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Discussion Membership
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The White House GaggleBlog[Note: I just discovered a URL that punches through to an alternate universe much like our own, except that is slightly ahead of us along the time axis of the space-time continuum. Now I don't know that this universe will happen... I just know that it might be possible. here is an excerpt from a blog that I found there.]
From Daily Gaggle to Daily BloggleFor years the accretions of habit have directed the channels of communications between the Presidency and the public. No more. Rising up: government as a "purely neutral" news provider, and a press corps sinks into the ordinary.
Good morning.
As press secretary, I asked you, the whole White House press corps, to meet me on this weblog because we've decided to move into the 21st century and replace the daily White House gaggle with this.
It has been clear for some time that everyone has been dissatisfied with the gaggle:
The journalism professors who contend that we are trying to decertify the press have it all wrong. We're just continuing the long tradition of Presidents all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt who have continuously opened more direct channels of communication with the American people whenever possible:
Besides, we don't have to decertify the press, the internet lifts up the veil and the press does enough to make decertification unnecessary.
Looking back, the gaggle wasn't our idea, it came from the major media. It gave you a daily feed to highlight network news and serve as a springboard for you to launch your own message, anyway. You'll still be able to do that. Nothing much will change. On our website we will release video clips chosen to represent the news we feel the public needs to know. You can work those clips into your stand-ups. Bullet points of what we want to communicate are also on the website, not that you have to use them. Absence of news clips hasn't stopped you in the past from filling up dead air with projection and conjecture from your stable of talking heads.
This new model got traction after Fishbowl DC attended the gaggle and reported it to be reality TV at its worst. The beauty of the new regimen is that it makes sure that when, as California political reporter Daniel Weintraub called for "an aggressive, curious and analytical press corps ... fact-checking the snot out of the White House", all our snot will be well-ordered, and, to back us up, we'll have hoards of bloggers lurking in the background to fact-check the snot out of you.
Down to business. The President is going to be meeting with staff today to map more direct contact with Americans to push for approval of his Social Security program. That's all I have.
This is your blog. I'll write a new essay at the beginning every day or so, but don't expect me to comment on everything. After Matter: Notes, reaction & links... BTW, I did tell you that comments on this blog are open to anyone?
Posted by the Press Secretary at 09:05 AM<
| Comments (15)
Comments
WTF!?!
Posted by: CBS at March 21, 2005 10:15 AM
This ain't gonna work. we have personna... We have an image to lose. We can't afford to be casual.
Posted by: ABC at March 21, 2005 10:20 AM
This sucks. A weblog doesn't record the press secretary's frozen look when you ask questions like, "why does [the President] want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?" And, besides, you can't say "Thank you, Mr. President" on a weblog.
Posted by: Helen Thomas at March 21, 2005 10:47 AM
CBS: WTF!?!
Cline would consider "WTF" to be argumentum ad explitivium which is rhetorical logic that does not move the discussion forward. And how does the press avoid anti-propaganda crusading as an elitist practice in much the same way that Cline describes "Anti-bias crusading as an elitist practice".
People expect politicians to be politicians, and expect the media to cut through the BS. It is the consistency with which the Bush regime is lying that has overwhelmed the corporate media's ability to perform its traditional function of informing the public. Not to mention WMD, the link between Iraq and al Qaeda, and TANG.
Gawd! I can't get a word in edgewise on this blog! This has to be a plot by Karen Hughes. She has to be more insidious than Karl Rove to have cut the pins from under main stream media by replacing the gaggle with a blog.
Not since Teddy Roosevelt first spoke to reporters each morning from his barber's chair has there been an assault on professional journalism like this. I know. I've built my career training people to be professionals and now the White House is not only challenging professional journalism, they are challenging my career teaching them. And you wonder why I'm so upset. We're in the twilight of a glamour world where the President and the Fourth Estate needed each other -- a world where the President represented the people and the press represented the public. The press should uphold the public's stake in reliable information and vigorous debate, but Bush wants to undercut even that "You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that." This is dangerously undemocratic.
Well, how do you think WE feel about it? How am I going to become a famous news anchor if I can't cover Presidents the away Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson did?
Look, I'm coming up on deadline. I need a WH non-response I can wave in front of Nancy Pelosi as bait to get her frothing for a sound bite, even though I know she's going to repeat, yet again, that it is "hard to understand. . .". Boy, if Daschle were back here.... Nobody can twist facts into a sound bite better than he can.
Who needs teflon when no one is close enough to the President to throw anything that sticks? All the reporting on the Prez' Social Security dog-and-pony shows is about the razzledazzle and precious little about the message that Bush is trying to get across. Karamargin in the Arizona paper, wrote "The White House called it a conversation with President Bush about Social Security. ... It was more like a well-scripted pep rally." Reporting the show is what journalists do best. It's a helluva lot safer than reporting substance.
Dear Press: you need us. We will be your sponsors. Take a deep breath and start on your twelve step journey to redemption.
Look. As White House press, you've manufactured yourselves into such brittle and ineffective parodies of yourselves it's no wonder the White House can skate past you. Journalism has a great future, but your sideshow of stand-ups is history. The perfesser is concerned about the collapse of an important check on the administration, but what has collapsed has been your hollow and breathless adversarial representations that have been conspicuously absent real substance. For instance, you haven't presented any thorough examinations of social security, leaving the AARP fertile grounds to run absurdly extreme commercials designed to generate fear, not understanding.
The administration can marginalize the press only when the press makes it easy to do so. The perfessor can't change the administration. And liberal bloggers should give up the line that Bushies are evil. They are only opportunistic. Remove the opportunity by sensible, useful reporting.
We don't care what other networks do. We've got our niche and we'll fight you for it. After all, business is business... as CNN with its declining market share knows full well.
Now that we've used the pajamahadeen as cover to get rid of Jordan Eason, we can re-invent ourselves to reclaim that market share lost to Fox.
Why is it that the more things change, the more they remain the same?
[Macro error: Can’t call the script because the name “commentIt” hasn’t been defined.] [Macro error: Can’t call the script because the name “commentIt” hasn’t been defined.]
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