The Glade 4.0

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/21/2 ... obama.html

WASHINGTON — The nation’s largest news organizations lodged a complaint Thursday against the White House for imposing unprecedented limitations on photojournalists covering President Barack Obama, which they say have harmed the public’s ability to monitor its own government.

The organizations accuse the White House of banning photojournalists from covering Obama at some events, and then later releasing its own photos and videos of the same events.

“Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the president while he is performing his official duties,” according to a letter the organizations sent to the White House. “As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the executive branch of government.”

Presidents often look for ways to get their own messages out. But media experts say Obama’s administration has developed an aggressive strategy to use social media, including government-sponsored websites and blogs, as well as Twitter, Instagram and Flickr accounts, to circumvent the media’s constitutional duty more than its predecessors have.

“You are only seeing what they want you to see,” said Lucy Dalglish, the dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest defended the release of photos and videos, saying the practice helps Obama live up to his pledge of transparency by allowing the public to have greater access to the inner workings of the administration when it’s not feasible for news media to be in the room.

“What we’ve done is we’ve taken advantage of new technology to give the American public even greater access to behind-the-scenes footage or photographs of the president doing his job,” Earnest said. “To the American public, that’s a clear win.”

He said the news organizations’ protests were just part of the natural tension between journalists and those they covered.

“The fact that there is a little bit of a disagreement between the press corps and the White House press office about how much access the press corps should have to the president is built into the system,” he said at the daily White House news briefing. “If that tension didn’t exist, then either you or we aren’t doing our jobs.”

Relations between Obama officials and journalists have further deteriorated this year.

News reports last spring indicated that the Justice Department had secretly seized the telephone records of reporters at the Associated Press and investigated a Fox News reporter as a potential criminal for doing his job.

In the most recent situation, the news organizations stressed that they’re referring only to presidential activities of a “fundamentally public nature,” not private or restricted events, including ones that may affect national security. But the White House often says the closed events are private, even though it releases its own photographs of the events.

Examples cited in the letter are Obama’s meetings with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on July 10, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 29 and Pakistani human rights activist Malala Yousafzai on Oct. 11.

In each case, journalists weren’t allowed – and sometimes were unaware – of the event. The White House later released written summaries of the events, along with photos taken by a government photographer.

On Thursday, the presidents of the American Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Media Editors sent a letter to their members urging them to stop using handout photos and video from the White House.

“We must accept that we, the press, have been enablers,” the letter says. “We urge those of you in news organizations to immediately refrain from publishing any of the photographs or videos released by the White House, just as you would refuse to run verbatim a press release from them.”

It’s unclear how many news organizations use handout photographs from the White House. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services generally doesn’t do so unless they were shot in areas that the media don’t expect to have access to, such as the Situation Room or the private residence areas of the White House.

Harry Walker, the director of the McClatchy-Tribune Photo Service, said opening access to events was “the foundation for journalism, not just photojournalism.”

The letter was signed by 38 news organizations, including all the major broadcast and cable networks, wire services, online services and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the McClatchy Co., which owns 30 daily newspapers across the nation.

The White House Correspondents’ Association and White House News Photographers Association also signed the letter. McClatchy’s government and politics editor, Steven Thomma, is the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The letter, which was addressed to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, a former reporter for Time magazine, requested a meeting to discuss the issue.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/21/2 ... rylink=cpy

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

OK, who are you and where is the liberal apologist we all know?

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In time, this too shall pass.

I don't think that's fair. Liberal, yes, but apologist? Not much. He'll justify a policy we don't agree with, but when something comes that is unjustifiable, he'll criticize. Maybe not as loudly.

Have to be honest that I'm torn on this.

I don't like the policy for all the obvious reasons. But at the same time, any of the main channels calling themselves "news" anymore is a joke. They are all just sensationalist whores and I can sympathize with the administration for not wanting to play with their antics.

Too bad "freedom of the press" is not limited to when the press is not a bunch of attention-whoring douchebags.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't believe there is anything that states the press has a right to access. It just has a right to print what it wants. Big difference there.

Taskiss,

Here's your apologist. Support for bad policy is not based on practical reasons such as some perception that access would hinder their ability to function or something, it's based on an assertion that the press would mistreat him. Less about the issues, more about a knee-jerk inability to criticize without some sort of caveat.

The article states that the press complaint is about cases of a "fundamentally public natire." I don't seem to recall any such being torn over Bush's free speech zones, even though those were so he could talk without having to shout down hecklers.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh for **** sake.

What part of "I don't like the policy for all the obvious reasons." don't you understand? I'm not sure I can find any smaller words, but I supposed I could type slower or something...

What part of "inability to criticize without some sort of caveat" don't you understand?

Sure, you don't like the policy, but you know how it is, people are just so hard on him. It's just so hard to live up to your own promises, you know?

I suppose, Arathain... but.

There comes a time when dealing with a person that lies where you realize you can't trust what they say. That's phase 1.

Phase 2 is when you don't trust the person, but you realize that, in all fairness, you should give them the benefit of the doubt.

Then there's phase 3. You've been lied to so many times that if the liar says "blue", you know without a shadow of a doubt that, when you look, you'll see red.

I realize that everyone has a different tolerance for dealing with a liar. I also know that my tolerance isn't the highest...but I do have an unshakable respect for the office of the executive and I'm willing to accept what I don't understand, far, far longer than many here have shown themselves to be willing to. Even now, I respect the office, so I zig and zag, never outright calling the president a liar, call for his impeachment, etc. There's still some small possibility that he's being insulated from the facts, dancing on the strings tugged upon by a hidden puppet master, totally unknowing of the falsehoods being promoted.

But, now all I see is red, and those that see any color other than crimson are, in my opinion, apologists.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The 4th estate being impartial and "newsy" until recently is a myth, really. They may be more sensationalist now, but they've always been pretty partisan hacks throughout US history.

It just used to be more transparent, is all.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I'm with you, but it may just be those folks are still in the zig and zag phase. Benefit of the doubt vs making excuses is where I draw the line.

The problem with your view, Taskiss, is that it assumes the person in question is, in fact, a liar, and that you aren't simply so biased yourself that you mistakenly perceive honest disagreement to be bald-faced lying (and vice-versa, at times). I think a lot of people on this board are guilty of doing that when it comes to the Dems in general and, for some reason, Obama in particular.

Now here's an epic apologist.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/24/politics/presidents-lie/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Consider the evidence aggregated on a site that I just found just googling the topic , RD - http://obamalies.net/list-of-lies

Now, while there are issues I have with certain individual items on that list, the list illustrates the scope of the issue I have.

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In time, this too shall pass.

So... the cover story is to slander ex-presidents (including dead ones) as an excuse for this president lying? That is seriously a new low.

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I'm pretty sure that tactic is standard operating procedure around here.

I fully expect a couple of posts defending it to show up here shortly....

Dont worry, Hillary will promise to clean all this mess up when elected....

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

It's not slander if it's true. Not that "but he did it first!" is a valid excuse, mind you.

I believe the actual point of the article is to claim that lying is a necessity of the job.

You win.

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Correct. Since Obama is so clearly lying at this point, apologists are having a much harder time making excuses for him. If you can take a step back and make excuses for the act of lying, then suddenly Obama's just doing his job.

Cool! What did I win?