Tag Results for President Barack Obama

Kicking off the official start of beach season, Beat the Press is giving you three reasons to feel good about that nice clean bit of New England seaside that you're about to spread your towel over. We've taken the best of our coverage of the coverage of the now 74-day-old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and given you a look back at how this story unfolded - from the media's slow response to the efforts to control the story and block media access to soiled beaches.

A Rolling Stone article got General Stanley McChrystal, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, fired in less than 48 hours.  Much of the initial reporting attributed the most damaging quotes to McChrystal. But the real damaging quotes were not McChrystal’s but unidentified associates.

Even the most supportive pundits of Barack Obama have been critical in the wake of the Gulf oil crisis.  After his Oval Office speech, some once friendly talking heads criticized the President for a lack of passion and vision on energy policy.

We took a look at the Gulf oil spill coverage two weeks ago, and included a clip of a CBS news crew being threatened with arrest for boating too close to an oil-soaked beach in South Pass, Louisiana. After it aired, I thought the video of apparent cooperation/collusion between the BP workers and US Coast Guardsmen would be enoughto shame the Obama administration into developing a rational plan for media access to the disaster.

Apparently, I was wrong. Reports have continued of BP calling the restrict-the-media tune while government officials play along.

On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that a seaplane charter pilot accused a BP contractor of denying flyover access to the spill area after he admitted that his passenger as a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer. 

Then there was a report on Mother Jones' web site about how local officials at Elmer's Island, Lousiana seemed to be doing BP's bidding keeping reporters away from an oil-covered wildlife refuge.

But the most eye-popping, they-don't-get-it example of the administration's cluelessness on the disaster coverage was the U.S. Coast Guard's official response to the CBS incident, which included the following line:

In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date. Just today 16 members of the press observed clean-up operations on a vessel out of Venice, La.

Embeds are fine in a war zone. But for the federal government to say the media should be satisfied with ride-alongs with an oil company under criminal investigation for the worst environmental disaster in US history is insane. It just staggers the imagination.

I get that the administration and BP are stuck with each other when it comes to stopping the gushing well. But transparency and coverage of the cleanup should be an entirely separate issue. The longer Obama allows BP to bully the media, the worse the fallout for the administration will be.

President Obama signed a bill today designed to promote a free press overseas, but apparently it doesn't apply to certain parts of Cuba.

OK, technically the military base at Guantanamo Bay is US territory. But any points Obama made with the media by signing of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act were surely undercut by the Pentagon's decision to kick four reporters off the island for not following a military's judge's nonsensical order.

In case you missed it, the Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg and three Canadians were barred by the Pentagon earlier this month from further coverage of military commissions and prosecutions at Guantanamo. Their offense: Publishing the name of US Army interrogator Sgt. Joshua Claus, who was a star defense witness for Canadian-born terror defendant Omar Khadr, even though the military judge in the case ruled that his name was protected information.

Khadr is arguing that confessions he made as a wounded 15-year-old detainee should be ruled inadmissible because they were made under duress. Claus was Khadr's first interrogator.

In a piece by Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post, ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer called the judge's order "absurd," because Claus' involvement in the case had already been widely reported. Claus, who earlier pleaded guilty to abusing prisoners at Bagram prison in Afghanistan, even gave an interview in which he talked about his intention to testify. While the four media organizations have been told they can send other reporters to take the place of the banned journalists, they're fighting the order with the help of the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Recent whining by the White House press corps about access aside, journalists have had some bones to pick with Obama lately. They include the Gitmo purge and the administration's recent effort to force New York Times reporter James Risen to cough up the sources who helped him write a recent book on a secret effort to undermine Iran's nuclear program. The Times reports that even the Daniel Pearl law signing was restricted to a small pool of reporters and photographers.

The Pearl Act requires the State Department to pay more attention to attempts abroad to control and restrict media access to important stories and events. One can only hope Obama can conduct a self-examination that's just as thorough.

(Gitmo license plate photo by Woody1778a, used under a Creative Commons license)

"Beat the Press" panelists sound off on their rants and raves of the week: Newsweek goes on sale; CBS chief Les Moonves makes millions after a round of cuts; President Obama calls for diversity of opinion in news consumption, but is he practicing what he preaches?; and the Supreme Court considers whether public records should remain public.

Beat the Press" panelists sound off on their rants and raves of the week: Is the Obama administration trying to kill the presidential press conference?; Yahoo! News expands its ranks, but lacks diversity; Prime Minister Gordon Brown's open mic gaffe; The Boston Globe's Haiti earthquake coverage; and the media's coverage of Beth Israeil's Paul Levy.

After the Venezuelan government and New York Yankee ownership, the White House press corps may be one of the least-sympathetic groups of people on earth. But when they do their jobs right they serve an important democratic function. And it appears from this story in The Politico that they're being denied the ability to do their jobs properly by the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, the mention of a president who "rarely lets a chance go by to make a critical or sarcastic comment about the press, its superficiality or its short-term mentality" reminds me of a certain incumbent Massachusetts governor who has shared key advisers with Mr. Obama. Give me time, and I'll place the name.

But seriously, does this sort of freeze-out bother anyone? If it doesn't, the future of political reporting is in danger.

Newsweek called it "the Interrupt-a-thon." Fox New's Bret Baier sat down with President Barack Obama this week, but was it an interview or an argument? Fox lovers say Baier was just trying to pin Obama down to specifics, but haters say he was rude and just trying to insert the network's conservative talking points.

Scott Brown’s election has been called a referendum on healthcare, and President Obama and the economy.  The media has not stopped speculating on what Brown’s win meant even without reliable election day exit polling.  So what is the speculation based upon?