By Barbara Cochran, RTDNA President Emeritus

President Obama is in Prague today to meet with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and to sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty. Ordinarily, this would be considered a big story. But, in a rare occurrence, the President made the trip from Washington to a foreign capital without the usual White House press charter.

U.S. news organizations do have reporters covering the story in Prague and the President carried the customary press pool on Air Force One. But the American reporters who made it to Prague got there on their own, not on the chartered airplane that usually accompanies the President on all his travels.

It’s just one small sign of how news coverage in Washington is changing. The changes raise concerns about how well the public will be kept informed in the future about what the federal government is doing.

Coverage is changing for two reasons – financial pressures on media companies and changes in technology that allow public officials to get around what some call “the filter” of journalists.

Finances were behind the cancellation of the press charter to Prague. News organizations reasoned that they could deploy fewer troops than in the past and send those that do go to a major city for a one-day presidential visit by regular commercial flights, rather than on an expensive charter flight. At a time when major newspapers and networks are making deep budget cuts, it’s not surprising that some would decide this was a good place to save money.

A news organization’s decision not to travel with the President is not without risks. On 9/11, then-President George W. Bush was on a routine trip to Florida, a trip that in advance did not appear to have great news value. But because the White House press corps did travel with him, journalists were able to report immediately on how the President was responding to the crisis during a time of confusion and chaos.

An incident like that shows why skipping the press charter is a chancy proposition. And financial pressures that trigger charter cancellations also hurt Washington watchdog coverage when bureaus are closed or downsized and beats are abolished.   

Technology is also making inroads into how Washington’s news coverage works. Obama staffers brought social media tools from the campaign trail into the White House and have deployed them like no previous administration. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has begun distributing news exclusively by Twitter, prompting a number of journalists on the beat to sign up for Twitter accounts. The White House photographer posts his exclusive behind-the-scenes photos of the President and his family on Flickr.

A White House aide recently told the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove that the White House has 1.7 million followers on Twitter, about 500,000 fans on Facebook, and 70,000 email subscribers. The public has access to news and photos from the White House at the same time the journalists do.

As ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper said in an interview with RTDNA, “Reaching around the filter is not new, but these techniques are.”  

Tapper, a web-savvy reporter who came to ABC News from the online magazine, Salon.com, said he has no problem with the White House using social media technology. What he is concerned about are occasions when the White House excludes the news media from events that have been open to coverage in the past. That happened when Obama signed the executive order on abortion to bolster passage of the health care bill and only the White House photographer was allowed at the event.

“What if there was an awkward moment?” Tapper asked.

The news cameras weren’t there to record it. 

For the White House to try to control the message and go directly to the public is nothing new. What makes this different are the financial pressures forcing news organizations to trim back on what they spend on coverage and the new technological tools available to reach the public without an intermediary.

Veterans in the Washington press corps are concerned. Hearst columnist Helen Thomas told Grove, “It’s a tragedy in my book—it means less accountability. We certainly haven’t had any news conferences in a long time, which reminds me of Watergate in the sense of a long time of not having press conferences. Obama has given a lot of interviews, but that doesn’t reveal the whole picture at all.”

 

 

 

 
     
 

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White House excluding media

I am the National Security Correspondent at WTOP Radio. Barbara Cochran\'s piece hit the nail on the head. On Apr. 6, 2010 at White House press spokesman said to me, \"talking to local radio stations is not a good use of our time.\" Considering how many people we reach (1.5) million people, it strikes me as short sighted and they seem pretty adamant about it. When you consider that National Security Officials across the Obama administration are telling reporters in confindence that they are frustrated with the White House\'s \"muzzling\" of them, you you begin to see a pattern that unfortunately suggests deep divisions inside the intel community.