http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2003-03-09-media-mix_x.htmBush has media walking a fine line
Some say Bush's March 6 news conference intimidated the media.
By Larry Downing, Reuter
Nowhere was that more apparent than last week, when Bush called a rare prime-time news conference, which networks and cable outlets covered.
There, Bush made two unprecedented moves that could signal the way he and his administration plan to handle — some say intimidate — the media during wartime.
First, rather than filing in as usual, reporters were summoned into the East Room in pairs, "as if we were in grammar school and were being called on the line for something," CBS' Bill Plante says. Then, after opening remarks, Bush called on reporters from a predetermined list assembled by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
Veterans say they hadn't seen such a stifling atmosphere since the 1980s, when President Reagan called on reporters using a seating chart.
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Some notables — including Time, Newsweek, USA TODAY, The Washington Post and Hearst columnist Helen Thomas — were never called on, leading to all sorts of buzz in the press corps. Follow-up questions, a White House tradition, were non-existent.
USA TODAY White House reporter Larry McQuillan, seated in the front row, stopped raising his hand after he realized that Bush — who himself used the word "scripted" during the news conference to describe what was going on — was calling on names from a list and not deviating from it.
McQuillan said it was "demeaning" to the media and Bush. "He's a smart man who knows how to answer questions. It created an image in the press corps that some were favored and some were not." McQuillan wasn't called upon. "Does that mean I'm being punished or that others are being rewarded?"
Fleischer wouldn't explain why certain reporters were on the list and others weren't. About not recognizing Thomas — one of the administration's more outspoken critics, whom past presidents have generally recognized — Fleischer said no columnists were chosen. Overall, Fleischer says, "The president just thinks it is actually a more orderly news conference, rather than to have the usual cacophony of everybody screaming, where the person who gets called on is the person who has the loudest voice. ... Reporters were called from all over."
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But others say it was a bold attempt to keep a tight lid on White House regulars. "This was a speech disguised as a presidential press conference. What you saw was political media control at a high level," says Tom Rosensteil of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"I don't know if they (reporters) were cowed," says ABC anchor Sam Donaldson, a longtime White House regular. "But I heard more than one 'good evening, Mr. President,' as if this were some social occasion, which it is not. It's about asking questions of the president that you want answered. This is not an occasion when friends get together and gently question each other."
That said, Donaldson understands that it's difficult for the media — especially at a time of war — "to press very hard when they know that a large segment of the population doesn't want to see a president, whom they have anointed, having to squirm."
Donaldson notes that Bush stayed on message and refused to answer certain questions — the possible cost of war, for example — and there wasn't much the media could do about it.
Still, Rosensteil says there was plenty of talk in Washington about how the press corps "looked like lapdogs."
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