RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s well established that Barack Obama, both as a candidate and a President, has received very favourable coverage from the American press. But what’s less known is that many of the White House reporters who cover Obama greatly resent the way they are treated by the Obama administration.

There are still some strikingly positive write-ups for Obama, even in supposedly objective news stories. This from the AP struck me at the weekend:

Take these two pieces in the Washington Post. The first, by Jason Horowitz, is a pretty unflattering profile of Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. It is drawing most attention because of the way it implies that Gibbs is lobbying/auditioning to take over from David Axelrod. But consider this passage (especially the parts I have bolded):

The hard feelings in the press room can be mutual. There are a few things about Gibbs that irritate even the least excitable reporters in the briefing room, though none of them would speak for the record out of fear of retaliation. One reporter expressed frustration with the way Gibbs has compared reporters – and even Sen John McCain – to his 6-year-old son because he didn’t approve of the way they were behaving. “He uses him as a prop,” the reporter said. Unlike press secretaries past, who would make rounds of calls to reporters as they neared deadlines, Gibbs is notoriously tough to get on the phone. His soliloquies are full of “first and foremost” and “I will say this,” and he relies on escape-hatch promises to “check and get back to you.” This month, Gibbs neglected to tell reporters traveling back from Prague on Air Force One that Justice John Paul Stevens had announced his retirement and refused to talk to them when they found out. Last weekend, Obama broke longstanding tradition by giving the slip to a pool reporter. Later this month, representatives of various news organizations will meet with Gibbs to express what they feel is the administration’s contempt for the press.

The piece by Dana Milbank – one of the sharpest and most acerbic reporters in Washington – doesn’t pull any punches, starting from the headline about “Obama’s disregard for media”:

In the middle of it all was Obama — occupant of an office once informally known as “leader of the free world” — putting on a clinic for some of the world’s greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.

Reporters for foreign outlets, admitted for the first time to the White House press pool, got the impression that the vaunted American freedoms are not all they’re cracked up to be.

Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said these were the most restricted such meetings they had ever seen. They complained to both the administration and White House Correspondents’ Association, which will discuss the matter Thursday with White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. The restrictions have become a common practice for the Obama White House.

Over the weekend, Obama broke with years of protocol and slipped off to a soccer game without the “protective” pool that is always in the vicinity of the president in case the unthinkable occurs. Obama joked about it later to Pakistan’s prime minister, saying reporters “were very upset.”

Ouch. I’d say the honeymoon is well and truly over.