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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."
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.
The Internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it. The tighter the control the more systems will slip through their fingers.
Ooh how many more memes can this article produce?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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?
After reading TFA, this is much to do about nothing. One piece of "news" requested by the White House to be removed included paring down an article of the President's visit on the "Tonight Show" based on an agreement with the show not to release too much about the content of the show before broadcast - a common show biz rule. Another was a line about the First Lady working out in a hotel gym, while another was a piece about the President honoring a retiring long-time White House journalist with a cake and a humorous quip. The only thing of possible substance here is the 4th mentioned report where a reporter had sour grapes about being left out of a photo op, and wrote a piece comparing his treatment to a freedom of the press speech the President had given days earlier.
In fact, they quoted other reporters saying they've never had a problem, and have never been corrected besides "spelling and factual errors".
What a sham post. Editors should be ashamed of themselves for trying to start a boiling political argument over nothing. Smells thickly of corporate motives, which is blatantly unacceptable.
Before everyone gets all uptight... actually check this story out. It's a bunch of hype.
Full Disclosure: I don't like Obama, didn't vote for him, etc... Though I'm not a republican either.
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."
Of course they did. Wouldn't you if you were president?
On top of that, this is only for print journalists. All of the other Journalists (Cable/TV/Internet) already have external distribution systems to send this stuff out. This isn't an example of Whitehouse overreach. It's yet another example of Print Journalism being 30 years out of date.
Next they'll accuse the whitehouse of withholding their typewriter ribbon supplies to delay stories.
Of course there are going to be dozens of free speech comments, and how this is censorship and a terrible thing. But the reality is that the president gives these reporters unprecedented access to his daily life that he need not give them at all. From TFA:
Carney told the pool reporter, David Nakamura of The Washington Post, that the workout was part of the first ladyâ(TM)s personal time and therefore off limits to reporters. Nakamura disagreed but reluctantly deleted the line to ensure that his report would be sent.
If I were president, Mr. Nakamura would have no fricking clue when and where my wife was working out, and if people did not like that, they could kiss my ass.
Just to be clear, it's not as if all the reporters on the White House beat run all their work through the White House press office. This story is talking about material produced by the "pool." These are low-impact, run of the mill stories (President met with Cub Scouts, talked about importance of youth exercise, etc.) where it would be silly to have every news outlet cover them with their own reporter. So, the journalists on the White House beat rotate through the pool, one person (maybe this week it's the reporter from the Chicago Tribune) writes the story about the Cub Scout meeting, and it gets distributed to all the outlets. Essentially, it's a mini version of the Associated Press.
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, I thought the Pres. was going to do this 5 years ago.