A group of journalists are speaking out regarding their treatment by White House press people. Their new boldness comes in the wake of reportedly being called foul names, among them “b***h”, “c**t” and “a**hole.”
Their new outspoken behavior was sparked by Bob Woodward’s recent op-ed on President Barack Obama in The Washington Post where he said the administration was “moving the goalposts” the night before the sequester went into effect.
The Commander-in-Chief’s people are not, and have never been, very fond of when the press — or any public figure for that matter — puts too much pressure on Obama’s White House.
“The whole Woodward thing doesn’t surprise me at all,” said David Brody, White House correspondent for CBN News. “I can tell you categorically that there’s always been, right from the get-go of this administration, an overzealous sensitivity to any push-back from any media outlet.”
Brody may not be surprised about the White House’s behavior because he experienced that same bullying in 2009 when he pursued an article regarding a cross be taken down at Georgetown University before President Obama was scheduled to speak there, according to Mediaite.
“What started as just some verbal frustration from the White House that I would even want a reason about this story turned into a full-fledged shouting match on the phone with some choice words, shall we say, and it escalated from there,” Brody said.
He added, “It was like my mother giving me a guilt trip… I felt like I need to start a therapy session.”
Woodward said that Gene Sperling, Obama’s Director of the National Economic Council, shouted at him during a 30-minute phone conversation due to the article, and Sperling sent him email that said, “I think you will regret staking out this claim.”
Sperling did his best to make peace with Woodward on Sunday’s ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos,’ calling Woodward a “legend.”
Since Sperling admitted to these comments, more reporters have come out to say the White House has treated them poorly, going so far as to call them incredibly offensive names.
“There is a kind of threatening tone that, from time to time — not all the time — comes out of these guys,” said Jonathan Alter, who appears often on MSNBC. “I was told ‘Don’t come,’ in a fairly abusive e-mail. [It] made what Gene Sperling wrote [to Woodward] look like patty-cake.”
Another D.C. veteran, who declined to be named, was told about another incident involving a colleague, where a member of Obama’s inner circle used very harsh words when speaking with her, according to the New York Post.
“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” said one D.C. veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — b–ch, c–t, a–hole.”
When he complained, things didn’t get fixed. “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened,” he said.
While the White House couldn’t care less about bullying journalists — or at least that’s how it seems — more reporters who cover that beat are speaking out against that atrocious behavior.
Acclaimed journalist Ron Fournier of the National Journal Group went so far to tell one White House official that if he was ever bullied again, then all of those emails would be on the record and publishable at his discretion. An anonymous White House office chastised him “for spreading “bull**** like that” via email when Fournier tweeted his support for Woodward.
“As editor-in-chief of ‘National Journal,’ I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that ‘Politico’ characterized as a veiled threat. ‘You will regret staking out that claim,’ ‘The Washington Post’ reporter was told,” Fournier said. “Once I moved back to daily reporting this year, the badgering intensified. I wrote Saturday night, asking the official to stop e-mailing me. The official wrote, challenging Woodward and my tweet. ‘Get off your high horse and assess the facts, Ron,’ the official wrote.
He added, “Personally, I had a great relationship with Clinton’s communications team, less so with President Bush’s press shop, and now — for the first time in my career — I told a public servant to essentially buzz off.”
Maybe this treatment from the President will teach the mainstream media to take off the kid gloves and do their jobs. But then again — maybe not.
