Obama, The Puppet Master

Great Excerpts that I resonate with from a great POLITICO article:

~President Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House."

~Former Clinton Press Aide: “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing."

~"The president has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions. Instead, he spends way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities. Why bother with The New York Times beat reporter when Obama can go on “The View”?

~"Obama boasted Thursday during a Google+ Hangout from the White House: “This is the most transparent administration in history.” The people who cover him day to day see it very differently."

~"“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford."

~"One authentically new technique pioneered by the Obama White House is extensive government creation of content (photos of the president, videos of White House officials, blog posts written by Obama aides), which can then be instantly released to the masses through social media. They often include footage unavailable to the press...But I don’t blame the White House for doing it, because networks and newspapers use them. So the White House has built its own content distribution network.”

~"His 2012 opponent, Mitt Romney, was equally adept at substance-free encounters with reporters."

~"They are more disciplined about cracking down on staff that leak, or reporters who write things they don’t like."

~"Conservatives assume a cozy relationship between this White House and the reporters who cover it. Wrong. Many reporters find Obama himself strangely fearful of talking with them and often aloof and cocky when he does."

~"Obama himself sees little upside to wide-ranging interviews with the beat reporters for the big newspapers — hence, the stiffing of even The New York Times since 2010."

~"The super-safe, softball interview is an Obama specialty"

~“This administration loves to boast about how transparent they are, but they’re transparent about things they want to be transparent about,” said Mark Knoller, the veteran CBS News reporter. “He gives interviews not for our benefit, but to achieve his objective.”

~* They are also masters of scrutiny avoidance. The president has not granted an interview to print reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and others in years. These are the reporters who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions.

~* While White House officials deny it is intentional, this administration —like its predecessors — does some good old-fashioned bullying of reporters: making clear there will be no interviews, or even questions at press conferences, if aides are displeased with their coverage.

~“The goal is not to satisfy the requester, but doing what is necessary to get into people’s homes and communicate your agenda to the American people.” -Jen Psaki, Former Obama Campaign Press Secretary

Obama, The Puppet Master || POLITICO