It won't be long now before Ari Fleischer departs his post of White House
press secretary, and the press corps at 1600 Pennsylvania isn't exactly
begging him to stay.
Long-squelched grumblings about Fleischer are finally surfacing. Reporters
complain about his propaganda-pushing, his relentless spin and his dogged
refusal to say anything substantive. Asking Fleischer a follow-up question
is about as useful as punching a wall.
Consequently, some reporters wonder if the White House higher-ups ever
actually tell Fleischer anything important, and they marvel at his loyalty
under humiliation. In one mortifying pre-war moment, Fleischer proclaimed
that it was deeply offensive to suggest that the administration would try to
buy the cooperation of foreign countries, and the press corps responded with
derisive laughter. An embarrassed Fleischer mumbled "thank you" and stalked
away from the podium.
All these complaints may be legitimate, but they're not Fleischer's fault;
he's just doing what he's told to do, probably by Karl Rove. And there's a
simple solution: The newspapers and networks should pull their reporters
from the White House.
It's not as crazy an idea as it sounds. After all, there are really only two
reasons why newspapers and networks dispatch reporters to the White House
briefing room -- a tiny, messy space where most of their time is spent
lounging around waiting for something to happen. One is for visuals for the
nightly news.
The other is just in case anything should happen. Usually it doesn't -- but
when some news or a gaffe does emerge, the reporters bound after the story
like dogs that haven't been walked for days. That's one reason -- and not a
very good one -- why they pursued the Clinton sex scandal so furiously.
Such press walkouts have happened before under similar conditions. During
the war in Iraq, media reporter Michael Wolff made news when he asked
Pentagon briefer General Vincent Brooks "I mean no disrespect, but what is
the value proposition of these briefings? Why are we here? Why should we
stay?"
Reroute those White House reporters to cover the rest of the Bush
administration, where there is real news happening.
Every other reporter present felt the same way, but only Wolff had the
freedom to say it. And in 1996, Ted Koppel pulled his production crew from
the 1996 GOP convention. There was no news to cover, Koppel said, and he was
half-right.
The stage-managing had made the press irrelevant; they just didn't want to
admit it -- at least those covering the podium. Meanwhile, few reporters had
the inclination to cover the posh receptions, skyboxes and yachts moored in
the San Diego harbor where the real action was.
But for a risk-taking producer or editor, there's a great opportunity here:
Reroute those White House reporters to cover the rest of the Bush
administration, where there is real news happening. The Justice Department,
the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and Labor are all busily
dismantling the progress of the 1990s, confident in the knowledge that the
press can't or won't cover their dirty work.
The Department of Treasury, one of the shining lights of the Clinton
administration, is bumbling incompetently along -- a great story that's
barely been covered. The RNC is now headed by a Washington lobbyist; you
know there's some good stuff there. Granted, the visuals aren't as good as
those at the White House, but the stories are just as important.
Pretty soon, a lot of these White House reporters will start decamping for
Iowa and New Hampshire, where they'll issue the same kinds of complaints:
nothing's going on, they don't get any access, there's no news. That won't
be true, of course.
They're just looking in the wrong places.
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