not that it happens, but that it seems to take up way too much of his attention at times. He won the popularity contest. It's time to be the president, and at times, I don't get the impression that he's doing that. Again though, its just my opinion.

Does it lower the prestige of the office when the President continues to attack the media from his pulpit?

 

http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0510/media_lecture_a4e43552-1138-4040-a7a5-4d35ddc398b4.html

President Barack Obama served up the latest installment of his running lecture on Internet distractions and the chattering peril posed by cable-TV news during a commencement address Sunday at Hampton University.

 

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter,” said Obama, who’s been critical of high-velocity news outlets, including POLITICO, CNN and Fox News, which administration officials have long accused of tilting right.

 

Concerning the last paragraph quoted:

 

Does anyone else find it ironic that the man who masterfully used the new media to get his message out during a campaign is now deriding that same new media?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36454.html

 

The correspondents association recently met with Gibbs to discuss, in the words of Bloomberg's Ed Chen, "a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press.”

 

A few days later, Gibbs said at one of his briefings, “This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country.”

 

Peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room.

 

The numbers speak for themselves: During his first year in office, President Bill Clinton did 252 such Q & A sessions — an average of one every weekday. Bush did 147. Obama did 46, according to Towson University professor Martha Kumar.

 

 

Like him or not, Clinton was always willing to answer questions from the media. He may not have always given a straight answer (after all he was a politician), but they did have access to him. I knew that there was a dropoff with Bush, but looks like he was pretty active. But to think that Bush did around 3 times as many Q&As than Obama is quite a bit staggering.