Add USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page to the growing list of media personnel complaining the Obama administration isn’t living up to its much hyped (and much failed) policy of being the most open and transparent (and ethical) administration in history.
During the White House Correspondents’ Association seminar last week, Page made the following comments:
“My big fear is that this administration has been more restrictive and more challenging to the press, more dangerous to the press, really, than any administration in American history in terms of legal investigations and so on. And I think access to the White House has just gotten worse and worse.”
Only now, after six years into his presidency, a select few in the MSM have taken issue with the (nontransparent) transparent Obama administration. It was Obama, after-all, who made transparency a key issue on the “Hope and Change” campaign trail to Washington:
"More and more, the real business of our democracy isn't done in town halls or public meetings or even in the open halls of Congress…Decisions are made in closed-door meetings, or with the silent stroke of the President's pen, or because some lobbyist got some Congressman to slip his pet project into a bill during the dead of night. We have to take the blinders off the White House. The more people know about what's going on in Washington, and how their tax dollars are being spent, and who's raising money for who, the less likely it is that major decisions will be hijacked by lobbyists and special interests.”
The Obama administration is no stranger to denying media access to even the most basic meetings and photo ops. Take, for example, last week when Obama met with Nina Pham, the nurse who contracted Ebola and just finished treatment at the National Institute of Health. Reporters and TV cameras had the door shut on them, but the door was wide open for photographers to capture this photo op. As Erik Wemple of the Washington Post reported:
“At a briefing with White House press secretary Josh Earnest, Karl asked why. Earnest responded that “many of you did have the opportunity to see [Pham] deliver remarks at the NIH upon her departure from the hospital.”
Karl: “That’s not answering the question. Why was this decision made?”
Earnest: “Because reporters did have the opportunity to see her speak already.”
Also, the press secretary said that neither President Obama nor Pham planned on making any comments at the event. Taken together, those explanations amount to a lump of nothing.
It's so tight-lipped now that Bloomberg White House correspondent Margaret Talev noted how the White House stopped giving details on the fine wines served at state dinners.
What used to be a “love-love” relationship between the media and Obama has is becoming more of a “love-hate” relationship, only we the public are getting mere glimpses of this spat. In what is probably the most colorful comparison of the relationship, Human Events writes:
Media’s still trapped in her abusive “Fifty Shades of Grey” relationship with Obama, heaving a heavy sigh and donning a blindfold whenever he demands it of her. She’s not going to make a big public spectacle about how he treats her. The White House can still plant, and scuttle, stories with relative ease.
