From U.S. News: Several veteran and prize-winning journalists who covered presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush say that the current crop of White House correspondents are too timid and deferential and have played a role in killing the impact of presidential news conferences.
"If you watch an Obama news conference, and watched a Bush news conference previous to that, where correspondents sit in their seats with their hands folded on their laps, [it's] as if they are in the room with a monarch and they have to wait to be recognized by the president," says Sid Davis, the former NBC Washington bureau chief who covered nine presidents. "It looks like they are watching a funeral service at [Washington funeral firm] Joseph Gawler's and it shouldn't be that way." [See photos of the Obamas behind the scenes.]
Adds Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Haynes Johnson, "It's all very stale, very structured, very pale."
And longtime NBC and ABC reporter Sander Vanocur: "You want to know what's wrong with the press? The press is what's wrong with the press."
"If you watch an Obama news conference, and watched a Bush news conference previous to that, where correspondents sit in their seats with their hands folded on their laps, [it's] as if they are in the room with a monarch and they have to wait to be recognized by the president," says Sid Davis, the former NBC Washington bureau chief who covered nine presidents. "It looks like they are watching a funeral service at [Washington funeral firm] Joseph Gawler's and it shouldn't be that way." [See photos of the Obamas behind the scenes.]
Adds Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Haynes Johnson, "It's all very stale, very structured, very pale."
And longtime NBC and ABC reporter Sander Vanocur: "You want to know what's wrong with the press? The press is what's wrong with the press."
Why would this be a surprise? 95% of the press are in love with Obama and they don't want anything to piss him off. If they piss off Obama, then they face retaliation from the White House and they would lose their plumb assignments.
Here is your typical White House journalist:
Meh. Just depends upon the reporter, and the subject at hand. How 'bout FOX "News"'s treatment of any current GOP star? Greta Van Whatsername's treatment of Sarah Palin, and most recently, Newt Gingrich?
ReplyDeleteI think the assumed media love for Obama is overblown, and unproved as a theory. I seem to remember a HUGE amount of mudslinging about Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. Palling around with terrorists, and such. They treated Trump's ludicrous birther talk like it was serious. They trumpet any tweet and bleat of Palin as though it is EQUAL to Obama's. Etc., etc.