Obama and the Press Corps

Bal­loon Juice on Obama’s atti­tude toward the press corps:

Through both the cam­paign and his pres­i­dency, Obama has made lit­tle secret of his dis­dain for some of the horse-​​race, tabloid ele­ments of the press corps—though his polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ca­tions staff are not above some­times exploit­ing those same ten­den­cies for their own ben­e­fit. Obama meets reg­u­larly off-​​the-​​record and on-​​the-​​record meals with colum­nists who his advis­ers see as more intel­lec­tu­ally sub­stan­tive (or polit­i­cally influ­en­tial). But he has not done the same with beat reporters, whom, as he sug­gested Thurs­day, some­times do a dis­ser­vice to the coun­try with the jour­nal­is­tic equiv­a­lent of ambu­lance chasing.

Ambu­lance chas­ing is an oddly appro­pri­ate cross-​​metaphor, for I fear we will fail to endow pub­lic jour­nal­ism as we have failed to cre­ate pub­lic health insurance.

7 December 2009 – 9:42 am | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Media | Tagged , , | Comments (155)