By Brigitte L. Nacos
Under the headline "A Growing Separation of Press and State" Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank laments today the new distance between the President and his White House on two counts: First, because the White House press quarters are being renovated, reporters moved into temporary facilities elsewhere in Washington, and second, because President Bush travels increasingly without a press plane into the hinterland to sell sunny assessments of his policies without facing the national media. Wouldn't it be marvelous, if Milbank's headline had it right in one respect, namely, a press truly separate from media-savvy White Houses, departments, and agencies--a news media not acting like a beast that is tamed by being fed the official lines of the day by the disciplined stay-on-message crowd?
Whereas efforts to manage the news are as old as the White House and pushed by all presidents starting with George Washington, modern White Houses have taken the staging and managing of the news to another level. As far as the present regime is concerned, it must be music in the ears of the President and those around him that the Post headline equates him with the state and seems to accept the post-9/11 maxim of this presidency: L'etat c'est moi a la Louis XIV.
No wonder that much of the pertinent post-9/11 reporting resembled more that of court scribes than of watchdogs--not just when it comes to crucial policies. The other day, for example, one of the leading wire services reported that President Bush was returning to Washington from his "working" vacation at his Texas ranch. That's precisely the terminology that the White Houses uses and wants--working holiday or working vacation--not just plain holiday or vacation at a time of multiple crises...
Whether the press works from quarters in the White House or from temporary facilities elsewhere in Washington, the problem surrounding the tamed post-9/11 watchdog transcends the physical distance between president and press.
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