Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I was promised a recession.

No one could have predicted…

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

T R E 4 5 O N

You are here: Home / Access Denied

Access Denied

by | 78 Comments

This post is in: 

p112113ps-0521

Here’s yesterday’s White House photo of the day, taken on November 21, designed to address the current bout of whining from the White House Press Corpse about access to Obama for photo-ops. I’m all for meaningful press access to the President, but that’s never what these guys complain about. They’re butthurt because the official White House photographer gets to take pictures in more places than they do:

“Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the President while he is performing his official duties,” the news organizations said in the letter. “As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government.”

Here are some of the events they are complaining about:

Just last month, he said, the White House kept photographers away from a White House meeting between the president and Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani student who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for speaking out in support of the right of girls to go to school. She met with Obama and his wife, Michelle, and their 15-year-old daughter, Malia.

The letter cites seven recent instances of newsworthy meetings from which independent photographers were excluded, including the one with Malala. Among the others were meetings with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in July and Sens. Lindsay O. Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-Ariz) in September.

Because what the world needs is a 15 year-old girl facing a gagglefuck of White House paparazzi, and yet another picture of Mr and Mrs John McCain.

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  4. 4.

    JGabriel

    As far as Malala goes, the girl’s already been shot in the head once. It seems like a prudent gesture to limit her media exposure.

  5. 5.

    JGabriel

    Baud:

    I wish Obama would pull an LBJ and invite the press to watch him take a shit.

    Or spread a rumor that they’re all fornicatin’ with hogs. Just to make ’em publically deny that they’re pigfuckers.

    .

  6. 6.

    Aimai

    Can any one of them explain what they think is lost by not having twenty extra people in the room taking the same picture of a meet and greet?

  7. 7.

    Baud

    @Aimai:

    If you look carefully, you’ll notice that, when the White House photographer takes pictures in the Oval Office, he always points the camera away from the walls with the Death to America posters on them.

  8. 8.

    WereBear

    I applaud the President’s apparent decision to “get the whiners belowdecks.”

    If they are going to claim they have to write suck-up pieces to get “access,” then why don’t they?

  10. 10.

    TS

    @Aimai:

    They lose the opportunity for the one in a thousand chance to photograph the President frowning, or hitting his head on the table, or climbing the walls – or losing his temper – they want pictures that their GOP followers can point to and laugh.

    They are not honest – saying they want a picture of the President and John McCain is the stupidest thing imaginable to put in a letter to anyone – let alone the white house. What they want is a picture they can use in an attempt to humiliate the President (which they will NEVER do anyway – but they keep trying).

  11. 11.

    Valdivia

    And the WH photographer offering official photos is just like Soviet propaganda. Ron Fournier can go die in a fucking fire.
    These people have absolutely no sense of proportion on anything. Just. Ugh.

    Also. Too. Idiot in NYT saying Obamacare is Obama’s Bay of Pigs. Will they ever stop?

  15. 15.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @TS:
    I think there’s some of that, but there’s also a lot of ego involved. The arrogance and sense of entitlement of the national journalist class matches their GOP buddies. They’re demanding as their right the chance to piss on Obama, expect him to be thankful for it, and are offended when he’s not. The ones not actively hoping to catch Obama in a ‘gotcha’ believe that being in the press should give them the power to do anything they want, completely unfettered, because they are wise and noble god-journalists seeking out the truth and leading American thought.

    Of course, during Bush’s administration this was tempered with respect, but there’s some strange difference that makes them think Obama should defer to them rather than the other way around.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Valdivia:

    The White House needs to expand what they’ve already starting doing in the press conferences. Bypass the Villagers and call on alternative media. Instead of only the MSM press photographers, allow bloggers and other alternative media, or local media, to photograph official events also. Then let the Village complain about how the White House is too open.

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    These big-deal White House correspondents are complaining about being denied access to staged photo-op events. If they did cover these events themselves, their story would only be trivially different from a press-release version.

    And this is the kind of assignment that, where I worked, would get doled out to newbie reporters. White House correspondents, who are senior journalists working the most prestigious beat at their news organisation, are supposed to have bigger fish to fry. Their editors — and, even more importantly, their audiences — should be asking them, where are those stories?

  18. 18.

    Valdivia

    @Baud:

    That would be delicious indeed.
    I agree with @Frankensteinbeck: that the default mode of the Village is to disrespect the president. Yesterday, right out of the gate, without understanding anything. Gregory was saying how we gave everything to Iran without getting anything back. What? All these guys do is repeat GOP talking points and expect deference, they’re vacuous and vapid.

  19. 19.

    gnomedad

    @Baud:

    I wish Obama would pull an LBJ and invite the press to watch him take a shit.

    He can’t do that because it would reveal his actual reptilian ass.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @Amir Khalid:

    And this is the kind of assignment that, where I worked, would get doled out to newbie reporters.

    LOL. Last night, MSNBC made poor Ann Curry stand outside in the wind and cold to report on the Iran deal because, apparently, the visuals looked better with the White House in the background.

  23. 23.

    WereBear

    @Valdivia: We are in the process of training people to figure out where the “news” is.

    After all, their ratings are dropping like rocks, and I think the lack of any nutrition in their information is part of it.

  24. 24.

    gnomedad

    @Baud:

    Is that a reference to something? Otherwise, it sounds like a very odd dig at Obama

    Sarcasm fail. It was a reference to the (27%?) belief that we are actually ruled by reptilians..

  25. 25.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud: The funny thing is they could have green-screened that background shot and nobody would ever have known the difference. And poor Ann could have been standing inside.

  29. 29.

    aimai

    @Zam: I know, I was just kidding. Every single one of them dreams of the day that Obama falls over in a fit while signing something, or accidentally signs “Barry Soetero!!!!” or they are walking in the halls and they see Michelle give him such a potsch.

  31. 31.

    geg6

    HAHAHAHAHAHA! Jeebus, could they possibly sound any more junior high? Fuck these whiny ass juvenile mother fuckers. O should shut them out completely in favor of local media, bloggers and Steve, who could be the senior WH BJ correspondent.

  32. 32.

    TS

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Of course, during Bush’s administration this was tempered with respect, but there’s some strange difference that makes them think Obama should defer to them rather than the other way around.

    I tend to forget the obvious because it really is not part of my mindset – and then I am reminded.

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @WereBear:

    If they are going to claim they have to write suck-up pieces to get “access,” then why don’t they?

    They think “suck-up pieces” are ones where they don’t slag the President as hard as they their paymasters think he deserves.

  34. 34.

    shelly

    ‘Shameless Power Grab’
    Gov. Walker Seen as Christie Alternative in 2016

    My favorite NewMax headline of the day. Hahahaha. Oh, yes GOP. Please, please do this.
    *******************
    As to the photographer’s access. Weren’t they just complaining that they’d missed another chance to cover Sunny, the WH dog? Breaking news!

  36. 36.

    Ash Can

    They’re butthurt because the official White House photographer gets to take pictures in more places than they do

    So, what part of the term “official White House photographer” is so hard for the poor simple things to understand?

    Keeping a mob of guys with clicking cameras away from a traumatized young girl and a young member of an unusually highly threatened presidential family sounds like common fucking sense to me. So does keeping the same jostling, clicking horde away from situations in which sensitive information is, or may be, discussed, or in which people simply have to focus on the fucking job at hand and get some actual (and fairly serious and important, on top of it) work done without getting distracted by a bunch of idiots jockeying for camera angles.

    …OK, I’m starting to understand how the difference between the last administration and the current one could be coming as such a shock to the mindless paparazzi…

    ETA @TS:

    I tend to forget the obvious because it really is not part of my mindset – and then I am reminded.

    Um, yeah. Me too.

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    Almost forgot to mention: the text in the Firefox tab for this thread says “Access Denied >> Balloon Juice”. Which, if the page takes a bit of time to load, might cause a moment or two of worry.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    Next up: News media concerned that First Lady has more access to the President than they do.

    Journalists are routinely being denied the right to share a bed with the President,” the news organizations said in the letter. “As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important pillow talk that could reveal what this President really thinks about issues affecting the American people.”

  40. 40.

    WaterGIrl

    @geg6: After reading all the comments, I was just going to write:

    Fucking whiners.

    But your comment was more fun.

    Oh, and the president needs to send every white house correspondent a card on their birthday. You know, the one that says “you, you, you, it always has to be about you, doesn’t it?” on the front, and then inside it says “happy birthday”.

  41. 41.

    PsiFighter37

    And people wonder why the newspaper medium is shriveling up more than Hugh Hefner’s dick without the magic blue pills? It’s because they’re run by a bunch of whiny, entitled fuckheads.

    Or maybe it’s because they’re all super-jealous of Jay Carney, who used to work at Time but made the successful jump over and now gets to poke their eyes out and laugh in their faces about it every day.

  44. 44.

    Cacti

    @Zam:

    They miss the opportunity to run with unflattering photos and any possible missteps.

    More like, they want to be on hand to get the corpse photos if some teabagger guns him down.

  45. 45.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I really wish someone, anyone, would change the diapers of the whining members of the White House press corpse. I can smell them here on the left coast., and that’s with the prevailing winds being westerly.

  46. 46.

    scav

    Such a repression of the freedom of the press that they have to go through security checkpoints too! Poor poor Pressparazzi.

  49. 49.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Aimai: Revenue. Mass media is still about generating profit at some point in the process, and when an organization whines about stupid shit like this, somewhere along the line it’s about the bottom line. El Presidente is one of the few famous that can choke off the paparazzi where they live and still effectively conduct his business. The butthurt that causes likely has dollar signs attached to it.

    @WereBear: Dingdingdingdingdingding! Nicely done.

    @Baud: Oooh, this too! I would love to see KXYZ from Podunk UT get the interview, or the Podunk Monitor Weekly newsie be able to ask something relevant to the folks back home about mineral rights or Department of the Interior.

  52. 52.

    Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)

    Maybe if the media stopped dreaming up narratives and then tailoring their reporting to them they’d get the respect that they seem to be demanding. As things stand, giving the press more access to the president would do nothing to raise the quality of the news.

  53. 53.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):

    These people have a job. It’s not to report, it’s to entertain. And they’re being denied that, so their paymasters are less than fully happy.

    So they whine. Like three year olds.

    Fournier needs to be spanked with a Louisville Slugger and sent to bed without supper.

    Forever.

  55. 55.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Baud:

    Dealing with three year olds behaving like three year olds is one thing.

    Dealing with adults behaving like three year olds calls for more vigorous measures.

    Because they’re supposed to know better by then.

  56. 56.

    Patrick

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):

    Maybe if the media stopped dreaming up narratives and then tailoring their reporting to them they’d get the respect that they seem to be demanding. As things stand, giving the press more access to the president would do nothing to raise the quality of the news.

    How about if they simply did some elementary fact-checking of the most idiotic claims out there? If they had we could have avoided wasting time discussing death panels and what have you. I have more respect for a cockroach with diarrhea than I do for the White House Corps.

  57. 57.

    gratuitous

    So, what breathless stories are we missing? I remember the fawning coverage of the Dim Son endlessly clearing brush, or out riding his trail bike (where nobody, not even Lance Armstrong, was allowed to go ahead of him), or the tacit cooperation when a White House photo op covered over the “Made in China” labels to talk up all the jobs Republicans were getting ready to create just any minute now.

    Yeah, go cover some real news boys. And quit whining so much.

  58. 58.

    handsmile

    @Valdivia:

    [perhaps more on-topical for the “Breaking: An Agreement with Israel” thread,” but haven’t seen your nym there]

    This Jerusalem Post article, while full of baleful indignation and invocations of historical wrongs from senior Israeli political and military figures, also suggests that this “first step” does not necessarily lead to a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that would be deemed calamitous to Israel’s interests, i.e., “losing the battle but not the war.”

    http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Israel-denounces-Iranian-nuclear-deal-says-it-will-review-options-332800

    To accomplish that objective, I would expect Netanyahu et al to re-triple their efforts among bipartisan US Congressional allies to obstruct or vitiate negotiations over the next six months. Until that plays out, it’s unclear to me how Bibi would be vulnerable to “fall to the hard right there.” And is there a harder right in the Likud? Would Lieberman/Yisrael Beiteinu really be a threat to Likud dominance in national political affairs? Stipulated: you follow Israeli politics more closely than I do.

    (also, Buzzfeed? really?)

  59. 59.

    Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)

    @Patrick:

    How about if they simply did some elementary fact-checking of the most idiotic claims out there?

    Facts just stand in the way of the narrative. Look at the piss poor job Lara Logan did with the Benghazi story. She asserted that she spent a year working on it. Whatever work she did clearly involved no fact-checking.

  61. 61.

    Ruckus

    @geg6:
    I believe they are waiting to get into jr high. They haven’t achieved the lofty goal of acting 13-14 yrs old.
    And Steve would do a better job, even without opposable thumbs.

  62. 62.

    handsmile

    Checking back to see if Valdivia might have replied, I noticed quite an ironic, albeit unintentional, error in my opening bracketed sentence above (#58) : should be “…’Breaking: An Agreement with Iran.'”

    (matters to me anyways)

  63. 63.

    Keith G

    @JGabriel: So the White House press might cap her? As you have noted, she is used to a more rough and tumble world than the White House press corps. After all, she is an activist who is choosing to work very publicly for a very important message.

    I know there is a bit of “It’s okay if Obama does it”, but all presidents need to be more accessible and transparent. It’s particularly galling when a Democrat isn’t a whole lot better than the others. It seems that lately more and more forces are leading to “the President is in a bubble”. Both democrats and Democrats should be concerned.

  68. 68.

    phoebes-in-santa fe

    I used to watch every presser given by W Bush, because I felt/knew that sometime he would just “dissolve” and I wanted to be able to say I saw it live. I rarely watch – or listen – to Obama’s pressers because he’s always in self-control and therefore, boring.

  69. 69.

    Cervantes

    @Baud: You joke, but they said almost the same thing in the 90s about the Clintons when Mrs. C. was working on health-care reform.

  70. 70.

    Smiling Mortician

    @Keith G: I, for one, have noted your concern. Is the weather better on the planet Obtusia? I hope so, but I fear there’s something unhealthy in the air.

  71. 71.

    Cervantes

    @Keith G: I know there is a bit of “It’s okay if Obama does it”, but all presidents need to be more accessible and transparent. It’s particularly galling when a Democrat isn’t a whole lot better than the others. It seems that lately more and more forces are leading to “the President is in a bubble”. Both democrats and Democrats should be concerned.

    Taking pictures of the President (or his dogs) and then showing us those pictures is an utter waste of time — ours if not theirs. It was an utter waste of time in every other presidency as well. There is no “It’s okay if Obama does it” here. If they want to investigate Obama’s bad judgment in this or that area, or if they want to argue that he’s making this or that mistake — this, at least, might be useful if they do it well. But complaining about the dearth of photo opportunities — photo opportunities, for crying out loud — is idiotic!

    In short: our contempt for these buffoons is based on their inability to do anything even remotely useful.

  72. 72.

    Lurking Buffoon

    @Baud: To be fair, the Press Corpse would probably go along with it and the headline would read “President Dumping Biological Weapons into Nation’s Water Supply!”

  73. 73.

    Keith G

    @Cervantes: The dog issue was a stupid sideshow. The real change that is a concern is that there are official White House functions done in our name where the only public images are recorded by the the President’s photographer. In this area, the Obama administration is being more restrictive than others in the past.

    I would rather not have future presidents follow and expand on these Obama precedents.

  74. 74.

    Cervantes

    In this area, the Obama administration is being more restrictive than others in the past.

    I don’t think that’s exactly true. The Bush (43) White House tried a similar approach and there were complaints. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a letter sent by the White House News Photographers’ Association in 2005:

    The WHNPA is troubled by the increasing number of photo releases from events involving the President of the United States. Each day, WHNPA members stand ready to document the important work of the President, his Cabinet and Congress. Limiting our access to these events is a disservice to the public here in Washington and around the world. WHNPA members, both still and video, bring their unique vision, skill and journalistic ethic to every assignment. However, we are quickly losing our ability to independently gather the news, especially at the White House.


    The White House conceded, because the photo wire services simply refused to distribute the official photos, thus leaving the White House at their mercy.

    And once access was restored, unvarnished photographs told the Whole Truth about Bush and his crew, thereby Freeing We, the People and Enhancing Our Democracy. (Well, no, but I’m sure this detail is irrelevant.)

    Anyway, the current protest is a bit different. Obama’s White House operation does not rely as much on the wire services as a distribution channel; it uses Flickr, etc., to run its own photo wire and is therefore less susceptible to pressure.

    (Incidentally, Obama’s official WH photographer served Reagan in the same capacity.)

  75. 75.

    Patrick

    @Keith G:

    It seems that lately more and more forces are leading to “the President is in a bubble”. Both democrats and Democrats should be concerned.

    With all due respect; this is a complete non-issue. The real issue is the lobbyists and all the money that is impacting Congress.

    So what if some idiot in the press corps is not allowed to take a stupid picture of the President’s daughter. Who cares? And I would say the same if W Bush was president. It is a non-issue.

  76. 76.

    Nutella

    Remember when the White House press corps got interested in the very important issue of the Clinton administration, that the Clintons had a pet cat rather than a dog? Socks the cat became a reluctant celebrity.

    At a Rose Garden ceremony the photographers were bored by the standard photo opp when Socks wandered by. One of them stepped back and took a picture of a crowd of at least 20 people armed with huge and very expensive cameras, all aimed at one small cat standing under a tree.

    How many important stories about actual events actually happening could have been published with the resources wasted on that cat picture?

    It summed up for me the uselessness of the MSM. They have not improved since then.

  77. 77.

    fuckwit

    cheney has secret meetings with oil industry fatcats to determine US energy policy, corporate media yawns. obama denies corporate media an opportiniy to take a picture of his dog, corporate media loses control of their bladders.

    image, baby. image is all thatmatters.

  78. 78.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Getting buthurt about the fact that the White House photographer has more access to the White House occupants than journalists makes it seem like journalists have trouble understanding the English language. I mean, the guy’s occupation title is “White House Photographer” – that kind of implies that he’ll have more access than Joe Schmo journalist.

Comments are closed.