With Milbank moved from reporting into Editorializing, his promise to eventually publish the actual *contents* of the Democratic Party Senate Intelligence Committee memos will no doubt continue to be broken.
Posted on 12/17/2004 3:39:37 PM PST by Pikamax
Good News for the White House: Milbank Is Off the Beat. The Bad News . . . The Bush White House finally got what it has wanted for years: Dana Milbank is off the White House beat for the Washington Post. He always was very skeptical of the White House message.
The bad news for the Bushies is that Milbank will be writing a column in the Post’s front section. Prospective title is Off Message.
Moving Milbank off the front lines is part of the Post’s strategy for covering the second Bush term. The Post is changing its entire team of White House reporters. Milbank, Mike Allen, and Amy Goldstein are out; Mike Fletcher, Jim VandeHei, and Peter Baker are in.
For the first time in years, the Post will throw a true triple team at the White House. The Post usually has assigned two primary reporters and a third to lie back and write about domestic policy. Fletcher, VandeHei, and Baker will take turns on primary daily coverage, then look for stories with more depth and punch.
VandeHei and Baker have covered the White House before, VandeHei for the Wall Street Journal and Baker for the Post. Fletcher is new to the beat, but he brings years of experience writing about education and race. He’s the first African-American to cover the White House for the Post since Juan Williams two decades ago.
The Post will be competing with a New York Times trio that will stay from the first term: Elisabeth Bumiller, David Sanger, and Richard Stevenson. At the Los Angeles Times, Warren Vieth and Peter Wallsten will join Ed Chen to cover the White House. The Wall Street Journal assigned John McKinnon and Christopher Cooper to handle the new term.
But as Times Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman says, there’s more than the Post and other big dailies out there.
“The old days when you could count your competitors on one hand is long gone,” says Taubman. “If there’s a good story on a blog site, that’s competition.”
The toughest hand-to-hand combat will still be between reporters and the Bush White House, which has succeeded so far in pretty well controlling its message, squelching leaks, and doling out information in deliberate fashion.
“They were so successful at freezing out reporters,” says VandeHei. “They are emboldened.”
Says Taubman: “This White House is very disciplined. We have to figure out how to pry out more information.”
Taubman and other Washington journalists hope that the changing of the Bush Cabinet might help reporters shake out some news stories that don’t support Bush-administration dogma. “Maybe things can be learned from those who are leaving,” Taubman says.
Discipline has eroded in the second terms of many presidents.
“Scandals of one kind or another can be disruptive to the discipline,” Taubman says.
Milbank managed to do a good job covering Bush’s first term despite being frozen out by the top echelon. He had come to the Washington Post from the New Republic, where he could write with an acerbic touch. The White House complained to his editors that he was taking his attitude and bias into the news columns. With a column, Milbank will be unleashed.
“It will have plenty of attitude and judgment,” he says, “but it will not have ideological opinions.”
Milbank, 36, hopes to model the column after the parliamentary sketches in British newspapers. They are reported columns about the highlights and lowlights of the day’s political parade. Milbank will try to do much the same at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Milbank ran into White House communications director Dan Bartlett at the White House Christmas party and gave him the news about his column.
“It will give me a chance to pick on other people,” Milbank says he told Bartlett, who was pleased. Milbank asked him to send along some ideas.
“It could be the beginning of a great friendship between me and Dan,” Milbank says.
The Compost repositioning its "troops" for the all-out offensive against the Bush Administration.
"...Washington journalists hope that the changing of the Bush Cabinet might help reporters shake out some news stories that don’t support Bush-administration dogma."
Nope... no bias here...no-sir-ee.
Just for fun, can anyone name any news stories from the MSM that DID support Bush-administration "dogma".
Heck, anyone remember the MSM referring to Clinton dogma?
Actually that's not bad. Let's get Milbank's obnoxious opinionating out in the open under a clear label, rather than disguised as "reporting".
With Milbank moved from reporting into Editorializing, his promise to eventually publish the actual *contents* of the Democratic Party Senate Intelligence Committee memos will no doubt continue to be broken.
<“It will have plenty of attitude and judgment,” he says, “but it will not have ideological opinions.”>
Law of journalism #14. Whenever a public figure says he avoids ideology and labels, his position on any given issue is probably liberal or Democratic.
See: Kerry, John F.
I just canceled my subscription to the Compost after 25 years. When I told them why (Left wing, anti-Bush bias), I got the impression they had heard it before. They asked me if I would miss the Thursday Food section, or the Friday movie reviews.
Not. Esp. since I had just seen the movie "Closer", because they said the most objectionable thing was that smoking and drinking were shown. Hah!
I honestly don't think this White House cares about individual "journalists".
They've an agenda. They have a plan to implement it. They have the 'git go' from the boss.
Milbank can go pound sand.
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