Thursday, May 19, 2011

Obama Pressures Media For Positive Coverage

Dan  RiehlPosted by Dan Riehl May 19th 2011 at 9:14 am in Featured Story, Politics, Print Journalism, journalism, newspapers

Living up to its reputation as a Leftist administration, the Obama White House appears to be engaged in blatant press intimidation, given emails exchanged with the Boston Herald.


The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”
“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.
The message seems to be loud and clear from the Herald’s perspective; so much so, that they’ve added fuel to the fire with a new companion piece. Let’s hope the institutions that are  home to professors that have commented negatively have their taxes and federal financial aid dealings done correctly. One never knows what lengths a tin-pot dictator might go to get the cooperation he wants from a so called free press.

Critics: Obama’s media snub ‘troubling’
The White House is engaging in a “troubling” pattern of heavy-handed dealings with the press, media critics said after yesterday’s news that the Boston Herald was frozen out of full access to a presidential visit to its home city.
“It’s always troubling when you have the administration deciding what’s fair in the media or what is unfair because that clearly does create a situation where they are trying to select the coverage that they’re going to receive,” said Boston University College of Communication dean Tom Fiedler, who covered the White House as a reporter for the Miami Herald.
Emerson College political communication professor Gregory Payne said the administration goofed.

Big Journalism