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The White House distrusts the media, reporters feel persecuted - a former Obama spokesman on the history of the toxic relationship
By Reid Cherlin | August 4, 2014
Somewhere between Seoul and Kuala Lumpur, with Air Force One cruising just shy of the speed of sound, Barack Obama decided to have a word with the press.
It has been tradition for Obama to make a visit back to the press cabin during the last leg of exhausting presidential foreign trips – just a friendly off-the-record chat – but this junket, a barnburner taking the chief executive to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines this past April, wouldn't be over for three days. The president's blood was up over two analysis pieces in The New York Times. One, written by national security correspondent David Sanger and timed for Obama's arrival in Seoul, accused the administration of dangerously underestimating Kim Jong-Un. A second story, splashed on the paper's front page, had effectively declared the trip a failure while it was still in progress: "President Obama encountered setbacks to two of his most cherished foreign-policy projects on Thursday," it read, citing the inability to reach a trade deal with Japan and the breakdown of Middle East peace talks. That piece had been co-bylined by White House correspondent Mark Landler, who had been tagging along on the president's jaunt and hence was at that moment sitting in the press cabin.
Jay Carney, the press secretary, arrived to give the heads-up and secure the standard agreement from the reporters to treat Obama's visit as off the record, meaning that the contents could never be published or broadcast. Carney was followed by the president himself, who assembled his lanky eminence against the bulkhead at the fore of the cabin and proceeded to dress down Landler and his colleagues.
With the chat being off the record, a definitive accounting of what was said is hard to come by; it is clear, though, that the thrust of the president's message was this: Foreign policy is hard, you guys are scoring it like a campaign debate, and moreover, you're doing it inaccurately. He went further, telling the dozen or so reporters that what he favored was a judicious use of American power, and that his primary concern was not to get the country embroiled in situations from which it might take a decade to extract ourselves. He offered up an oddly sophomoric mantra for his foreign policy: "Don't do stupid ****."
The White House insists that Obama's walk to the back of the plane wasn't motivated solely by irritation, and as a rule, correspondents say they value the chance to hear the president explain his thinking. But if the idea was to help shape the coverage, well, then that didn't work either. "Obama Criticized News Coverage During Off-the-Record Meeting With Reporters," flashed Huffington Post media writer Michael Calderone. "Stop whining, Mr. President," Maureen Dowd wrote with glee.
It was the latest in what has come to seem like an endless string of bad headlines: ongoing Benghazi investigations, bias and deleted e-mails at the IRS, indecision about Syria, the health care website fail, the conundrum of Ukraine, mismanagement at the VA, redeployment of American troops to Iraq, and the cringe-worthy handling of the coverage of the prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The discomfort here is more than just the ritual excoriation of a second-term American president: It's more jarring, and more lurid, because it runs contrary to the set idea of coziness between Obama and the news media.
I worked in Obama's press operation for four years, two on the first presidential campaign and two as a spokesman at the White House, responding to crises and commenting for reporters, and watching up close the rhythms of the particularly sour relationship between the president and the press. I'm biased in that I think Obama is right about most things. I also believe he'll be remembered as an excellent president. Which is strange to say, because if you are a consumer of any kind of political news these days, the only impression you get is that the Obama presidency is on the verge of collapse, and that he either doesn't know or doesn't seem to care. It's a complete disconnect, and it has everything to do with how the president is covered.
No, Barack Obama never had reporters eating out of his hand the way that right-wingers love to allege – even though Obama's intellectual approach made him seem like someone who could just as easily have been a columnist as a candidate. Appearing at his first Correspondents' Dinner, in 2009, the president joked, "Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me." But even as polite laughter settled over the black-tie crowd, there was ample evidence that the old way of the news business – in fact, the news business entirely – was falling away, and with it, the last shreds of comity between subject and scribe.
Obama, during his two campaigns for the presidency, had made a point of going over the heads of the media (denigrated as "the filter") and communicating directly with voters. With Obama in office, reporters have complained that the approach has sometimes bordered on pathology. Press photographers have loudly groused about a lack of access to the president – the White House often prefers to send out its own official shots – and reporters covering the beat say they are generally kept in the dark about what the president is actually doing. "At the White House, you're cordoned off like veal," says CNN's Jake Tapper, a former White House correspondent. Worse, the administration has initiated or continued high-profile legal action against reporters entangled in leak cases, most notably James Risen of The New York Times. Risen called this administration "the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation."
Meanwhile, the press corps itself, under immense financial and technological pressure, is in the process of remaking itself to fit a polarized country where users increasingly choose opinionated news sources that suit their own tastes. The result, six years into the Obama term, is that the administration and the press are in essence tweeting past each other, even as each decries its treatment at the hands of the other. The White House suspects that reporters intentionally sensationalize their stories; reporters suspect that the White House plays with the facts to get its message out. Both suspicions are correct.
"Like any period of tumultuous change, it's not a happy one," says Obama's former communications director Anita Dunn. But the consequences run deeper than a lack of good feeling. In our history classes we mythologize the idea that a president can change the world just by speaking: "Ask not," or "Tear down this wall." We summon the image of FDR's fireside chats – but what would they have been without that obedient row of network microphones? The pliant, monolithic news media of old is simply gone, and with it, one of the greatest powers of the presidency. "This idea that somehow there's a bully pulpit that can be used effectively," Dunn says, "to communicate with everybody in this country at the same time and get them all wrapped around one issue – it's very much an idea whose time has passed."
By Reid Cherlin | August 4, 2014
Somewhere between Seoul and Kuala Lumpur, with Air Force One cruising just shy of the speed of sound, Barack Obama decided to have a word with the press.
It has been tradition for Obama to make a visit back to the press cabin during the last leg of exhausting presidential foreign trips – just a friendly off-the-record chat – but this junket, a barnburner taking the chief executive to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines this past April, wouldn't be over for three days. The president's blood was up over two analysis pieces in The New York Times. One, written by national security correspondent David Sanger and timed for Obama's arrival in Seoul, accused the administration of dangerously underestimating Kim Jong-Un. A second story, splashed on the paper's front page, had effectively declared the trip a failure while it was still in progress: "President Obama encountered setbacks to two of his most cherished foreign-policy projects on Thursday," it read, citing the inability to reach a trade deal with Japan and the breakdown of Middle East peace talks. That piece had been co-bylined by White House correspondent Mark Landler, who had been tagging along on the president's jaunt and hence was at that moment sitting in the press cabin.
Jay Carney, the press secretary, arrived to give the heads-up and secure the standard agreement from the reporters to treat Obama's visit as off the record, meaning that the contents could never be published or broadcast. Carney was followed by the president himself, who assembled his lanky eminence against the bulkhead at the fore of the cabin and proceeded to dress down Landler and his colleagues.
With the chat being off the record, a definitive accounting of what was said is hard to come by; it is clear, though, that the thrust of the president's message was this: Foreign policy is hard, you guys are scoring it like a campaign debate, and moreover, you're doing it inaccurately. He went further, telling the dozen or so reporters that what he favored was a judicious use of American power, and that his primary concern was not to get the country embroiled in situations from which it might take a decade to extract ourselves. He offered up an oddly sophomoric mantra for his foreign policy: "Don't do stupid ****."
The White House insists that Obama's walk to the back of the plane wasn't motivated solely by irritation, and as a rule, correspondents say they value the chance to hear the president explain his thinking. But if the idea was to help shape the coverage, well, then that didn't work either. "Obama Criticized News Coverage During Off-the-Record Meeting With Reporters," flashed Huffington Post media writer Michael Calderone. "Stop whining, Mr. President," Maureen Dowd wrote with glee.
It was the latest in what has come to seem like an endless string of bad headlines: ongoing Benghazi investigations, bias and deleted e-mails at the IRS, indecision about Syria, the health care website fail, the conundrum of Ukraine, mismanagement at the VA, redeployment of American troops to Iraq, and the cringe-worthy handling of the coverage of the prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The discomfort here is more than just the ritual excoriation of a second-term American president: It's more jarring, and more lurid, because it runs contrary to the set idea of coziness between Obama and the news media.
I worked in Obama's press operation for four years, two on the first presidential campaign and two as a spokesman at the White House, responding to crises and commenting for reporters, and watching up close the rhythms of the particularly sour relationship between the president and the press. I'm biased in that I think Obama is right about most things. I also believe he'll be remembered as an excellent president. Which is strange to say, because if you are a consumer of any kind of political news these days, the only impression you get is that the Obama presidency is on the verge of collapse, and that he either doesn't know or doesn't seem to care. It's a complete disconnect, and it has everything to do with how the president is covered.
No, Barack Obama never had reporters eating out of his hand the way that right-wingers love to allege – even though Obama's intellectual approach made him seem like someone who could just as easily have been a columnist as a candidate. Appearing at his first Correspondents' Dinner, in 2009, the president joked, "Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me." But even as polite laughter settled over the black-tie crowd, there was ample evidence that the old way of the news business – in fact, the news business entirely – was falling away, and with it, the last shreds of comity between subject and scribe.
Obama, during his two campaigns for the presidency, had made a point of going over the heads of the media (denigrated as "the filter") and communicating directly with voters. With Obama in office, reporters have complained that the approach has sometimes bordered on pathology. Press photographers have loudly groused about a lack of access to the president – the White House often prefers to send out its own official shots – and reporters covering the beat say they are generally kept in the dark about what the president is actually doing. "At the White House, you're cordoned off like veal," says CNN's Jake Tapper, a former White House correspondent. Worse, the administration has initiated or continued high-profile legal action against reporters entangled in leak cases, most notably James Risen of The New York Times. Risen called this administration "the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation."
Meanwhile, the press corps itself, under immense financial and technological pressure, is in the process of remaking itself to fit a polarized country where users increasingly choose opinionated news sources that suit their own tastes. The result, six years into the Obama term, is that the administration and the press are in essence tweeting past each other, even as each decries its treatment at the hands of the other. The White House suspects that reporters intentionally sensationalize their stories; reporters suspect that the White House plays with the facts to get its message out. Both suspicions are correct.
"Like any period of tumultuous change, it's not a happy one," says Obama's former communications director Anita Dunn. But the consequences run deeper than a lack of good feeling. In our history classes we mythologize the idea that a president can change the world just by speaking: "Ask not," or "Tear down this wall." We summon the image of FDR's fireside chats – but what would they have been without that obedient row of network microphones? The pliant, monolithic news media of old is simply gone, and with it, one of the greatest powers of the presidency. "This idea that somehow there's a bully pulpit that can be used effectively," Dunn says, "to communicate with everybody in this country at the same time and get them all wrapped around one issue – it's very much an idea whose time has passed."
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