BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press

Subject: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 02:21 PM

The scandalous manipulation of the press by Rove strategists is just another flag that the consittutional republic we thought we lived in is being shredded by extremism at the top.


From Salon (paid subscription pages):

"Jeff Gannon's" incredible access
There's evidence he got into White House briefings before he was a "reporter."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert


Feb. 17, 2005  |  James Guckert's mysterious career as a White House correspondent for Talon News just took another strange twist. And once again, the newest revelation begs the central question: Who broke the rules on Guckert's behalf to give him access to the White House? Despite administration claims that Guckert simply followed established protocol in order to routinely slip inside the White House briefing room, it now appears clear that Guckert, who just months before his 2003 debut as a cub reporter was offering himself up online as a $200 an hour male escort, benefited from extraordinary preferential treatment, likely granted by someone inside the White House press office.


Thanks to the continued digging by online sleuths, there's now documented evidence that Guckert attended White House briefings as early as February 2003. Guckert, using his alias "Jeff Gannon," once boasted online about asking then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer a question at the Feb. 28, 2003, briefing. The date is significant because in order to receive a White House press pass, Guckert would have needed to prove that he worked for a news organization that, in the words of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, "published regularly," in itself an extraordinarily low threshold. Critics have charged that while Talon News may publish regularly, it boasts a nearly all-volunteer news team which includes not a single person with actual journalism experience. (The team does, though, have quite a bit of experience working on Republican campaigns.) In other words, the outfit is not legitimate nor independent, two criteria often used in Washington, D.C., to receive press credentials.





But what's significant about the February 2003 date is that Talon did not even exist then. The organization was created in late March 2003, and began publishing online in early April 2003. Gannon, a jack of all trades who spent time in the military as well as working at an auto repair shop (not to mention escorting), has already stated publicly that Talon News was his first job in journalism. That means he wasn't working for any other news outlet in February 2003 when he was spotted by C-Span cameras inside the White House briefing room. And that means Guckert was ushered into the White House press room in February 2003 for a briefing despite the fact he was not a journalist.
Whereas it was once suspected that White House press officials in charge of doling out coveted press passes went easy on Guckert, a Republican partisan working for an amateurish news outlet who would routinely ask softball questions, it now appears those same unnamed White House officials simply ignored all established credential standards -- including detailed security guidelines -- and gave Guckert White House access, even though he had no professional standing whatsoever.


For more than a week White House officials have refused to answer any of Salon's questions regarding the credential process used for Guckert's press passes.


Democrats on the Hill are also looking for answers. Last week, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., requested from McClellan all documents related to Guckert's press passes. On Wednesday, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Homeland Security, in search of all information related to Guckert's credentials and security clearance to cover the White House. On Wednesday Slaughter noted, "With each new revelation it becomes more and more clear that the relationship between the White House and Jeff Gannon was anything but typical. It is time for this Administration to stop the stonewalling and come clean with the American people."


President Bush called on Guckert during a Jan. 26 press conference. "It is a huge deal for Bush to pick on you at a press conferences," says a member of the White House press corps. "There are people in the press room who have covered Bush for four years and haven't had a chance to ask him a question." Ironically, it was Guckert's time in the spotlight on Jan. 26 that triggered his downfall. After asking a loaded, partisan question, in which Guckert mocked Democratic leaders for being "divorced from reality," liberal critics online began digging into his qualifications, Talon's partisan ties, and eventually into Guckert's unusual past. Guckert resigned as Talon White House correspondent on Feb. 9.


The question about credentials remains key. The vast majority of reporters covering the White House have what's called a "hard," or permanent, pass. To obtain one they have to verify they work for a recognized news organization with job responsibilities covering the White House. They have to submit to a lengthy security background check conducted by the FBI, which can take months to complete and requires being photographed and fingerprinted. Journalists also must verify to the White House they already have credentials to cover Capitol Hill. Without them, the White House won't complete a hard pass request.


In late 2003 Guckert applied for a Capitol Hill pass and was denied because Talon, which enjoys close ties to GOPUSA.com, was not deemed to be a legitimate, independent news outlet. That in and of itself should have been a red flag for the White House press office. Yet for nearly two years, it allowed Guckert to circumvent the hard pass system by using a day pass whenever he needed White House access. The day pass requires just a minimal background check. It was designed to be used on a temporary basis, such as for reporters coming in from out of town to cover the White House for a brief period. Guckert, though, with the help of somebody inside the press office, turned the day pass system into his own revolving door. That was when he was at least working for Talon News.


To learn Guckert was waved into the White House for fourth estate briefings even before he was affiliated with any kind of news outlet is startling.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 02:24 PM

Sidney Blumenthal, also in the paid pages of Salon:

Midnight cowboy in the garden of Bush and evil
The phony journalist in the White House is the most bizarre example yet of the administration's efforts to thwart an independent press.


- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal




Feb. 17, 2005  |  The White House press room has often been a cockpit of intrigue, duplicity and truckling. But nothing imagined on "The West Wing," or occurring before in the actual West Wing, challenges the most recent scandal there in phantasmagorical possibility.


The latest incident began with a sequence of questions for President Bush at his Jan. 26 press conference. First, he was asked whether he approved of his administration's payments to conservative commentators. Government contracts had been granted to three pundits, who had tried to keep the funding hidden. "There needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press," said the president as he swiftly called on his next questioner.


A man then known as Jeff Gannon, Washington bureau chief of Talon News, rose from his chair to speak in a way that did not seem designed to elicit information. "Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

Each of his assertions was false, gleaned from right-wing talk radio, where Gannon himself was frequently quoted and highlighted as an expert guest. On Fox News, one host hailed him as "a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent." For almost two years, in the daily White House press briefings, Gannon had been called upon by press secretary Scott McClellan to break up difficult questioning from the rest of the press. But who was Gannon? His strange nonquestion to the president inspired inquiry.


Talon News is a wholly owned subsidiary of a group of Texas Republicans called GOPUSA. Gannon's notable articles had consisted of asserting that John Kerry "might someday be known as 'the first gay president'" and a false story that an "intern" with whom Kerry was wrongly alleged to have had an affair had given an interview to a "major television network."


Gannon had also gotten himself entangled in the investigation into the criminal disclosure of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame is the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a mission by the Bush administration to discover whether Saddam Hussein was procuring uranium in Niger for nuclear weapons. He learned that the suspicion was bogus; appalled that the administration had lied about nuclear WMD to justify the Iraq war, he wrote an article in the New York Times about his role. In retaliation, administration officials blew Plame's CIA cover to conservative columnist Robert Novak. Gannon had called up Wilson to ask him about a secret CIA memo supposedly proving that his wife had sent him on the mission to Niger, prompting the special prosecutor in the case to question Gannon about his "sources."


It turned out that Jeff Gannon's real name is James Dale Guckert and that he had no journalistic background whatsoever. His application for a press credential to cover Congress, a process handled there by reporters, was rejected. But at the White House the press office arranged for him to be given a new pass every single day, a highly unusual and deliberate evasion of the regular credentialing that requires an FBI security check, which likely would have discovered more about Guckert. More information soon was revealed. Guckert owned and advertised his services as a gay escort on more than half a dozen Web sites, with names like Militarystud.com, MaleCorps.com, WorkingBoys.net and MeetLocalMen.com, featuring dozens of photographs of Guckert in dramatic naked poses. One of the sites was still active this week.


Thus a phony journalist planted by a Republican operation, used by the White House press secretary to interrupt questions from the press corps, called on by the president for a safe question, protected from FBI vetting by the press office, disseminating innuendo and smears about critics and opponents of the administration, some of them gay-baiting, was unmasked not only as a hireling and fraud but as a gay prostitute, with enormous potential for blackmail.


The Bush White House is the most opaque, allowing the least access for reporters, in living memory. All news organizations have significant economic interests subject to government regulation. Every organization seems to be intimidated, and reporters who have done stories the administration finds discomfiting have received threats about their careers. The administration has its own quasi-official state TV network in Fox News; hundreds of right-wing radio shows, conservative newspapers and journals, and Internet sites coordinate with the Republican apparatus.


Lifting the heavy Puritan curtain draping Bush's Washington reveals enlightening scenes of its decadent anthropology. Even as Guckert's true colors were revealed, the administration issued orders that the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" be removed from the program of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention. But the transparent hypocrisy of conservative "values" hardly deters a ruthless government.


The experiment of inserting an agent directly into the White House press corps was a daring operation. Guckert's "legend," in the language of espionage, was that he was a news director, and his "false flag" was journalism. Until his exposure, this midnight cowboy in the garden of Bush and evil proved marginally useful for the White House. But the affair's longer-run implication is the Republican effort to sideline an independent press and undermine its legitimacy. "Spin" seems too quaint. "In this day and age," said McClellan, waxing philosophical about the Gannon affair, "when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist." The problem is not that the White House press secretary cannot distinguish who is or is not a journalist; it is that there are no journalists, just the gaming of the system for the concentration of power.

---

Is this slimey enough to motivate impeachment? In a moral sense it certainly is, I think.

Legally it probably depends on the degree of uproar. :>)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 02:31 PM

Jon Stewart provides a wonderful summary of this interesting scandal:

Quicktime of Stewart's Show

Enjoy.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 02:42 PM

Fran Rich of the NEw York Times weighs in:

The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Published: February 20, 2005



HE prayers of those hoping that real television news might take its cues from Jon Stewart were finally answered on Feb. 9, 2005. A real newsman borrowed a technique from fake news to deliver real news about fake news in prime time.

Let me explain.

On "Countdown," a nightly news hour on MSNBC, the anchor, Keith Olbermann, led off with a classic "Daily Show"-style bit: a rapid-fire montage of sharply edited video bites illustrating the apparent idiocy of those in Washington. In this case, the eight clips stretched over a year in the White House briefing room - from February 2004 to late last month - and all featured a reporter named "Jeff." In most of them, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, says "Go ahead, Jeff," and "Jeff" responds with a softball question intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents. In the last clip, "Jeff" is quizzing the president himself, in his first post-inaugural press conference of Jan. 26. Referring to Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, "Jeff" asks, "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

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If we did not live in a time when the news culture itself is divorced from reality, the story might end there: "Jeff," you'd assume, was a lapdog reporter from a legitimate, if right-wing, news organization like Fox, and you'd get some predictable yuks from watching a compressed video anthology of his kissing up to power. But as Mr. Olbermann explained, "Jeff Gannon," the star of the montage, was a newsman no more real than a "Senior White House Correspondent" like Stephen Colbert on "The Daily Show" and he worked for a news organization no more real than The Onion. Yet the video broadcast by Mr. Olbermann was not fake. "Jeff" was in the real White House, and he did have those exchanges with the real Mr. McClellan and the real Mr. Bush.

"Jeff Gannon's" real name is James D. Guckert. His employer was a Web site called Talon News, staffed mostly by volunteer Republican activists. Media Matters for America, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that Talon's "news" often consists of recycled Republican National Committee and White House press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, GOPUSA, with which it shares its owner, a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican convention. Nonetheless, for nearly two years the White House press office had credentialed Mr. Guckert, even though, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post explained on Mr. Olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."

How this happened is a mystery that has yet to be solved. "Jeff" has now quit Talon News not because he and it have been exposed as fakes but because of other embarrassing blogosphere revelations linking him to sites like hotmilitarystud.com and to an apparently promising career as an X-rated $200-per-hour "escort." If Mr. Guckert, the author of Talon News exclusives like "Kerry Could Become First Gay President," is yet another link in the boundless network of homophobic Republican closet cases, that's not without interest. But it shouldn't distract from the real question - that is, the real news - of how this fake newsman might be connected to a White House propaganda machine that grows curiouser by the day. Though Mr. McClellan told Editor & Publisher magazine that he didn't know until recently that Mr. Guckert was using an alias, Bruce Bartlett, a White House veteran of the Reagan-Bush I era, wrote on the nonpartisan journalism Web site Romenesko, that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." (Otherwise, it would be a rather amazing post-9/11 security breach.)

By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives. The other four have played real newsmen on TV. Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia. Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news. They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004. Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.

(excerpt).

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Jim Tailor
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 02:46 PM

Even if the darkest view of this scandalous behavior is taken, how does that undermine freedom of the press?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 02:48 PM

The Maureen Down column on this hot topic, in her usually zestful and pentrating style, is called "Bush's Barberini Faun", and it is well worth reading.

The original Barberini Faun is portrayed on this page in case tghe reference is unclear -- a classic nude male statue.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 02:53 PM

Jim:

If you sell milk as full milk, but actually water it down with a 10% mixture of chalk and water, what does that do to the nutritional value of milk?

If you followed the threads I have posted here and in the "Popular Views of the Bush Administration" thread you would find that aside from falsifying the press, so that its relative freedom becomes as meaningless as the virtue of a whore, they have also prosecuted journalists for exercising traditional freedoms, such as trying to force anyone who investigated the Valerie Plair exposure to reveal all they knew even if no story was written.

Here are four other sources who can answer the question for you:

http://www.americablog.org/

http://www.dailykos.com/

http://atrios.blogspot.com/


http://rawstory.com/

A.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Jim Tailor
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 03:01 PM

Is there a person alive who doesn't think that the press is whore for one side or the other? LOL!! And Dan Rather just goofed!

Never thought I'd be the cynical one of the two of us!

I'm off to a weekend of endless guitar playing. Some pals and I are meeting -- some travelling over 750 miles! -- to meet in a hotel room and play all weekend 'til our fingers bleed. Maybe I'll continue this on t'other side.

....or maybe you'll turn it into another megathread rant, eh?!

Slap happy for me wouldja?!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 03:07 PM

And it looks like there will be a limiting of class-action lawsuits against large companies now. Maybe it's time Americans got a bit nervous, no?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 03:14 PM

"At last month's press conference, Jeff Gannon asked Mr. Bush how he could work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." But Bush officials have divorced themselves from reality.

They flipped TV's in the West Wing and Air Force One to Fox News. They paid conservative columnists handsomely to promote administration programs. Federal agencies distributed packaged "news" video releases with faux anchors so local news outlets would run them. As CNN reported, the Pentagon produces Web sites with "news" articles intended to influence opinion abroad and at home, but you have to look hard for the disclaimer: "Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense." The agencies spent a whopping $88 million spinning reality in 2004, splurging on P.R. contracts.

Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy. It's worse than hating the press. It's an attempt to reinvent it."

E-mail: [e-mail]


Jim, I hope someone is bringing a fiddle, and you enjoy the hell out of it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: DougR
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 05:51 PM

Hopefully, Amos, you will become aware at some point that you are preaching to the choir. Is this to be yet another 1000+ thread calling attention to opinions written by newspaper columnists, bloggers, etc. who hate Bush? You really do need to get a life.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 06:11 PM

Thanks, Doug. I don't believe any administration has ever shown such militant disregard for reason, a free and fairly informed press, the repute of the nation, or any of its hard-earned highest standards of decency. You will forgive me if I feel it is my civic duty to make what waves I can about it. I am sorry to say your efforts to make me shut up and get all introspective do not succeed at having a chilling effect; I have been introverted by masters, and your efforts don't slow me down at all.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 06:48 PM

There are a limited number of seats in that press room, and important questions to be asked. When those seats are filled with bogus reporters, the number of hard questions that might get asked are diminished. Bush likes it that way, he probably loves having softballs pitched straight at him.

Bernard Kerik and James D. Guckert/Jeff Gannon are just the kinds of folks who need to be outed. It would be lovely if they could take Bush with them. Or better yet, take Rove, and the machine in the rose garden may collapse.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 06:50 PM

Interesting Amos - we haven't yet discovered such games in Australia - here Little Johnny just doesn't say anything - such as "I'm Sorry" or just denies things apparently to the point of outright lies - so far. Don't give him ideas....

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 07:18 PM

Yeah, Dougie, Amos may be preachin' to the choir but one thing is fir sure, when Bush and his crooks get around to messin with you, you won't be able to say you didn't have a clue.

This stuff is happening and I guess you figure that at yer age no one is ever gonna make you uncimfy and I hope they don't, 'der thay'll have to go thru me first. But that's not the point. You are supporting a guy who makes Slick Willie look like a Boy Scout, and that is hard to do.

Using shills in news conferences is dow right dishonest. Not only that, it demonstartes just how scared that yer guy is that a tought question might sneak in in just knowing that if one does then Bush can just provide a juvinile response and go onto his planted shill, Jeff.

Had Clinton been caught doing this you would have had Ken Starr spend another $50M of tax payers money investigating it...

I loves ya, Dougie, but you is one hypocriical person.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 07:24 PM

Yo, Amos, check out tonight's NSNBC News when it finds it's way to California. This story got about a minute just s few minutes ago on the other coast...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Teresa
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 07:48 PM

Why read 1984 when you can get a good dose of it in reality? :-P pffffft :>

Teresa

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: DougR
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 10:25 PM

Yep, the sky is definitely falling.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Kaleea
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 11:15 PM

Undermine Freedom? Dubblepew?! Are we shocked? NOT!!!!!
undermining freedom is what he's all about. OOps, I forgot, he's a texas oilman & oil is what he's all about.. Oops, I forgot, then there's the family armament company that first sold weaponry to sadsack insane when pappy put him into power. Power! Oh, yeah! that's it. that's what dubblepew is all about.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Feb 05 - 11:23 PM

Yeah, Kaleea, ahhh I could maybe give a few detils but would you like to elaborate of the deals of Precott Bush....

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Peace
Date: 18 Feb 05 - 03:59 AM

DougR correct. The shy IS falling!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 05 - 04:41 AM

Great site, Brucie!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Sawzaw
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 11:54 AM

The Washington Post

In his first daytime news conference yesterday, President Obama preempted "All My Children," "Days of Our Lives" and "The Young and the Restless." But the soap viewers shouldn't have been disappointed: The president had arranged some prepackaged entertainment for them.

After the obligatory first question from the Associated Press, Obama treated the overflowing White House briefing room to a surprise. "I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post," he announced.

Obama knew this because White House aides had called Pitney the day before to invite him, and they had escorted him into the room. They told him the president was likely to call on him, with the understanding that he would ask a question about Iran that had been submitted online by an Iranian. "I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet," Obama went on. "Do you have a question?"

Pitney recognized his prompt. "That's right," he said, standing in the aisle and wearing a temporary White House press pass. "I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian."

Pitney asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: GUEST,999
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 01:43 PM

That article is from June 24, 2009.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 01:54 PM

///the American press isn't as free as advertised.////

DUH!! Why is this news all the sudden?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Amos
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 02:22 PM

Jaysus, Sawz, try to move up a little closer to the present, why doncha?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Sawzaw
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 02:28 PM

Please explain how things have changed Amos.

Perhaps this is new enough:

In his latest push for a health care overhaul bill, President Obama spoke to doctors in the White House Rose Garden yesterday. Painting a nice picture of the event were many media outlets that neglected to mention the White House's doctoring of the audience in an attempt at a powerful photo-op.

Doctors attending the event were instructed to show up in white lab coats to give observers the feeling that doctors stand behind the President's health care plans.

"White Coats in the Rose Garden, as Obama Rallies Doctors on Health Overhaul," read a New York Times blog post headline. "The roughly 150 doctors assembled wore white lab coats under the brilliant fall sun," the Washington Post recalled. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Obama faced rows of smiling doctors, all wearing white lab coats." NBC News also noted the white coats donned by the doctors in attendance.

But none of these media outlets mentioned that the White House had to hand out lab coats to a number of the doctors in attendance who showed up in business attire. Apparently trying to drive home the image of medical professionals applauding the President, the White House would not start the press conference until all of the doctors were dressed in the "spiffy" outfits, in the President's words.

The Washington Post and the New York Times included pictures in their respective stories showing white-coated doctors listening to and conversing with the President.

According to the Associated Press, the Obama offered nothing new in his address to the doctors, so the event was clearly an opportunity to show the country that medical professionals support his plan. Many major media outlets declined to note the botched attempt to enhance the 'doctors-support-the-plan' image of the event, playing right into the White House's objectives.

Rather than cover the clear attempt by the President to use visuals to enhance the public perception of support from the industry, media outlets chose to rehash White House talking points.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Sawzaw
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 02:31 PM

When Obama met with Repubs over the health care reform bill, he accused them of bringing a prop when they put the bill itself on the table.

The actual object of the meeting is a prop?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 02:39 PM

///The actual object of the meeting is a prop?///

Maybe they were using it for their song and dance act.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Undermines Freedom of Press
From: Sawzaw
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 03:38 PM

Mr. Obama managed to produce a young man as a prop. They handed out lab coats. They staged a question a question at a press conference. Was it a song and dance?

Your assertion that bringing the bill to the meeting was part of a song and dance is pure rhetoric.