President Obama Meets the Press
Well, that certainly didn't take long. Roughly a week into the presidency, Barack Obama and his team find themselves at odds with the White House press corps.
The dustups have been relatively modest, but they've been dramatized with the sort of flair reserved for media reporting. The "first spat," as the Times put it, involved the exclusion of photographers from Obama's first day in the Oval Office and his second swearing-in. Last Wednesday, reporters grumbled about a briefing conducted on background by two senior administration officials. The following afternoon, Obama paid a friendly visit to the White House press corps but demurred when asked a question by Jonathan Martin, a Politico reporter, about how his nomination of a former defense lobbyist for the position of deputy defense secretary was consistent with the tight restrictions on lobbyists in the new administration. Writing about the incident shortly afterward, Martin and a colleague pointedly reported that the new President "got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question." A separate piece on the Politico's site talked of "growing media frustration with Barack Obama's team."
And by the end of the first week, Ana Marie Cox, formerly of Time and Radar, was complaining that Obama had "Bush's touch with the White House press corps" and that he was "perfecting the moves" of the last President. Most bizarrely, she claimed that Obama had appeared in the White House press area last Thursday with the intention of making "whichever reporter dared to ask a question ...look like an asshole."
That there would be incidents like these is not particularly surprising. In these first few months of the Obama administration, there is bound to be a certain level of discord between the White House and the press corps. Each side will be testing the other's limits, and the press will be going out of its way to avoid the appearance of being in the tank for Obama. The conflicts can partially be chalked up to what we might characterize as anxiety, the predictable result of these two large groups -- one elected and now governing in a time of crisis, the other notoriously self-entitled -- at last coming into contact.
But although it's inherently difficult to speculate this early in the game, we can very tentatively see the broad outlines of the Obama administration's approach to the media and, in particular, how it will stack up against the approach taken by the administration of George W. Bush. The evidence to date is necessarily limited and imperfect, but it suggests that even as the new occupants of the White House lift some of the Bush team's strategies, there will, on the whole, be a noticeably different relationship between the executive branch and the media. Rather than lamenting any perceived slights on the part of the new White House, members of the press would do better to recognize the changing dynamic and to reorient themselves so that they're best-positioned to take advantage of the new opportunities that the Obama administration may afford.
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Invariably, it seems, the first point of comparison for elite journalists exploring the Obama administration's press strategy is life under George W. Bush. The comparisons, on some level, are completely understandable -- the man just left the White House, after all -- but they tend to obscure much more than they illuminate, particularly at this early stage of Obama's tenure.
Writing last month in The New York Times Magazine, for instance, Mark Leibovich pointed to the Obama team's tight control of information during the campaign and drew a rough parallel between the "Obama model" of press relations and the "Bush model." Echoing that piece, The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza claimed that the "husbanding of information by Obama's inner circle" was "Bush-like in its intensity." And the week before the inauguration, Time's James Poniewozik argued that Obama had "learned from Bush about dealing with the press" insofar as he "exercised tight message control, limited press availability and disregarded old-media courtship rituals." Indeed, according to David Plouffe, the Obama team itself referred during the campaign to the "Bush model" of communications to describe the small, close-knit group of campaign principals who closely guarded strategic information.
Yet there are differences between Obama and Bush that are both small and large, and they're clear enough that even a straightforward recitation of them can seem glib. We have yet to learn of a journalist, for example, who has been paid off, and thus far, there isn't a single reporter who's been told that he would have blood on his hands if he did his job. The Obama administration also has yet to display the willful, systematic disregard for the truth that marked much of the Bush era and, at least in its first week, has managed to avoid using the media in order to disseminate misinformation.
The differences in personnel are striking, as well. The personification of the Bush administration's disdain for the press was its longest-serving Press Secretary -- the comically inept and out-of-the-loop Scott McClellan. Things got better after McClellan left, but not by much. Robert Gibbs, by contrast, will retain his position as a close advisor to President Obama in addition to his role as the new Press Secretary. Which is to say: When Gibbs briefs the press, he may actually be able to expand beyond prepackaged talking points.
As for Obama's frequently-cited isolation from the media, that case has become much harder to make since Election Day. During the transition, he held more press conferences than any other incoming President, and he did high-profile interviews with the likes of Tom Brokaw and George Stephanopoulos. In the week leading up to his inauguration, the President sat down for lengthy interviews with CNN's John King, reporters at USA Today, and the editorial board of The Washington Post, to say nothing of the much-discussed off-the-record sessions with members of the elite commentariat.
It's true that the new administration has been dismissive of some of the old-media protocols. The Post's editorial page had been grousing about being ignored during the campaign, and the Times is still complaining about how it hasn't gotten an in-depth interview with the new President. But this apparent lack of interest in the old, informal rules seems to stem more from a desire on the part of the Obama team to assert their independence, rather than any generalized allergy to taking questions.
Those, at least, are a few of the most readily available facts that complicate the Obama-as-Bush theory of press relations, but there is a subtler and more important point to be made. Bush's press strategy didn't exist in isolation, or even just as part of the White House's broader communications strategy. It was one plank in a much more ambitious and wide-ranging agenda to expand executive power and to make the government's operations more inscrutable. That agenda, as the Columbia Journalism Review recently documented, was forwarded by pervasive classification and a restrictive view of the Freedom of Information Act, one of the key tools for reporters and the public to obtain information from the government.
But the Bush administration's larger goal was clear: to limit the ability of outsiders to scrutinize the workings of the administration. The goal went far beyond restricting information about internal personnel squabbles, or about who was up and who was down in the White House hierarchy (behind-the-scenes stories that are vastly less interesting to the public than to people in the media). It was about obscuring the actual workings of the government, from secret prisons to secret legal opinions, and promoting what media critic Jay Rosen has called "the opacity agenda."
After all, what was the purpose of transparency if empiricism was truly dead -- if, as one Bush aide legendarily put it, the "reality-based community" had it all wrong when it stubbornly clung to the belief that problem-solving required the "judicious study of discernible reality"? Many conservatives would no doubt argue that the administration's obscurantism was compelled by national security imperatives, but it began well before 9/11, and I suspect few of the former President's supporters would deny that secrecy was, as a simple matter of fact, a paramount concern in the Bush administration.
By contrast, the new president's first week involved moves that have been nothing if not highly public, and even during the campaign, the sketchy criticisms that the Obama team was withholding information had more to do with the strategic/process/behind-the-scenes stories that are beloved by the press. Anyone with time and access to either the internet or a local campaign office could learn about Obama's substantive positions in as much detail as any modern presidential candidate has provided.
Ultimately, the Bush team's press strategy was just one component of its more expansive agenda and an extension of the White House's overarching belief that it had no serious obligation to explain itself, to the press or the public at large. It is for that reason more than any that a comparison of the nascent Obama administration's press management with that of the Bush administration is bound to be myopic and ahistorical, let alone premature. Both Obama and Bush may be seriously leak-averse, but we have a long way to go before a credible argument can be made that equates their larger motives, or that comes anywhere close to substantiating the overheated claim that Obama is, as Ana Marie Cox put it, "perfecting the moves" of Bush.
***
At this early stage of the Obama presidency, any attempt at exploring how the new White House will actually interact with the media is necessarily going to be vague and schematic. In all likelihood, they are themselves still working out the kinks in their media strategy and will continue to make significant adjustments in these opening months. But to do this sort of speculation justice, we have to place the Obama administration's relationship with the press in the broader context of its communications strategy and, crucially, its relationship with the public.
To date, the most important developments on this front have come in the form of two documents signed by Obama on his first full day in office -- the first, an executive order requiring the President to consult with the Attorney General and White House Counsel before asserting executive privilege; and the second, a memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act that more clearly favors disclosure of executive branch materials. On-the-ground implementation in such matters is always key, but the stated rationale for these moves was to increase the flow of information leaving the government and making its way into the hands of the public.
Beyond that, the Obama team is likely to continue using some of the methods honed during the campaign and the transition to "bypass the filter" of the media. Over a half-million people watched the President's first weekly address on his YouTube channel, and the White House has promised greater access to information on its website, including the use of streaming video to make some meetings available to the public. Critically, though, when Obama works around traditional press outlets, he tends to use platforms that are both widely accessible and ideologically neutral -- an approach that contrasts starkly with that of the Bush administration, which tended to avoid the establishment media and make itself more available to friendly, conservative media outlets.
Still, although the White House's new website is certainly an upgrade from its predecessor, the upgrade in governmental transparency is so far rather limited. The Obama administration will post executive orders, presidential memoranda and pending legislation, but public executive orders and pending legislation have long been accessible on the internet, if not available quickly or directly through the White House's website. The Obama administration also plans to post non-emergency legislation for five days for public comment before the President signs it, but, as Obama aides have conceded, the White House is not likely to be swayed by the comments of internet users, who aren't necessarily representative of the nation at large. As for other initiatives that could recall the social networking features and tight connection between Obama and his supporters that marked the campaign, White House aides have already been dampening expectations, citing legal and logistical hurdles that constrain the government. (These may somehow explain why the White House blog is, for now, little more than a series of press releases.)
It should be clear, then, that none of the Obama administration's opening moves will obviate the role of a vigorous press. In fact, while the Obama administration's orientation to the media may require some adjustments, opportunities abound for enterprising journalists. FOIA requests will no doubt skyrocket. And if pending nonemergency legislation is to be available for at least five days, that is a guaranteed timeframe during which reporters can further analyze a proposed law before it's signed. Indeed, this function of the press -- its ability to synthesize and contextualize information -- will be more important than ever, and the ability to do it well is what will separate the best media outlets from the mediocre in an environment where the public is inundated with raw news and opinion.
This is also the potential silver lining for the press when the Obama administration bypasses them in favor of direct connections to the public. If the President can successfully expand the sphere of direct interactions between the White House and the American people, that frees up more time and space for analysis, context and fact-checking, today's truly scarce news commodities. It also increases the importance of watchdogs who can monitor the integrity of those interactions.
More than anything, though, the Obama administration may simply accelerate changes that the media landscape has been undertaking for years but that have been slower to affect the political media. Information and opinion abounds, but news consumers need people to make sense of it. With an administration that has promised unprecedented openness and has already made strides in that direction, it remains to be seen whether the elite media will fully seize the opportunity, or whether their own sense of self-importance will get in the way.
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I've been reading and hearing nothing but boo-hoos from the White House Press Corps since the Pierre Salinger "Managing the News" non-controversy of the early '60's. The president has enough on his plate without a bunch of stuffed shirts, a large number of whom seem to be menopausal women, crabbing about how they're treated.
Not everything known to the nation's chief executive can be sent through the loudspeaker. JZ735 and the rest of the crybabies need to invest more in new technology than just an occasional snide comment.
Kid where were you with your voice of reason and good sense when the NY Times was reporting with banner, front-page headlines on U.S. warmaking capabililties and methods? Your objections to that and support of WH-management of news could have been most helpful then.
Obama is quick, some are saying too quick and precipitously so; also a quick study with a measured high IQ. So I am still hoping for his turn-around success. Something to hope for as change after his 9 days so far of fouling up everything he has touched.
Reasonable questions though are: Was any reasonable person - like the 48% who did not vote for Obama - expecting anything else other than one foul up after another on and since Jan. 20 from an unqualified, possibly ineligible, naive, inexperienced Chi-town shyster in way over his head in a job so far above his pay grade? Can this tiger change his stripes, and quickly too. Tempus fugit, and these guys ain't waitin' for Obama to learn - http://rel
RonMar, tell us , besides that, what do you really think of President Obama. Some of you folks aren't accustomed to seeing a president who is in charge, knows what he's doing and can complete a sentence, and even pronounce the words correctly.
RonMar: I went to your link and learned that you are Muslim who espouses the original teachings of your religion. Those teachings are very similar to the teachings of Jesus, whom you acknowledge as a Prophet of the One God. It is only the fringe groups of each religion that call for war and retribution and isolation between us.
Your final paragraph suggests to me that you have allowed some of the hatred of the fringe of Islam to color your perception of who Barack Obama is and what his aspirations for the office of president of the United States are. We heard too much of that hatred coming from the Republican campaign and radical christian groups before the election. Perhaps that is the party that needs to change stripes.
Great stuff. Check out my HuffPost Piece:
"Fear and Envy of Black Masculinity: How Jonathan Martin Mugged President Obama and got Away With It"
http://www
Obama is no fool, as the American people are not fools. The White House press corps doesn't have crap coming to them. The entire media failed to ask the most important questions during most of the Bush disaster era. For years they not only cosigned his crap, but they even did PR for him. WMD and Torture could have been forced into the light, but weren't, because the press let them go, trusting Georgy and Dicky, their elitist buddies to, lead the country, despite every indication that they were leading us to right where we are now; in shambles. The American people do not trust the Justice Dept., the Congress or the Press, to do anything on their behalf. But, they do trust President Obama. So, to the Press... you made your bed, now lay in it. We get our news on the Internet from people that are not selling Newspapers of TV News Operas!
For the past 2 years, and even longer, we have had very little actual news, and an overabundance of prognostication. I watch news programs and mutter and mumble all through them "Tell us what happened. Wait until the vote is taken before you start sticking pins into the map. Get the facts before you break the news"
Now the election is over, the chosen have been sworn in and nearly every story coming from Washington is how the stimulus package will effect the 2010 and 2012 campaign.
Please -- give us some facts. Dig a little deeper into the subject. I'd like a factual report on the effects of the ice storm across a wide swath of eastern US. Could some of the stimulus funds help the affected states get the power lines repaired and perhaps even updated as protection from the next storm? That's what I would like to read about. It would be difficult to put a partisan spin to such news.
Talk all you want to, but there's no way to minimize the excellence of Henry, Reid, Todd and Tapper. The networks couldn't have chosen less qualified correspondents who are killing me daily with their irrelevant asides, melodramatic searching and eye-rolling self-importance.
Get 'em outta here, quick.
Maybe now the media will be more neutral now that the Obama shine has worn off of "The One".
We can only hope...
EasyCheese, Maybe, just maybe now after eiight years of NOT reporting the news and just going along and giving us a lot of nonsense, just maybe the media can start doing its job. President Obama does not have to bend over to them, they did NOT demand that from GW Bush. I wonder why. President Obama won the election by vastly using the internet, if they continue to bitch then We the People will encourage him to use the internet more and give the interviews to the foreign press. Not the gotcha gang.
A member of the media has the same appetite as a homeless person; they need help, food and whatever kindness one will lend. They are befuddled most of the time and struggle to live another day.
At the inauguration itself, The media pumped inaccurate information about its cost, comparing the 2008 cost including security to the 2004 cost without. This week, we had NPR host Juan Williams calling the First Lady Stokely Carmichael in a dress.
Every Democratic candidate going into the 2008 election viewed, with good reason, the mainstream press as the enemy. John Solomon shot at Edwards with his 'suspicious' house sale, even though there was nothing suspicious about it. Then they went after him on the $400 haircut, which was mentioned practically every time his name was brought up in the media. Hillary Clinton was attacked for her accent when reciting an African-American Spiritual, and attacked for her cleavage and her cackle--and NOT by Fox. We had Obambi from the New York Times, and a grand mal seizure over Jeremiah Wright (but none over John Hagee.)
The Right squawks that the press looved Obama. The fact that they said anything nice about Barack Hussein Obama at all is proof of bias, since they did refuse to call him 'Barry' and repeat Larry Sullivan's drugs-and-
The lessons were learned quite clearly. If you're a Republican, you can have the press go into ecstasies about your flight suit, and bury a damning warrantles
You really think the mainstream media is pro-Republican???? You are kidding right? What about the constant barrage of Palin bashing, accompanied by the constant fawning over everything Obama? SNL even did a skit or two about the the Obama media fawning! Obama was their candidate and now they are miffed that he doesn't want to be buddies with them. Well the joke's on them isn't it? Maybe now they can go back to actual reporting - remember that?
Ummm, SNL is comedy, not the "mainstream media." (For those of you that have a hard time telling the difference, The Daily Show also is not the "mainstream media." I know the fact that it's on the Comedy Channel may make it difficult to tell, but it is also comedy.)
Now, if you can come up with some other incidences of "fawning over everything Obama," I might be inclined to listen to you. Be sure you can substantiate how much more "fawning" there was over Obama than there was over McCain, while you're at it.
LoHaze, Sarah Palin was a gift to the media by the McCain campaign. The lady was not ready for national prime time, maybe Alaska, but not world wide. She proved to be uneducated, bigot, arrogant and just like her "base", ignorant. So don't blame the media, the Republicans should have konwn she was not ready, but they were counting on women just voting for her because she is a woman.
How could anyone resist throwing tomatoes at Palin, she was "the" joke of the 21st Century, and I might add a "Republican" invention. As for the "buddies" thing, well, Obama is just too smart to not realize that Americans get their real news, on the Internet, thus, why worry about the White House press corps; they don't even count to most of us anymore, anyway!
Thanks for this coverage. Please keep it up. The self importance of the White House Press Corps can best be visualized by remembering their confused and angry faces when Colbert actually "spoke truth to power" and disoriented them....so badly, they elected to not even report it until forced to do so.
I try to keep that in mind when I watch their imbalanced reporting. Huffington's report on 2 to 1 Republican voices coverage on the stimulus package is a nice case in point.
Wake up all you hypnotized people! Yes, the media consists of pit bulls. However, they fussed and fawned and giggled over Obama and feel they had some part in getting him elected. What they didn't anticipate was that Obama NEVER wanted to get close with them. I could see his annoyance with the press during the campaign - they couldn't see it because they had stars in their eyes. The real questions is why does Obama want to limit access to them? I think I have the answer: he simply is not that smart. He is a stuttering, hesitating bumbler when he doesn't read a prepared speech from numerous teleprompters. However, he is arrogant enough to assume that since the press slobbered lovingly over him during the campaign, they would bow to his every whim after the election. They still may not complain much - yet. After most of them are white and they certainly don't want to be accused of racism, which will definitely happen once they take the kid gloves off. So at least for a while, this is a win-win situation for Obama.
LoHaze, when you say he is not smart, are you refering to President Obama or former President Bush? I guess you think President Bush was a smart person and that alone tell me a lot about your intelligence. I guess you are one of the members of the Republicans "base".
"...[T]he media consists of pit bulls. However, they fussed and fawned and giggled over Obama..."
HELLO?
Rev. Wright? William Ayers? Flag-lapel pins? The Blagojevich "connection" to Obama? The MSM was 100 percent AGAINST Obama (and still is). How DARE he not be a Republican! And then, how dare he WIN?
BINGO, Tom! Maureen Dowd, the Queen of Nobamistas, is now fulminating against the Black Governor of New York, for having dared pick a senator from outside the ranks of the Big Apple's nomenklatura. His biggest offense? Besides being African-American and visually-c
Same with the president: I am quite sure he will visit "Red " states and "Blue" with equanimity. The MSM despises us who live in Podunk and may be expected to be doing a lot of nose-holding these next 4-8 years.
Here's the issue with the press - they're owned by corporations, who hate the middle class.
Here is a summary of the MSM economic recovery act coverage from Think Progress:
"In total, from 6 AM on Monday to 4 PM on Wednesday, the networks have hosted Republican lawmakers 51 times and Democratic lawmakers only 24 times. Surprisingly, Fox News came the closest to offering balance, hosting 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats. CNN had only one Democrat compared to 7 Republicans.
The drastically imbalanced coverage isn’t the first time that the news networks have effectively supported attacks on the recovery plans. As ThinkProgress reported on Monday, the cable networks, the Sunday shows and the network newscasts promoted a controversial CBO non-report 81 times before the actual CBO analysis of the stimulus plan was released."
This demonstrates just how committed the press is to fair coverage.
I believe the quote above meets fair use guidelines. If not, please delete this post.
Thank You!!! What more proof is needed?
Ironically, the push for greater transparency will result in tighter control of information, opinions and positions within the administration. Obama follows the details and demands cohesive integrated teamwork.
As mentioned, there will be a much greater need for news analysis and intelligent informed criticism of government policies and proposals. The problem they will face is one of audience. They will be competing directly with all the bloggers and pundits in every media available. The business model for news is changing fast and they will be next in line for facing up to this competitive, global out-sourced economy.
Ironically, the push for greater transparency will result in tighter control of information, opinions and positions within the administration. Obama follows the details and demands cohesive integrated teamwork.
Jabberwocky.
Obama is interested in implementing his strategy of openness and transparency taking advantage of the immediacy provided by digital on-line communications. It may seem as if he is shunning the traditional media, though that will not be the intent. In place of the unending series of photo ops produced by the Bush media operation (with carefully crafted questions, brief answers, scenic backdrops, etc.) the new regime will present the information it deems worthy of public dissemination directly through its own channels rather than through the filter of this or that "old media" outlet.
The grumbling from the White House Press Corps is an expression of their frustration with being denied an exclusive scoop on the President's latest activities. They will no longer have the special access to scripted events provided by the Bush team. In its place they will be faced with information produced "in house" to be widely disseminated to the public without benefit of the special prior access to these sources to which the White House Press Corps has become accustomed.
Obama's brand of transparency involves an experiment in direct democracy and freedom of expression in its widest interpretation. In place of selected comments made while boarding a helicopter on the White House lawn, there will be many more events open to the public or presented directly in the format of an interview or other announcements.
Great comment! I certainly hope you are right. It's about time the courtiers and town criers got a shaking up.
Good thing I didn't go with that journalism degree in college...
Sorry...no
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