I’ve written many times about how the Obama Administration (which promised to be the most transparent), is actually the least transparent. It’s not just the refusal of FOIA requests, the NDAA, banker immunity and attacks on whistleblowers. The Obama team is very purposefully putting out its own media propaganda, which it tries to pass off for news, while there is almost zero press oversight allowed. We find out from the Huffington Post that:
Capitalizing on the possibilities of the digital age, the Obama White House is generating its own content like no president before, and refining its media strategies in the second term in hopes of telling a more compelling story than in the first.
At the same time, it is limiting press access in ways that past administrations wouldn’t have dared, and the president is answering to the public in more controlled settings than his predecessors. It’s raising new questions about what’s lost when the White House tries to make an end run around the media, functioning, in effect, as its own news agency.
Mike McCurry, who served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton, sees an inclination by the Obama White House to “self-publish,” coupled with tactics “I never would have dreamed of in terms of restricting access” for independent news organizations.
Obama himself took note of complaints about limited access in his jokes last month at the Gridiron dinner, an annual event where political leaders, journalists and media executives poke fun at one another.
“Some of you have said that I’m ignoring the Washington press corps, that we’re too controlling,” Obama said. “You know what, you were right. I was wrong and I want to apologize — in a video you can watch exclusively at whitehouse.gov.”
Three days later, it was no laughing matter when the White House live-streamed on the Internet Obama’s meeting with his export council and allowed just one reporter in the room.
Meanwhile, all these idiot journalists laugh it up at his jokes. There’s nothing funny about the collapse of your profession.
Statistics compiled by Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University in Maryland who studies presidential communication, show how Obama’s strategy has differed from his predecessors’.
In his first term, Obama engaged in 107 short question-and-answer sessions with reporters during events in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and similar settings. President George W. Bush, by contrast, had 354.
Kumar, the Towson professor, warns that the administration can even delude itself if it puts too much emphasis on self-reinforcing content.
“They start believing what they’re creating,” she says. “They need to hear a lot of voices and they need to hear them early.”
In other news, Oceania is now at war with Eurasia.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Mike
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The media has been complicit for years and now are fully a part of the machine. No other explanation is plausible
What Richard Adler said. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the final nail in the coffin for the US media. By allowing consolodation of ownership, Chomsky’s filters were entirely implemented.
And Eastasia is being teed up.
“There’s nothing funny about the collapse of your profession.” Score another wonderfully crafted quote to Mr. Krieger.