RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Free Speech in the Era of Obama

I read elsewhere it was a money play by Olbermann and he lost, doesn't mean of course the socialists won't use this as a way to attack free speech.

So much for the new-and-improved, "I'm not a bully," Rahm Emanuel.

Since returning to Chicago to run for mayor, Emanuel has shied away from the public outbursts and vulgar language that famously earned him the nickname "Rahmbo."

But I've learned the new-and-improved Rahm has a way to punish the press when they report on stories he doesn't like.

He cuts off access.

This week NBCChicago and Ward Room published details of the Emanuel Inauguration, which includes a plan to charge donors up to $50,000 for a premium seat at the swearing-in on May 16th. While noting that there will be "free, open and accessible" events around the ceremony, our writers took him to task for being the first Chicago mayor to charge a fee of any sort for his inaugural.

The Emanuel team says that money will pay for the event and save the taxpayers.

So the day after the "Mini White House Inaugural" was reported, the Emanuel team refused to notify NBC of rare one-on-one interviews allotted to our competitors. The TV business is competitive, but typically politicians and public figures who are involved with big events grant the same access to all-comers.

When we asked why we were left out of the mix, the Emanuel communications team implied they weren't happy with the coverage of the VIP inauguration. They didn't challenge facts, but were upset with tone. So they left us out.

It's an old game ... kill the messenger not the message; cut off the access.

The story continued on Friday, when during a press conference about Chicago Public Schools changes, Emanuel abruptly left the podium before taking questions about his inaugural, nor would he comment on a report about incoming communications director Chris Mather, who has racked up nine personnel complaints during her time at the USDA (See the above video for the Emanuel reaction and how I tried to follow up him.)

Remember what outgoing Alderman Berny Stone said about preparing Emperor Emanuel? Which Rahm replied "My family says I don't look good in a toga."

I have to agree.

Washington (CNN) -- Don't like the way airport screeners are doing their job? You might not want to complain too much while standing in line.

Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 "behavioral indicators" that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially "high risk" passengers at the nation's airports.

Many of the indicators, as characterized in open government reports, are behaviors and appearances that may be indicative of stress, fear or deception. None of them, as the TSA has long said, refer to or suggest race, religion or ethnicity.

But one addresses passengers' attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.

It reads: "Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures."

TSA officials declined to comment on the list of indicators, but said that no single indicator, taken by itself, is ever used to identify travelers as potentially high-risk passengers. Travelers must exhibit several indicators before behavior detection officers steer them to more thorough screening.

But a civil liberties organization said the list should not include behavior relating to the expression of opinions, even arrogant expressions of opinion.

When the even-keeled and cool President Obama gets prickly in public, it never goes unnoticed.

For Obama, who has carefully cultivated a reputation of easily managing confrontations with people who disagree with him, these moments are as rare as they are revealing of the person behind the presidency.

So it’s no surprise that Washington took notice when after a tense interview with a Texas TV reporter on Monday, Obama unclipped his microphone with no smile in sight, and tersely warned, “Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview, all right?”

The president of the United States was not happy. Obama had been corrected (he lost Texas by 12 points, not “a few,” in 2008), he was accused of punishing the state for political reasons (he denied that the White House had any part in the decision not to award a space shuttle to Houston), and he was challenged with the most basic of political questions: Why are you so unpopular in Texas?

And all that in a setting the White House anticipated would be largely free of tricky questions.

The conservative media type Matt Drudge broadcasted word of the interview on his website’s banner spot with the headline “First time: Reporter turns aggressive with Obama,” accompanied by the image of Obama, mid-reprimand.

On Twitter on Tuesday morning, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer took the bait by responding to the interview, which had been bouncing around the beltway echo chamber for hours.

The White House often expects the toughest questions from reporters outside of Washington, not the easiest, Pfeiffer tweeted.

The problem: The reporter’s questions weren’t particularly difficult, but they were clearly not what Obama was expecting. The result was a viral video that depicted Obama as angry when faced with tough questioning. And it unveiled some of the degree to which the White House would like to control its message.

Pfeiffer was asked by Time reporter Michael Scherer, “So will WFAA's Brad Watson get another interview one day?”

Instead of quickly taking the high road, Pfeiffer suggested that Watson may truly be out in the cold after irritating the president. And he did it by revealing yet another trick of Washington communications: playing one news outlet against its rival.

“Right around the time we do our next interview with @TIME. I am kidding ... or am I. @Newsweek is on the other line,” Pfeiffer responded.

It wasn’t the first time Obama has gotten a bit of bravado from local reporters who are granted a rare 7-minute one-on-one with him.

In March, just hours before Obama announced the attack on Libya, Philadelphia news reporter Jim Gardner was warned by Obama’s aides that he wouldn’t be taking any questions on that subject. Gardner asked anyway.

“I think as was already mentioned to you, I’m not going to comment beyond the statement that I made today,” Obama responded flatly.

That interview, which aired late on a Friday night, was buried beneath the news that Obama had ordered the strike. The White House had dodged another slew of potential headlines declaring that Obama had evaded a request to clarify the mission in Libya, but just barely.

There’s no question that there are significant upsides to the White House arranging local sit-downs. Among other reasons, the interviews shoot instantly to the top of local evening and nightly broadcasts in key battleground states like Florida, Philadelphia and, apparently, Texas. And outside the beltway, reporters might ask focused questions that give Obama a chance to circumvent the national narrative and pitch the local impact of his policies.

But Obama’s latest interview indicates at least some of the potential downsides. Obama’s prickly response to Watson’s questioning not only made the local news, but it suddenly became the national news as well.

The hip, transparent and social media-loving Obama administration is showing its analog roots. And maybe even some hypocrisy highlights.

White House officials have banished one of the best political reporters in the country from the approved pool of journalists covering presidential visits to the Bay Area for using now-standard multimedia tools to gather the news.

The Chronicle's Carla Marinucci - who, like many contemporary reporters, has a phone with video capabilities on her at all times - pulled out a small video camera last week and shot some protesters interrupting an Obama fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel.

She was part of a "print pool" - a limited number of journalists at an event who represent their bigger hoard colleagues - which White House press officials still refer to quaintly as "pen and pad" reporting.

But that's a pretty Flintstones concept of journalism for an administration that presents itself as the Jetsons. Video is every bit a part of any journalist's tool kit these days as a functioning pen that doesn't leak through your pocket.

In fact, Carla and her reporting colleague, Joe Garofoli, founded something called "Shaky Hand Productions" - the semi-pro, sometimes vertiginous use of a Flip or phone camera by Hearst reporters to catch more impromptu or urgent moments during last year's California gubernatorial race that might otherwise be missed by TV.

The name has become its own brand; often politicians even ask if anyone from Shaky Hand will show at their event. For Carla, Joe and reporters at other Hearst newsrooms where Shaky Hand has taken hold, this was an appropriate dive into use of other media by traditional journalists catering to audiences who expect their news delivered in all modes and manners.

That's the world we live in and the President of the United States claims to be one of its biggest advocates.

Just the day before Carla's Stone Age infraction, Mr. Obama was at Facebook seated next to its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and may as well have been wearing an "I'm With Mark" t-shirt for all the mutual admiration going back and forth.

"The main reason we wanted to do this is," Obama said of his appearance, "first of all, because more and more people, especially young people, are getting their information through different media. And historically, part of what makes for a healthy democracy, what is good politics, is when you've got citizens who are informed, who are engaged."

Informed, in other words, through social and other digital media where videos of news are posted.

The President and his staffers deftly used social media like Twitter and Facebook in his election campaign and continue to extol the virtues and value. Except, apparently, when it comes to the press.

So what's up with the White House? We can't say because neither Press Secretary Jay Carney nor anyone from his staff would speak on the record.

Other sources confirmed that Carla was vanquished, including Chronicle editor Ward Bushee, who said he was "informed that Carla was removed as a pool reporter." Which shouldn't be a secret in any case because it's a fact that affects the newsgathering of our largest regional paper (and sfgate)and how local citizens get their information.

What's worse: more than a few journalists familiar with this story are aware of some implied threats from the White House of additional and wider punishment if Carla's spanking became public. Really? That's a heavy hand usually reserved for places other than the land of the free.

But bravery is a challenge, in particular for White House correspondents, most of whom are seasoned and capable journalists. They live a little bit in a gilded cage where they have access to the most powerful man in the world but must obey the rules whether they make sense or not.

CBS News reporter, Mark Knoller, has publicly protested the limited press access to Obama fundraisers, calling the policy "inconsistent." "It's no way to do business," wrote Politico's Julie Mason, "especially [for] a candidate who prides himself on transparency."

A 2009 blog by the White House Director of New Media states that "President Obama is committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history."

Not last week.

Mason referred to the San Francisco St. Regis protest as "a highly newsworthy event" where "reporters had to rely on written pool reports..."

Except, thanks to Carla's quick action with her camera, they didn't.

I get that all powerful people and institutions want to control their image and their message. That's part of their job, to create a mythology that allows them to continue being powerful.

But part of the press' job is to do the opposite, to strip away the cloaks and veneers. By banning her, and by not acknowledging how contemporary media works, the White House did not just put Carla in a cage but more like one of those stifling pens reserved for calves on their way to being veal.

Carla cannot do her job to the best of her ability if she can't use all the tools available to her as a journalist. The public still sees the videos posted by protesters and other St. Regis attendees, because the technology is ubiquitous. But the Obama Administration apparently wants to give the distinct advantage to citizen witnesses at the expense of professionals.

Why? Well, they won't tell us.

Some White House reporters are grumbling almost as much as the Administration about Carla's "breaking the rules." I can understand how they'd be irritated. If you didn't get the video because you understood you weren't supposed to, why should someone else get it who isn't following the longstanding civilized table manners?

The White House Press Correspondents' Association pool reporting guidelines warn about "no hoarding" of information and also say, "pool reports must be filed before any online story or blog." While uploading her video probably was the best way to file her report, Carla may have technically busted the letter of that law.

But the guidelines also say, "Print poolers can snap pictures or take video. They are not obliged to share these pictures...but can make them available if they so choose."

Then what guidelines is the White House applying here? Again, we don't know.

What the Administration should have done is to use this incident to precipitate a reasonable conversation about changing their 1950's policies into rules more suited to 2011. Dwight Eisenhower was the last President who let some new media air into the room when he lifted the ban on cameras at press conferences in 1952.

"We've come full circle here," Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism told me today. "A newspaper reporter is being punished because she took pictures with a moving camera. We live in a world where there are no longer distinctions. The White House is trying to live by 20th century distinctions."

The President's practice not just with transparency but in other dealings with the press has not been tracking his words, despite the cool glamour and easy conversation that makes him seem so much more open than the last guy.

It was his administration that decided to go after New York Times reporter James Risen to get at his source in a book he wrote about the CIA. For us here in SF who went through the BALCO case and other fisticuffs with the George W. Bush Attorney General's prosecutors, this is deja vu.

Late today, there were hints that the White House might be backing off the Carla Fatwa.

Barack Obama sold himself successfully as a fresh wind for the 21st century. In important matters of communication, technology, openness and the press, it's not too late for him to demonstrate that.

Update: In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

The Chronicle's report is accurate.

If the White House has indeed decided not to ban our reporter, we would like an on-the-record notice that she will remain the San Francisco print pool reporter.

I was on some of those calls and can confirm Ward's statement.

Messy ball now firmly in White House court.

SAN FRANCISCO – The White House says a San Francisco Chronicle reporter broke the rules when she put down her pen and picked up a video camera to film a protest. The newspaper says the Obama administration needs to join the 21st century.

Marinucci was covering the event when about a half-dozen protesters who paid a combined $76,000 to attend the breakfast broke into a song chastising Obama for the government's treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst suspected of illegally passing government secrets to the WikiLeaks website.

"We paid our dues, where's our change?" the protesters sang.

Although a print reporter, Marinucci is seldom seen without a small video recorder while covering politicians. She captured video of the protest, which was posted with her written story in the online edition of the Chronicle and on its politics blog.

Editor Ward Bushee said in the Chronicle's story Friday that the paper acted within its rights to cover the newsworthy incident.

He also said White House officials in off-the-record conversations Thursday threatened to bar Marinucci from pool coverage of future presidential appearances. He added that the officials, whom Bushee did not name, threatened to freeze out Chronicle and other Hearst Newspaper chain reporters if they reported on the threat against Marinucci.

"We expect our reporters to use the reporting tools they have to cover the news, and Carla did," Bushee said in the Chronicle story. The White House rule against print reporters shooting and posting video is "objectionable and just is not in sync with how reporters are doing their jobs these days." he said.

"The White House of course would have no problem including any reporter who follows the rules in pool-only events," he said.

The White House should rethink those rules in an era when few reporters limit their coverage to just one medium, and when several other attendees not with the media were taking their own video of the protest, Bushee said.

The protesters' own footage ended up appearing on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

The fundraiser came a day after Obama appeared at the Palo Alto headquarters of Facebook, praising the social media giant for enabling a more open, two-way conversation between citizens and politicians. The president said he was interested in holding the event, billed as a social media town hall, because young people especially were now getting their information through a range of different media.

Dan Gillmor, a media critic and head of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, said the White House needs to update the rules for its pool reports to match the realities of 21stcentury reporting.

A small weekly paper in California claims that a White House official asked it to remove a sentence from a “benign” feature about Marine One because it reflected poorly on first lady Michelle Obama.

In an email to The Daily Caller, Gina Channell-Allen, president of the Pleasanton Weekly in Pleasanton, California, said that her paper “received a call from the White House asking us to take out part of the story because it reflected poorly on the First Lady.”

The story in question was a soft feature about Marine One titled, “Inside Marine One, President Obama’s helicopter,” that ran in the paper on April 20. Pleasanton staffer Amory Gutierrez “didn’t get to ride in ‘Marine One,’” she wrote in her story, “but I did get the VIP tour and took photographs of the otherwise unseen aircraft.”

She also wrote a sentence that the White House thought made FLOTUS look snooty.

“Basically the reporter said that the First Lady didn’t speak to the pilots but acknowledged them by making eye contact,” Allen wrote in her email.

Allen says she “complied” with the White House’s request “because it was not worth making a fuss over.”

She added, “I thought it was interesting, though, that the [White House] was concerned enough about image to contact a little weekly paper in Pleasanton.”

I think the thread pretty clearly shows that you posted, I posted a link to what you posted, making it obvious where your original post was, and then responded.

Try using your lawyer double talk all you want, you know exactly what my post meant. Or are you really as ignorant as your posts make you out to be?

Yes.

Why don't you two have your hot gay hate sex and get it over with. Your attraction to each other is obvious and, quite frankly, the board is sick of being used for your secret lust.

Please don't involve me in your partisan bullshit.

G-shill needs a new friend, ever since bsams had his internet turned off at the double-wide.

Sucking up to rex didn't take, and you name was next on the list of Right-Wing Super Friends.

Now that you spurned his advances, poor little G-shill will have to buddy up with Pariah!

Man, you're cruel!

...since bsams had his internet turned off at the double-wide.

Maybe so. But at least I've been able to be funny since 2005.

I just spit coffee...