Obama takes it directly to the people (ap photo)
Has the YouTube presidency pre-empted the journalists who cover the White House every day? If you can get the news directly from the president and his Twittering West Wing staff, why do you need the press corps? That’s the question posed by the Daily Beast today.
That is, are Twitter, Facebook and YouTube—to say nothing of slick video vignettes and candid shots of a triumphantly appealing President Obama on WhiteHouse.gov—poised to supplant the often-skeptical journalistic stylings of CBS, CNN, and The New York Times?
It’s an inexcusably heretical thought, especially to the wizened veterans who occupy the coveted reserved seating in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, just off the West Wing, during presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs’ daily Q&As.
Everyone hates the news media — we get it. And this president has made greater use of new technology than his immediate past predecessors (remember former President Bush’s gestures toward “the internets” and “the Google”?) But both share an aversion to what Bush called “the filter,” those pesky reporters who include more than just White House talking points in their stories.
But, “obsolete”? Not the filter!
“We’ve been on the brink of that longer than just this presidency,” said CBS senior White House correspondent Bill Plante, who has been covering the beat since Ronald Reagan’s term. “When I came here in 1981, Mike Deaver made no secret of the fact that he wanted to reach out beyond us to the public, by having events where the president would be presented to the public unfiltered—and that has been the goal of every White House since.”
There is a persistent notion that the White House press corps is overly enamored of Obama. And some journalists certainly are, or appear to be (including at the Daily Beast). But over the past year at the White House, as frustrations have grown among the press corps over the true nature of acountability and openness, and the campaign has become the administration, the love has more or less hardened into something more skeptical. Questions at the briefing are more pointed (when we get a briefing — there isn’t one today) and the stories are more critical, overall.
For all their vaunted use of Twitter and YouTube, isn’t it just another way for the administration to issue its press releases? What they are basically saying when they try to circumvent the press and talk directly to the people is, “We don’t care to be questioned” and, “Here are our talking points, unfiltered.”
So yes, Daily Beast. Flawed, arrogant, clueless, pinheaded and often badly dressed — the press corps is still necessary.
And p.s. — who are you calling “wizened”?
