President Obama has given only a single interview to Washington Post news reporters since late 2009.
Since that time, the president has sat down for exclusive interviews with WebMD, comedians Zach Galifianakis and Marc Maron, “the pimp with the limp” DJ Laz, a Vox.com blogger, People magazine, “The Wire” creator David Simon and GloZell, a YouTube celebrity best known for eating raw cinnamon and bathing in Froot Loops.
The leading publication in the nation’s capital, however, will likely boast at the end of the year that it was granted only a single interview since 2009, according to the Post’s Margaret Sullivan.
“Think about that,” she wrote in an article titled, “Obama promised transparency. But his administration is one of the most secretive.”
“The Post is, after all, perhaps the leading news outlet on national government and politics, with no in-depth, on-the-record access to the president of the United States for almost all of his two terms,” she added.
Her remarks came as an aside in a larger piece about how the Obama administration has reportedly kept the press “in the dark” for most of his presidency.
“After early promises to be the most transparent administration in history, this has been … one of the most elusive,” Sullivan wrote. “It’s also been one of the most punitive toward whistleblowers and leakers who want to bring light to wrongdoing they have observed from inside powerful institutions.”
“That’s why I’m skeptical about the notion that Americans will soon know what they need to know about drone strikes — the targeted killings that have become a major part of the administration’s anti-terrorism effort in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya,” she added.
The president’s relationship with media, she wrote, should be called “Transparency Lite.”
Sure, Obama has given more interviews than any president in recent history, according to former Towson University professor Martha Joynt Kumar.
But these interviews are all “tightly controlled,” and extremely choreographed affairs, Sullivan retorted.
“More interviews, less accountability. Feet kept safe from the fire,” she wrote.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for confirmation on the number of interviews given to the Post since 2009.
The White House reportedly ignored Sullivan’s inquiries as well.
“I couldn’t get anyone in the White House press office to address this, despite repeated attempts by phone and email — which possibly proves my point,” she wrote.
