But back to the showdown at the White House briefing last week: CNN’s Ed Henry, while appearing on The Situation Room, stressed to host Wolf Blitzer that he didn’t think the new White House press secretary had answered his query that day about Obama’s pick to become deputy defense secretary. Think about that premise for a moment (i.e. a White House press secretary artfully dodges a reporter’s question) while recalling what the White House press briefings were like for reporters under Bush. Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com did his best to capture the vacuous nature of those exercises:
The spin, the secrets, the non-answers and the unprecedented lack of access are an insult not only to journalists, but to the public that depends on us to fully inform them about what’s really going on in the White House.
Added blogger and J-school professor Jay Rosen:
The point here was to underline how pointless it was even to ask questions of the Bush White House. And reporters got that point, though they missed the larger picture I am describing. Many times they wondered what they were doing there.
And TNR‘s Jonathan Chait:
Much of the time [Ari] Fleischer does not engage with the logic of a question at all. He simply denies its premises — or refuses to answer it on the grounds that it conflicts with a Byzantine set of rules governing what questions he deems appropriate. Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom: Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether.
But suddenly for Henry, when a Democrat’s in power, it’s news when a White House press person doesn’t answer a reporter’s question during a daily briefing. After eight years of having a succession of Bush flacks who, almost with robotic precision, refused to answer weeks, months, and years’ worth of daily briefing questions from reporters — to the point where journalists stopped showing up at the daily briefings or even trying to draw out useful information from the uncooperative White House press operation — against that backdrop, the CNN correspondent thought it was newsworthy that his question wasn’t answered by the new Democratic White House spokesman.
In other words, a routine, everyday press occurrence under Bush (a reporter gets a non-answer) suddenly transformed itself into a news event under Obama.
Do reporters deserve to get straight answers at the White House? Yes. Was Henry’s query a legitimate one? Absolutely. But when the non-answers came from Bush spokesmen and women, the working press corps seemed to shrug it off. On Obama’s first day, though, an unsatisfactory response was suddenly worthy of discussion on cable television. Why? From the press’ perspective, Democratic administrations are supposed to answer all questions. They’re supposed to grant carte blanche access to the press. Republicans could do whatever they wanted to the daily briefing and defang the process to the point of irrelevancy. But Democrats? Sorry, a different set of rules apply.
That double standard explained why there was so much media chatter last week after Obama, while making a good-natured social visit to the White House press workspace, waved off a substantive question about a high-level appointment of his. Pressed again by Politico‘s Jonathan Martin, Obama responded good-naturedly, “We will be having a press conference, at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys. That’s all I was trying to do.” (“A testy exchange,” gasped Politico.)
But did the press ever needle Bush with uncomfortable questions when he made social calls? Please note that in August 2006, when Bush made a rare unannounced visit to the White House press room — and this was years after Bush had broadcast his open contempt for the press — there were no tough questions. As Froomkin reported at the time:
So there was something entirely appropriate about Bush stopping by the briefing room yesterday not to answer (or even be asked) a single substantive question — but to insult pretty much everyone in spitting distance.
Bush mocked members of the media to their face that day by tossing out several insults, and none of them asked a substantive question. Obama was gracious with reporters and was rewarded with a gotcha moment, which the press corps then obsessed over.
More proof that the Rip Van Winkle press corps has been stirred from its slumber.
—Eric Boehlert
Media Matters for America
