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Journalists Route Around White House Press Office

Posted by samzenpus on from the indirect-route dept.

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."

5 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. If I were president... by gfxguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I were president, $#% like that wouldn't happen... I'd leave it all completely open - the thought of filtering news and coercing journalists is repulsive to me... But then that's one of the million reasons I'm not president and have never felt like there was a good candidate to vote for.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
    1. Re:If I were president... by peragrin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But you can't that is the point. You will never know half of the presidents daily actions and descisions. Who don't want to know a lot of the stuff he has to know.

      Think of it like living on Twitter where you get bits and pieces of information and have to decide whether or not to act on 140 character sound bites. Whether the country goes to war depends on at best incomplete information.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:If I were president... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The problem is..the news agencies have been so complacent in all this all along too.

      If we had a more independent, and aggressive, investigative news agencies out there, Obama and other politicians (both parties) would not get away with half the shit they do.

      I think the news agencies should, in general, always view the administration at the time as somewhat adversarial, and should always be on the look for errors, law breaking and any hint of wrong doing. That should be their jobs, to constantly being on the heels of those in power, and keep them on their toes.

      When you lose true news investigation and reporting, you lose democracy....the free press is needed to keep the administration honest, and just parroting news feeds from whatever administration is in office does the country absolutely NO service, and can in fact, allow very bad things to happen to the country as a whole as well as to erode and harm citizens on a more personal level.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:If I were president... by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's funny to watch the hypocrisy in this thread though. Bush did the same thing. In fact he took it a step farther. If you didn't tow Bush's line in the White House as a reporter they would ask for the reporter to be replaced in the pool and if the employer refused they would stop taking questions from the reporter, permanently. I can vividly remember people defending this behavior, many are the same ones that are slamming Obama for it.

      It's quite funny. Especially the ones that claim it's the worst thing the presidents office has ever seen.

  2. What's the Press Office for? by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What did they imagine the White House Press Office was for? It's always been the tool that the White House uses to get whatever information it wants the press to report on out to reporters. It's not a service to the press to tell them everything THEY want to know about the government. Never has been. If they're not getting out the information that THEY want to report on, whose job is that?