Is This White House The Most “Dangerous” To Media? One Reporter Says So

The Washington Post has taken an in-depth look at the complete lack of transparency characterizing the Obama administration and its clear abhorrence of the media, ultimately concluding that this administration is at least oneof the most dangerous to the media in history.

It was USA Today’s Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page who conclusively declared that the current White House is not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the media than any other White House in history. Page’s comments were made at a White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) seminar on October 25.

According to the Washington Post, Page’s remarks are a “clear reference” to the Obama administration’s naming of Fox News’ James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act, as well as the White House’s investigations into leaks.

The very purpose of Saturday’s seminar was to discuss the administration’s lack of transparency and its ill treatment of the press. The Post wrote:

The WHCA convened the event both to strategize over how to open up the byways of the self-proclaimed most transparent administration in history, as well as to compare war stories on the many ways in which it is not.

But Page is not the first person in the press to make such a claim about the Obama administration. Former New York Timesexecutive editor Jill Abramson had said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering,” whileNew York Times reporter James Risen remarked, “I think Obama hates the press.” And CBS News’s Bob Schieffer opined, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”

Those reporters do not work for conservative media outlets. But their statements are certainly not unwarranted.

Just one day before the seminar took place, reporters had been in a dispute with the White House after it was announced that the press would not be permitted to be present when the White House was to meet with Nina Pham, the Texas nurse who had just recovered from Ebola, at the National Institutes of Health.

According to Bloomberg White House correspondent Margaret Talev, it was “ridiculous” that the White House would not allow full media access to the meeting. However, this was not the first time that reporters were not provided access to White House events.

In November of 2013, a group of news organizations sent a letter to the White House addressing that particular issue. The letter read:

The restrictions imposed by the White House on photographers covering these events, followed by the routine release by the White House of photographs made by government employees of these same events, is an arbitrary restraint and unwarranted interference on legitimate newsgathering activities. You are, in effect, replacing independent photojournalism with visual press releases.

Still, when asked about greater press access to the White House, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said, “We believe in the value of transparency, and that is why we work to provide as much access as we can. That said, the press has a responsibility to always push for more access and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs.”

Quite ironically, President Obama received a transparency award in 2011 that was given to him during a closed, unannounced meeting that was originally supposed to be open to the press. According to Politico, the meeting was “inexplicably postponed” and rescheduled without notice and “without disclosing the meeting on [the president's] public schedule or letting photographers or print reporters into the room.”

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