Posted on 08/12/2006 10:59:32 AM PDT by Mo1
GREEN BAY, Wis. - On one of the scariest days yet in the five-year battle with terrorists, President Bush prepared to make a speech to reassure the American people. But the White House press corps was 1,000 miles away in Texas.
Bush had left his ranch vacation and jetted north for a scheduled closed-door fundraiser. No press plane accompanied him. And so when news broke that Britain had broken up a major terrorist plot, the only ones there to convey the president's reaction were a handful of local reporters and a few pool journalists who ride in the back of Air Force One.
The idea that Bush could travel across the country without a full contingent of reporters, especially in the middle of a war, highlights a major cultural shift in the presidency and the news media. In the four decades since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, presidents traditionally have taken journalists with them wherever they traveled on the theory that when it comes to the most powerful leader on the planet, anything can happen at any time.
Striking out alone
But increasingly in recent months, Bush has left town without a chartered press plane, often to receptions where he talks to donors chipping in hundreds of thousands of dollars with no cameras or tapes to record his words for the public. Barred from such events, most news organizations will not pay to travel with him. And so a White House policy inclined to secrecy has combined with escalating costs for the strapped news media to let Bush fly under the radar in a way his predecessors could not.
"A lot of it is a reflection of the times," said C-SPAN's Steve Scully, president of the White House Correspondents' Association. "The whole thing is changing."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Isn't this, you know... kind of the key sentence?
What a whiney, spoiled little bastard. He's just upset bacause the President doesn't cater to his every whim. I'd leave without him, too.
it's all about them
let the press pay for their own tickets, spoiled brats
They can't stand it that he doesn't kiss the a** every minute of the day. He isn't the first President to do this and hopefully he won't be the last. I don't remember anything in the constitution that requires the President to have any reporters tagging along after him where ever he goes!
These press guys have an inflated opinion of themselves. It's not shared by the rest of us.
What a bunch of media cry-babies. I'm surprised David Gregory is not identified as either a co-author or contributor to this story.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said there is nothing insidious about closing fundraisers in private homes and noted that news organizations choose whether to pay for a plane follow the president. "It's really all about money," he said. "It used to be that media organizations had more dough."
Why bother talking to brain dead morons who never bother to accurately report what he says? The President has better thing to do then waste time on the vastly over inflated egos and less then room temperature intellects that people the Washington Press corp. Hey Junk Media, try being "Journalists" again and not Democrat Party PR flacks with your arrogant bombastic pronouncements pretending to be "Questions" and we will talk, otherwise, don't waste our time with your hysterics self important posturing
HAR! I love it.
Smart move... ;o) MSM are nothing more than whores for the left....why should taxpayers pay for them to fly around with the President anyway...let their news organization foot the bills.....
I credit Tony Snow 100%.
Clinton totally ignored them during the impeachment era but they didn't seem to mind that too much.
*L* .. I've noticed that too .. Tony nails the press all the time
The world needs the MSM like a fish needs Gloria Steinem on a bicycle.
As reporters they are supposed to report the story that the Press Secretary relates to them, there should not be different versions. There seem to be many commentators that will give the different versions, whether true or not.
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