White House Reporters Send Terse Letter To Gibbs Over Press Shop's Handling Of Egypt

WASHINGTON -- The White House Correspondents Association, of which The Huffington Post is a member, sent a sharply worded letter to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Wednesday, complaining of limited access to the president and Gibbs himself as chaos in Egypt unfolded.

The note includes a formal protest over the press office's decision to keep the president's signing of the START nuclear nonproliferation treaty off-limits to everyone but still photographers. But the main thrust of the critique involves Gibbs's handling of media relations during the past week, when the president has taken no questions and the daily briefings have been either delayed or canceled altogether.

The letter is below:

We recognize that the crisis in Egypt is a quickly evolving story and you are working to get us the information we need in a timely manner, but we are concerned about several access issues on Tuesday and now today.

On behalf of the White House Correspondents Association we are writing to protest in the strongest possible terms the White House's decision to close the President's Cabinet meeting on Tuesday and his signing of the START Treaty today to the full press pool.

The START treaty was held up as one of the President's most important foreign policy priorities for almost a year dating back to the trip to Prague last spring. We are concerned that now his signing of it is open to still photographers but closed to editorial, including print and wire reporters and television cameras.

We know the President came out late last night to speak on Egypt, and we appreciate the email updates from NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor, but his emails have not gone to all members of the press corps and are not a substitute for access to the Press Secretary or the President.

Prior to the President's statement Tuesday night, the press corps had not received a substantive update from the White House all day on the situation in Egypt. In addition, the press corps did not have an on-camera briefing, or an off-camera gaggle, with you yesterday to ask the White House about its decision-making process during this major foreign policy crisis. Now for two straight days the full press pool is being shut out of events that have typically been open and provided opportunities try to ask the President a question.

These issues are vitally important for all of our members - print, TV and radio.

We value our working relationship, and we hope you will reconsider and at least open the START Treaty signing to the full pool.

Comments

[Peter Boehringer]

03:01 PM on 02/03/2011

Am I mistaken, or is the WH press corps so used to being fed stories that they have forgotten how to actually be journalists? They might also want to understand that anything the WH has to say needs to be pretty carefully worded in such an incendiary environment. I'm sure the WH is just shaking over their "terse" words. They sound like babies who have missed their bottle feeding. Reporters of previous generations developed sources so that when official channels closed they could still get news. This new breed of celebrity reporters just pouts.

[dblshell]

02:36 PM on 02/03/2011

The WH press corps did very little to earn my respect during the last presidential cycle and this isn't endearing them to me any better. They take notes and repeat what's said with very little checking of the veracity of what's being told to them. This copy and paste reporting fed right into the last administration's propaganda machine and took us down several avenues of disaster.

But after watching one accomplishment after another go largely unnoticed by the general public, I have to wonder if not getting the message out was more specifically attributable to Gibbs than the press in general. I've never liked the guy and I suspect the rest of the press corps feels pretty much the same. He's smug, arrogant and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. That's not exactly the kind of relationship that inspires one to carry your water for you.

The sooner he is replaced with a competent manager of the message, the better

[deltalady]

10:28 AM on 02/03/2011

I didn't think there could be a press secretary as arrogant and smart a*s as Tony Snow, but along comes Gibbs. He rode in with his boss with this attitude of arrogance and "coolness" and he didn't know how to do the job. Sound familiar?

[RadCenter]

10:00 AM on 02/03/2011

I'll consider the hissy fit thrown.

[Geovan]

08:44 AM on 02/03/2011

LOL.
Translation:
How dare you not give us our daily dose of PR and force us to actually work for a living.

[rickman48]

08:12 AM on 02/03/2011

the white house news readers lost my respect forever when they sat next to a gay porn actor and said nothing. scotty ghanon was this mans name. think what would happen if the Obama administration allowed this to happen. bush got away with this because he was supported by these same people.

[alfo]

06:09 AM on 02/03/2011

@white house press corp...S.T.F.U. sit down just pretend "W" in office & roll over as you have for the last 8 years,how dare you be journalist.

[VirginiaJeff]

04:43 AM on 02/03/2011

What a bunch of worthless whiners.  Maybe they could all get on a plane get their hands dirty covering the actual events in Egypt.

[pietromp]

02:51 AM on 02/03/2011

Now you all know why we need WIKI*LEA*KS, so much for freedom of information! Oh no, no, no, they can't speak to you because it's amatter of "National Security" and the guy in the W*H with no guts is not able to speak to you. He's got to make sure that Mubarack has nothing against himself that would make a candidate for The Hague and then the guy in the W*H has to "look forward and never backward" just like hi did with mr Bu*sh et al....

[its miller time]

03:24 AM on 02/03/2011

The adults in the room call "the guy in the W*H, President Obama.

No President would go after Bush or Cheney it has nothing to do with guts.

[Maxx Webber]

12:53 AM on 02/03/2011

Transparency is a word I heard quite a bit at one time.

So much for the 3 am phone call getting answered.

[ctom]

12:29 AM on 02/03/2011

Who cares! Egypt is yet another distraction. If only the Press Corps put as much focus on where has all the stimulus money had gone (i.e. trillions of tax dollars that didn't result in the jobs promised) and what policies will be in place in the near future to get the economy going again, I'd buy their newspapers. Egypt? Let's not worry if a house at the end of the block is on fire when your house is already ablazed and that other house-owner is busy playing with matches.

[Waveskiboy]

01:23 AM on 02/03/2011

Ctom, spoken like a true meat head. Sure, why care about Egypt? It's only the only Arab country with a peace treaty with Israel, but who cares? I could go on, but why bother with a dolt like you!

[jeanrenoir]

01:52 AM on 02/03/2011

Yeah, why should we care about the slaughter of the Egyptians? Let's stick to that ancient American ideal: "It your problem and none of mine." And let's add the Boomer mantra of narcissism while we're at it: "Looking out for No. 1." Of course we whine when they screw us with that principle on Wall St., but it's a fine principle when WE are the ones ignoring the irrelevant suffering of others, much less the absurdly abstract notion of mere "justice."

[AthheistInChief]

11:47 PM on 02/02/2011

Dear Mr. Reporter. Good job on the letter to Gibbs. But you should know that the president just can't take your questions. It will be impossible for him to answer your questions in an honest manner that anybody will find appealing. US policy in the middle east is not complicated. It's just nasty. Nobody wants to talk about it, least of all the president.

Oh yeah, thanks for blocking my comment.

[madatnewsmedia]

02:53 PM on 02/03/2011

They should have blocked your comment, because it was a foolish one.

[pwd2008]

10:35 PM on 02/02/2011

When there is leadership incompetence, there is a good reason for limited access and silence.

[its miller time]

03:35 AM on 02/03/2011

Incompetence, explain?

[pwd2008]

09:26 PM on 02/08/2011

Incompetence though confusion: Outward statements for President Mubarack to leave office immediatley, then later backing down from the direction.

Incompentance of the naive: Encouraging the Muslim Broherhood to have a role at the table.
If they succeed in Egypt this will be even a bigger disaster than President Carter turning his back on the Shah of Iran.

This WH administration is driven to turn over the middle East to the most violent factions.
I guess if talking to them without preconditions doesn't work then just join them....

[kinoptikation]

10:24 PM on 02/02/2011

Reporters are in their right to be ticked off, unfortunately as in any administration they'll answer what they want.

[Anthony Perone]

02:37 AM on 02/03/2011

HELEN THOMAS.....

[kinoptikation]

10:22 PM on 02/02/2011

Blaming reporters for their uprise is very similar to what T-baggers do here in the U.S.

[kinoptikation]

10:27 PM on 02/02/2011

OOOOPS!
This is beyond a typo. Wrote about another bit of news by mistake... I had several windoes opened and just didn't verify, my bad... but it's a fact. (wink)