Compare and Contrast
Katharine Seelye writes this morning in the New York Times about the "mutual distrust" between the White House press corps and the administration:
By its nature, the relationship between the White House and the press has historically held an inherent tension. And many say it has been eroding since the Vietnam War and Watergate, when reporters had reason to distrust everything the White House said and made a scandalous "gate" out of every murky act.But today, those on both sides say, the relationship has deteriorated further, exacerbated by the live briefings.
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Renana Brooks, a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington who said she had counseled several White House correspondents [ ! ], said the last few years had given rise to "White House reporter syndrome," in which competitive high achievers feel restricted and controlled and become emotionally isolated from others who are not steeped in the same experience.
She said the syndrome was evident in the Cheney case, which she described as an inconsequential event that produced an outsize feeding frenzy. She said some reporters used the occasion to compensate for not having pressed harder before the Iraq war.
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White House reporters say they know the public hates them because they regularly receive abusive e-mail messages and read blogs that tell them so.
"This is the punching-bag beat of American journalism," said David E. Sanger, who has covered the Bush administration since its inception for The New York Times. "And the White House itself has been skillful at diverting tough questions by changing the subject to its battles with the media."
This happened in the Cheney case. While the eruption from the White House press finally forced the vice president to discuss his accident on national television, he deftly portrayed the hubbub as a result of jealousy that a small paper in Texas was given the news first; reporters said they were upset because their questions were not being answered.
The message many perceived in Mr. Cheney's response was that the national media were no longer relevant, a point made and reinforced almost daily in certain blogs.
David Gregory, the NBC correspondent who has been among the most ardent questioners in the briefing room, apologized for yelling at Mr. McClellan over the Cheney incident but said the situation had become particularly frustrating.
"There is a desire by some, particularly on the right, to morph these situations into a different kind of debate — it's the vice president against an angry, left-wing, cynical, hate-filled press corps that wants to expose him as a liar," he said. "This is a false debate, stoked by a president and vice president who have made no bones about the fact that they don't have much respect for the press corps as an institution."
I think the reason the President and Vice-President don't have much respect for the press corps as an institution is that it consists largely of "angry, left-wing, cynical, hate-filled" people. It seems odd for reporters to complain that the White House doesn't like them, or that they have a left-wing image. Consider this item about the National Press Foundation awards dinner last Thursday night, courtesy of NRO's Media Blog:
Journalists primarily divided their energy at the National Press Foundation awards dinner Thursday night in Washington between praising their colleagues for their efforts to report on Hurricane Katrina and slamming the administration.In the latter camp, the Bush administration was lampooned in the cartoons of winner Jimmy Margulies, who narrated a series of wicked jabs. But the hardest hit on the administration came from Jack Germond, winner of the Kiplinger award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. Germond, a veteran newspaperman--most recently with the Baltimore Sun--and an analyst for NBC and CNN, was scathing in his assessment.
He talked of the administration's "staggering arrogance" and the "serial comic quality of daily White House briefings," which he called "an embarrassment to us and them."
Citing Plato, Germond said those who are too smart to go into politics are destined to be governed by those who are dumber.
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CNN's Ed Henry, who received the Everett Dirksen award for congressional reporting, had a hard time keeping it together as he thanked his colleagues and remembered his mentor and injured ABC journalists Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt. Henry said it was tough to think of his job as a hard one in the face of their stories.
Henry also emotionally thanked his mentor, the late Jack Anderson, for whom he interned while still in school.
He drew applause with the assertion that "the American people own the news" and that the First Amendment is "under assault."
Long ago, the bulk of the Washington press corps abandoned any pretense of objectivity, neutrality or fairness in its coverage of Republicans. It is therefore hard to take the press corps seriously when it complains about its poor relations with the administration, or alleges that the administration is "secretive" and that the President and Vice-President lack "respect for the press corps as an institution."
