Obama limiting press access in ways past presidents ‘wouldn’t have dared’

 

The Associated Press has put together a report that concludes about President Obama what most of us already suspected – this is hardly the most transparent administration in history, which Obama famously promised at the start of his first term.

The AP’s Nancy Benac summarizes the White House’s obsessive approach toward producing photos, videos and tweets that portray the president and First Family in the best possible light.

“At the same time,” Benac wrote, “it is limiting press access in ways that past administrations wouldn't have dared, and the president is answering to the public in more controlled settings than his predecessors. It's raising new questions about what's lost when the White House tries to make an end run around the media, functioning, in effect, as its own news agency.”

The White House press corps’ growing irritation with Obama ratcheted up when the White House recently live-streamed on the Internet Obama's meeting with his export council and allowed just one reporter in the room.

Statistics compiled by Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University in Maryland who studies presidential communication, show how Obama's strategy has differed from his predecessors'.

In his first term, Obama engaged in 107 short question-and-answer sessions with reporters during events in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and similar settings. President George W. Bush, by contrast, had 354.

By the same token, though, Obama held twice as many solo press conferences as Bush: 36 compared to 17. And in the first term Obama did 674 interviews -- TV, radio, Internet, print -- compared to 217 for Bush and 191 for Bill Clinton.

Here’s Benac again:

“With interviews, the president has more power to choose his timing, questioners and format, in hopes of delivering a certain message in a setting that's not always hard-hitting. In impromptu Q-and-A's, the questions fly about anything and everything from the national press corps -- and these wide-open opportunities to challenge the president on the events of the day have become increasingly rare.”