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Relaxed Press Relations“Afterward, a colleague joked to me, ‘About midway through, I thought I was going to fall asleep.’ Too bad Obama has frozen the salaries of his top staffers. In earlier times, that kind of praise for a press secretary would have gotten him a raise.”
—John Dickerson, political correspondent, Slate.com,
on Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs’ first White House press briefing (1/22/09)
on Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs’ first White House press briefing (1/22/09)
Today in History
2005 Senate confirms Alberto Gonzales as first Hispanic attorney general; 2002 New England Patriots win first Super Bowl; 1998 20 skiers killed when U.S. jet severs ski-lift cables in Italian Alps; 1971 third Apollo Moon landing; 1959 The day the music—and Buddy Holly—died; 1953 Jacques Cousteau publishes The Silent World; 1948 First Cadillac with tail fins; 1938 Abbott & Costello radio premiere; 1913 16th Amendment, creating federal income tax, adopted; 1809 Illinois Territory created; 1690 First paper money in American colonies issued in Massachusetts
(See History.com)
I think it's the paragraph before the one you chose as the Word of the Day that is more telling:
ReplyDelete"If any viewers were frustrated with Gibbs, they were no doubt far more frustrated with the journalists. Several of the questions related to access and transparency—like how President Obama could exclude TV and radio coverage of his second oath of office Wednesday. In some cases, the questions involved matters of principle that are important to the press but are of little interest to anyone else, such as whether accountability is better than anonymity. To members of the nonpress—which is to say, pretty much everyone not in that room—it must have looked small-minded. Said Jim Jordan, a veteran Democratic strategist: "It certainly worked to his advantage that the press corps—in the midst of this historic moment, in the midst of national and international crisis—descended, inevitably, into a whiny, pitiful litany of it's-all-about-me complaints about access."
No wonder the general public discounts the news media -- why bother with esoteric whining when you can get briefed directly from Obama via your own, personal email inbox and even get invited to a neighbor's for in-depth video explanations of what is going to happen.