Recent incidents between the Obama administration and members of the press suggest growing dissatisfaction between the two as spats develop over limited access, purportedly biased coverage and rumored reporter bans.
During his first 100 days in office, President Barack Obama enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than Bill Clinton or George Bush, the Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism reported in 2009.
Now more than two years into his presidency, the possible schisms between the press and the president may mark the end of what Fox News Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld calls the honeymoon that would outlive most marriages.
The most recent dust-up pitted the White House Press Office against the Boston Herald during Obamas May 18 Boston fundraiser. According to the paper, the Boston Herald was denied full access to the fundraiser due to a Mitt Romney opinion piece titled Obama Misery Index hits a record high that ran on March 8.
I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters, White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote to the paper. My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting U.S. president to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the presidents visits.
In a pool coverage situation, the number of reporters allowed to attend is limited, but information and footage from the event is shared with other reporters who are unable to attend. According to Lehrich, the Herald was not purposely barred from the press pool in retaliation for publishing the Romney piece, but rather because pool duty had already been assigned to the Boston Globe.
Romney blasted the White House in another Boston Herald article published the day after the presidents visit.
I know the president and the White House are very sensitive about anyone who talks about the failures of the economy, Romney said, referring to his opinion piece. Theyre in denial about putting people out of work and the under-employed. When the Herald speaks the truth, they lash out.
Other Herald writers have followed up on the controversy, exploring the issue of presidential access more closely as well as highlighting the chilling effects on freedom of the press that could result when a White House chooses which reporters it allows into its events.
Its always troubling when you have the administration deciding whats fair in the media or what is unfair because that clearly does create the situation where they are trying to select the coverage that theyre going to receive, Tom Fiedler, the dean of the Boston University College of Communications, told reporter Jessica Heslam.
If a single major-paper reporter had been booted from a (President) Bush event over editorial policy, journalists would have organized a hunger strike, writer Michael Graham states in a Herald column. But Obama does all this ��� and more ��� and liberals are silent. Why? Because Barack Obama is the Nixon the left always wanted.
Caren Bohan, the vice president of the White House Correspondents Association, told the Herald that her members are constantly fighting for more access to Obama, who hasnt taken questions from reporters since early April despite high gas prices, the release of his birth certificate and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Were constantly reminding the White House that we would like to see more press conferences and more opportunities for reporters to ask questions of the president, Bohan said. Thats a big concern for us.
Mark Heminway of The Weekly Standard said keeping the Herald out of the fundraiser was an example of anti-media thuggery from the White House.
Despite showing nothing but contempt for the press and unfairly limiting the access of nearly all publications ��� even those that are editorially favorable to the Obama administration ��� the White House still thinks they are in a position to determine who in the media is fair, he writes.
The Huffington Post reports that MSNBC host Lawrence ODonnell also criticized the White House for keeping the Herald from the event, saying Obama should expect to be targeted because the paper has targeted Democrats for ages.
The Boston Herald doesnt like you, he said. Get used to it.
An editorial at Investors Business Daily joined ODonnell in condemning the White House, saying if the media had any gumption, they would protest the self-appointed arbiter of fair press coverage.
What the White House has done by telling the Boston Herald it can no longer send a pool reporter to cover local campaign events on behalf of the media is another baby step toward state control of the media, using the carrot of access against the stick of exile, the editorial states. Outside the likes of, say, Ecuador, this is a first.
The White House also recently came under fire from the San Francisco Chronicle for reportedly threatening to ban the paper from pool coverage when Obama visited the Bay Area at the end of April.
According to the Chronicle, senior political reporter Carla Marinucci was invited to cover an April 21 fundraiser. During the event Marinucci took video of protestors singing about the treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked classified U.S. documents to WikiLeaks. The video was then posted with her online story and on the Chronicles politics blog.
White House press secretary Jay Carney told the Huffington Post that no reporters have been banned, despite Marinucci breaking the print-pool rules by filming the protest and posting her video. Ward Bushee, a Chronicle editor, said the paper stands by its report.
Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences, he writes. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.
The spats with the Boston Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle join a list of other battles between the Obama administration and members of the press.
At the beginning of May, the Pleasanton Weekly, a community newspaper in Pleasanton, Calif., shot into the spotlight after the paper was reportedly contacted by someone from the White House and asked to remove a line from a feature story about Marine One, the presidents helicopter.
The Daily Caller reports that Gina Channell-Allen, the president of the Pleasanton Weekly, said the White House asked them to take out a line because it reflected poorly on the First Lady.
Basically the reporter said that the first lady didnt speak to the pilots but acknowledged them by making eye contact, Allen wrote.
In a comment on the Pleasanton Weekly website, Allen said, It wasnt going to change lives or destroy administrations by leaving it in or taking it out. It was extraneous and really added nothing to the story. Even journalists have to choose our battles. If it was something worth fighting for, we would have. It wasnt.
The president also made news in April for scolding reporter Brad Watson after concluding an interview with WFAA-TV of Dallas.
Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, all right? Obama said.
In March, Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers nabbed headlines when members of Vice President Joe Bidens staff told him to wait in a closet during a fundraiser. After an hour in the closet, Powers was let out to record speeches by contributor Alan Ginsburg, Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. During his wait, Powers took a picture and sent it to his editor, who posted it online. Within a few days, the story was on DrudgeReport, Good Morning America and elsewhere.
I called it a closet because it was stuffed with shelves, boxes, baskets and other items in storage, and it felt like a closet, Powers writes in an Orlando Sentinel blog post. The door wasnt locked, though every time I opened it and stepped out to see what was going on a staffer told me I couldnt come out yet. Hed let me know.
Powers brushed off the incident, calling it ClosetGate and laughing at rumors he had been kidnapped and locked in. Even so, Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander wrote Powers a note after the event concluded, telling him he had their sincere apologies for the lack of a better hold room.
In 2009, the White House was also condemned for trying to keep Fox News from interviewing Kenneth Feinberg, the pay czar, by making him available to every member of the network pool except Fox.
However, after the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks consulted, they declared that none of them would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was also given permission to participate. The White House relented.
What its really about to me is the executive branch of the government trying to tell the press how it should behave, Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik said at the time. I mean, this democracy ��� we know this ��� only works with a free and unfettered press to provide information.
Obama has previously been criticized by the media for avoiding short question-and-answer sessions with the press pool and for limiting press access, The Christian Science Monitor reported in 2010.
Multiple papers, including The New York Times, also criticized Obama for not allowing coverage of the Gulf oil spill in 2010. According to the Times, papers ran into trouble covering the spill from the air and in gaining access to the beaches impacted by the spill.
There is a continued effort to keep control over the access, Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, said at the time. And even in places where the government is cooperating with us to provide access, its still a problem because its still access obtained through the government.
At a media panel by the White House Historical Association celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first live televised news conference, former presidential reporters criticized the media, in turn, for being too timid and deferential.
If you watch an Obama news conference and watch a Bush news conference previous to that, where correspondents sit in their seats with their hands folded on their laps, (its) as if they are in the room with a monarch and they have to wait to be recognized by the president, former NBC Washington bureau chief Sid Davis said. It looks like they are watching a funeral service.
Todays White House press corps is a weak imitation of their Cold War predecessors, and current reporters look like stenographers working in a rehearsed environment, the veteran reporters said.
You want to know whats wrong with the press? Sander Vanocur, an NBC and ABC reporter asked. The press is whats wrong with the press.