Boston Who? Establishment Press ‘Colleagues’ Virtually Ignore WH Shutout of Boston Herald
Imagine if the Bush 43 administration had decided to exclude a newspaper's reporters from full access to presidential events–regardless of the ostensible reason. Does anyone believe that the New York Times or Associated Press would have ignored the story? Well, in a thoroughly predictable but nonetheless sad development, that is what has happened since the Boston Herald's Hillary Chabot reported that “The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news 'fairly.'” Lachlan Markay relayed Chabot's item at NewsBusters yesterday, and also chronicled several previous examples of White House mistreatment, maltreatment, and abuse of disfavored media members. A search of the Associated Press's main site late this morning on “Boston Herald” (without quotes) returned nothing relevant , as seen after the jump: An advanced search at the New York Times also returned nothing relevant : At the Washington Post , the coverage consists of the following in Chris Cilliizza's “The Fix” Blog, in its entirety: “The White House has shut out the Boston Herald from a presidential event today.” Wow. Don't get carpal tunnel over this, Chris. The LA Times, to its credit, had an item yesterday by Kim Geiger at its Politics Now blog. To its discredit, the story's headline (“White House quarrels with Boston newspaper over Romney op-ed”) failed to communicate the situation's true nature, while Geiger aired a mindless White House argument over what was supposedly “on the record”: More than two months after the Boston Herald devoted its front page to promoting an opinion piece by Republican Mitt Romney, the White House press office denied the Herald full access to President Obama’s activities in Boston on Wednesday, sparking an unusual release of email banter that illustrated the sometimes adversarial relationship between the White House and the media.
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on May 19, 2011. Filed under