Kirsten Powers: ‘We Need to Hire Grown-ups to Cover the President’

Despite her liberal beliefs, FNC commentator Kirsten Powers has really distinguished herself by her willingness to tell the truth about America's media elite which has moved from being a legion of skeptics into a team of cheerleaders during the presidency of Barack Obama.

Earlier this week, Powers acknowledged the discomfort that many statists feel when confronted by conservative beliefs because their dominance of the media prevents them from being exposed to such thinking. Yesterday, Powers continued taking on the media saying that the White House press corps is “juvenile and amateurish” in how they cover Obama and swoon over his every move. Read on for video and discussion.

“We need to hire grown-ups to cover the president,” Powers said during the Friday afternoon edition of Fox News Channel's “Happening Now” program.

Powers's comment came after host Jon Scott quoted from a book about last year's presidential election entitled “Panic 2012” that was written by Michael Hastings, a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine who wrote that he “fell into the trap of asking Obama soft questions."

In his book, Hastings notes:

That's the presence of Obama, even on the press corps, even on the people who follow him every day. When they're near him, they lose their minds sometimes. They start behaving in ways that are juvenile and amateurish, and they swoon.

Scott then turned to Powers, who said that despite her repeated criticism of the media's coverage of the president, she was still surprised by Hastings's statement:

I think we need to hire some grown-ups to cover the president. This is not acceptable behavior, and the fact that you have somebody talking about it, I mean, I think he's sort of being critical, but he's telling us that these people are incapable of covering the president.

Powers then stated that she couldn't imagine Fox News Channel reporter Brit Hume “saying something like this about any president that he has covered. It really is beyond the pale.”

At that point, fellow panelist and National Review columnist John Fund said that the job of a White House press corps member has changed. “There is much less access, there is much less opportunity to ask questions than there used to be, a lot more photo ops and a lot more staged and managed news

“That's not to excuse away the behavior that Mister Hastings observes, but it's to explain that the job has gotten much tougher,” he continued.

Part of the job, unfortunately, of a White House reporter now is to report the White House’s point of view because you can’t get any other real news. The problem is if you don’t provide context. That's what's not being done in the White House.

“It’s one thing to report what the president believes; another thing not to provide any context,” he added.

“I think John's being very generous here to the White House press corps,” Powers stated. “The purpose of a journalist is to hold people in power accountable. I know this is probably a surprise to some journalists today, but that's actually what they’re supposed to be doing.

“They’re not supposed to be swooning. I mean, I wouldn’t swoon if I interviewed the president. I would go in, I would love to have the opportunity actually, and go in to ask him some tough questions,” Powers said.

Scott then referred to a supposedly humorous comment Obama made during a press corps dinner two years ago: “Welcome to all of you, my base who voted for me!”

Later that afternoon, the co-hosts of FNC's "The Five" also discussed the concept of reporters "swooning" over President Obama.

Liberal Bob Beckel said that the Democratic occupant of the White House is "somewhat intimidating" and compared him to Ronald Reagan, who "got very few hard questions" because "the press was intimidated by him and they liked him."

However, fellow co-host Andrea Tantaros asserted that "the media created the problem" by giving Obama "a God-like status."

Newsweek made him look angelic on the covers. Then they believed theier own hype. ... So now they are drunk with their own nonsense.