Last week I wrote about what appears to be a new White House policy barring media photographers from certain events while at the same time having White House photographers film the events and make them generally available. The deputy press secretary explains the policy, “There are certain circumstances where it is simply not feasible to have independent journalists in the room when the president is making decisions.”
Apparently, Mr. Obama makes decisions at some strange events. Dana Milbank has some examples: The president and first lady waving to a sea of people, with the Washington Monument in the background, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s march; Obama swimming with one of his daughters in the Gulf of Mexico to show that the water is clean; Obama embracing one of his daughters in Nelson Mandela’s prison cell; the president touring the West Bank church on the spot where Jesus is thought to have been born (news photographers were allowed to shoot images when George W. Bush toured that location); Obama alone on the Rosa Parks bus, sitting in the same row where the civil rights icon sat; Obama shaking hands on Veterans Day with the oldest living World War II veteran; Obama shaking hands with Mitt Romney in the Oval Office; the first lady and the president greeting kids the day White House tours resumed this month.
A transparent administration or a 1984 administration?
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