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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."

18 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 wisnoskij · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you would run on a platform of "change" and "transparency"?
      You are not fooling anyone Obama.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    3. Re:If I were president... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
      http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment

      SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government

      My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

      Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

      Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

      Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

      I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

      This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

      This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

      BARACK OBAMA

    4. 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.........
    5. Re: If I were president... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You neck bearded basement dwellers have NO IDEA how the real world works.

      There is a *very* simple way to take care of that. Go full Donald Trump on them. Your fired and not allowed back.

      When your people do bad things that make you look bad you get rid of them.

      An old boss of mine put it perfectly. If you come to me *we* have a problem. If I find out otherwise *you* have a problem.

      Your fired for breaking the law gets you no benefits.

      For example Nixon could have handled his situation much better by just firing people and coming clean. I think his reaction was "what asshole authorized this" and then circle the wagons. Sound familiar? It should, the current admin is doing the same thing.

      It would send a clear message to people "I do not put up with this I expect you to do the right thing".

      They are too busy blowing each other to notice there is an easy solution to their problems. They hire people because of their connections not because they will do the right thing. They are so desperate to hold onto that hellish job they will do and say anything.

    6. Re:If I were president... by nucrash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Place something witty here
    7. 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.

    8. Re:If I were president... by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I'm not saying Bush didn't do it...I'm saying it has been getting progressively WORSE for all administrations starting at least with the last 3 of them...a real decline in independent and investigative journalism.

      I think they should stop allowing the President or other officials from "choosing" whom to get questions from in the pool...make it a random drawing who gets question 1, 2, 3....

      But has gotten progressively worse...and that means the current admin is about bottom of the barrel with respect to this...until the next admin....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    9. Re:If I were president... by Dragonslicer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bush did it first! Bush did it first! Bush did it first!....seriously how fucking long can you parrot this shit?

      For as long as people think that it will all be fixed by a Republican president.

  2. Control by peragrin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Control by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Informative

      You should have seen the opening of the first draft -- "Washington DC: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  3. 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?

    1. Re:What's the Press Office for? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Everyone should see the movie Network. It is absolutely brilliant. The dearth of investigative journalism has a lot to do with news departments being expected to turn a profit and get ratings. Once that requirement is in place, everything will be subordinated to the bottom line. Journalism stops and profit seeking begins.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  4. Overblown Story About Nothing by coastal984 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. What the Pool System Actually Is by jratcliffe · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Apparently Worse Now by glennrrr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Most Open & Transparent System? by laing · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, this administration has prosecuted more "leakers" than any before. This administration has ignored more FOIA requests than any before. This administration has delayed or ignored more congressional subpoenas than ever before. It's obvious that the Obama administration is more "transparent" than prior adminisrations. What is not obvious is the definition of transparency being referred to. I am seeing right through them.