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Journalists Route Around White House Press Office
Tailhook writes Pool reports written by White House correspondents are distributed to news organizations via the White House Press Office. Reporters have alleged that the Obama White House exploits its role as distributor to "demand changes in pool reports" and has used this power to "steer coverage in a more favorable direction." Now a group of 90 print journalists has begun privately distributing their work through Google Groups, independent of the Press Office. Their intent is to "create an independent pool-reporting system for print and online recipients."
Well, apparently under this President it's gotten to the point where they've have to have a formal work-around. Perhaps partisans will jump in and say that under Bush a report was delayed for an hour because of an emergency, or some other lame precedent that will allow them to claim that "everybody does it," when no, everybody doesn't do it.
Sadly our current news media is ratings driven drivel. When your news outfits become purely profit driven, your quality doesn't have to be appealing, only your entertainment value. That is probably the largest marker of the decline of the United States. Often we hear about how the bread and circuses had to be maintained to keep the populace of Rome happy. As it turns out, our news media reflects a circus, and we have McDonald's and other fast food venues for our bread. While I support the legalization of marijuana, I feel that cheap thrills obtained by weed will most likely perpetuate this culture of bread and circuses.
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