Thread: Blackout: Reporters chased away from White House

Blackout: Police chase reporters away from covering protest outside White House
April 20, 2010 by Allahpundit


Via Ben Smith, who’s told by his reporter pals covering the WH beat that this is “extremely unusualâ€

Related

President shutting out reporters

Obama seems to have decided to skip tradition of a free press

April 17, 2010

BY DAN K. THOMASSON

WASHINGTON -- There is a striking resemblance to covering the White House and nourishing an infant.

You know the kind of activity parents engage in when they feed the baby by pretending the spoon full of apple sauce is a loaded airplane or helicopter and the mouth is a hanger. This is accompanied by aeronautical noises aimed at diverting the kid's attention from the true objective.

This happens in most administrations, but the current one is more adept at it than usual, particularly since the spoon is often empty of any sustenance for a thinning cadre of correspondents hungry for excitement and eager to convince the world and themselves that what they are doing is not only a glamorous journalistic assignment but enormously important.

President Obama and his minions, on the other hand, seem to have decided that long-held traditions of a ubiquitous free press geared to reporting everything big or small in his day is actually a detriment to his goals. He has even on at least one occasion shaken the press pool to its foundation by hustling secretly off without reportorial accompaniment, utterly ignoring the possibility that something might happen to him without the knowledge of his subjects, the American people.

Meanwhile, his seemingly part-time press secretary, raised on the pap of Capitol Hill and completely lacking in enthusiasm not to mention charisma, treats the care and feeding of the press with bored disdain, according to most assessments, preferring apparently to provide the president with his wise assistance in other matters and hoping some day to take over the job of chief political adviser from David Axelrod, who plans to head off before too long to help his messiah win re-election.

Probably the most disillusioning and in some ways embarrassing performance in a nation where a free and open press is a symbol of everything else we stand for came during the recent Nuclear Security Summit attended by the heads of 46 countries. Also on hand was a glorious gathering of the world's press, eager to be in a country where openness and journalistic acceptance are celebrated. Well, at least that's what they thought.

But that was before they were locked out of nearly everything being debated by their own presidents and foreign ministers in the two days of meetings.

According to reports, the "summit" was so tightly managed that reporters were given access that lasted literally less than 60 seconds. Nearly all the agenda of individual meetings carried a "no press" notice. This of course is at the behest of a president who soon will attend the White House Correspondents Association dinner, where there are more Hollywood stars present than working journalists and whose organization has been reduced to listening to Obama filibuster his own press conferences with long answers to planted questions from those picked to be called upon ahead of time.

A wise mentor once said that no one wants to hear reporters whine about how they have been mistreated. On the other hand, it is difficult to take lightly the disregard for the press held by a Chicago organizer who made it all the way to the White House in record time largely from publicity and enormously favorable treatment from the very journalists he now appears to eschew.

There is something much bigger at stake here. If Obama has decided that he now doesn't need anyone looking over his shoulder, it is a sad day for all of us, and that contention needs no further explanation. Those who are satisfied with only what he wants to tell them without question deserve what they get.

So the always overrated job of covering the White House has become even more so. It is about as glamorous as cleaning stalls, with the product of the labor about the same. The president joked recently about the press being angry with him after he sneaked out to go to his daughter's soccer game.

There really was nothing funny about it.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews ... 7a.article

Scripps Howard News Service

Wow, an amazing video. Thanks April. Looks like the Hope and Change has come home to roost.

Some of these people, LGBT lobbying groups, were at his recent speech. They were shouting in the audience at Mr. Obama, and Obama shouted back (in an unhappy manner) that he was for repealing the DADT ban.

So illegal alien groups, open borders, unions, and LGBT groups are now directly confronting him, and resorting to chaining themselves to the White House fence. And the Tea Party people are extreme?

Pay back time might not be so pleasant for Mr. Obama.

Matthew 10:32
It is written,... Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.

Looks like we have a dictator wanna be in the White House. At least all of this is on tape and needs to be spread around.

It would appear that some groups of people gather more attention than others?

Blackout some and cover the important ones. Like idiots posing as congressman.

Originally Posted by roundabout

It would appear that some groups of people gather more attention than others?

Blackout some and cover the important ones. Like idiots posing as congressman.

Or POTUS>>>