Press blasts Obama administration for limiting and managing access

[Skulnik]

Press blasts Obama administration for limiting and managing access

AFP-JIJI



Nov 22, 2013
Article history



WASHINGTON ? Reporters and photographers Thursday accused the White House of deliberately blocking their access to President Barack Obama and of substituting its own ?visual press releases? for independent news coverage.

In a letter to White House spokesman Jay Carney, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) and other news organizations said the practice belies the administration?s claim to a new level of transparency.

The letter registered alarm that the White House bans coverage of Obama at certain events, deeming them private, but later releases photographs and videos from its own in-house news and public relations operation.

?Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the president while he is performing his official duties,? the letter said. ?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.

?You are, in effect, replacing independent photojournalism with visual press releases,? the letter told Carney, calling the practice a ?troubling break from tradition.?

The White House denied the charge, saying it is merely interested in offering Americans ?an additive? so they can understand what goes on behind closed doors in the corridors of power.

Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said there are simply some circumstances ? for instance, in the secure White House Situation Room ? that are not suitable to open news coverage.

White House photographers have long been frustrated at the activities of White House official photographer Pete Souza, who has distributed hundreds of candid shots of Obama and other officials in meetings and settings from which the press is barred. The shots go out on a Flickr feed, Instagram and Twitter, where Souza has 94,000 followers.

The letter listed half a dozen recent instances where news coverage was banned of events that the WHCA considers of great public interest and for which official photos were released.

They included a meeting between Obama and the co-chairs of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic dialogue in July and talks the same month between the president and Vice President Joe Biden and Middle East peace negotiators.

While official White House photographers have existed for years, the WHCA contended in the letter that this administration has crossed a line.

Privately, White House journalists complain that official administration photos unfailingly portray Obama in a flattering light and lack the authenticity of independent news coverage. At a time of austerity in the news business, some photographers view the White House operation as tantamount to a rival photo wire service that threatens their livelihood.

Dusting Off the Old Playbook?



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opcorn2

 

[THE KOD]

During chilly November, feds jet off to Caribbean resort at taxpayer expense



Down go the temperatures, and away go the bureaucrats to the Caribbean, nonetheless.

A group of federal officials skipped chilly Washington this month for a taxpayer-funded trip to the Virgin Islands in the name of protecting the world?s coral reef.

The organizer, the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, isn?t saying much about the total cost or reasons for the trip or why officials chose the St. Croix beachfront resort Buccaneer Hotel (made famous by an episode of TV?s ?The Bachelor?) as their destination.

But life couldn?t have been too bad for the G-men and G-women at the swanky resort, which is surrounded by a lush green golf course and boasts rooms with rates that begin at $323 a night. ?Gracious, elegant, legendary? is how the 17th-century resort bills itself.

Federal officials defend the trip by saying that on-scene experience about Caribbean coral reefs is important to the mission of conservation. They also emphasized that they managed to get a special government discount rate of $135 a night for the hotel, topped off with a $74 meal per diem.


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But for fiscal watchdogs clamoring for reducing spending and the national debt, the trip stands as a powerful symbol of a government that has little sensitivity to appearances or the bottom line.

?Taxpayers expect accountability regardless of whether a particular meeting was held in a coral reef or in a Hyatt,? said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscal watchdog group.

For jetting off to the Virgin Islands at a dubious time of year and making it difficult to monitor its costs, the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force wins the Golden Hammer, a weekly distinction from The Washington Times awarded for examples of wasteful or excessive spending.

With 11 agencies involved in funding and support for the coral reef task force, it can be difficult to track down just how much is being spent and by whom. Spending records are spread across multiple agencies, with no single record of just how much these meeting might be costing taxpayers.

An Interior Department representative said the task force meeting was held in conjunction with a meeting of the Caribbean Regional Planning Body, and many people participated in both. Travel to the coral reefs directly is necessary, the representative said, as they are ?places where on-the-ground conservation activities are ongoing and local management issues can be effectively highlighted and assessed for progress to goal.?

Coral reefs are some of the most diverse habitats of the ocean, but they have been seriously harmed by pollution and climate change. The International Coral Reef Symposium, a multinational scientific conference, estimates that a quarter of the world?s coral reefs have been destroyed and half of all reefs could be lost within 20 years. In addition to biodiversity, coral reef tourism and fishing often bring millions of dollars in revenue to the economies of island nations and coastal countries.

The task force was established in 1998 by an executive order from President Clinton, though presidents and politicians on both sides of the aisle have supported similar endeavors.

With information and responsibilities spread across nearly a dozen federal agencies, getting a final tally of spending can be difficult. The Interior Department and the Commerce Department?s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lead the group. NOAA estimates it contributed about $21,000 to the meeting, spokesman Ben Sherman said.

In addition to the room rates and food per diems, the various departments were also responsible for providing airfare for attendees. A quick search of travel websites shows that flights from Washington to St. Croix, where the meeting was held, range from $500 to $1,000.

Mr. Schatz said governments often use existing resources and personnel to support such multiagency endeavors. But the decentralized nature means that often there is no single department that can easily track spending, no single congressional committee that can oversee it, no single body with responsibility to determine whether the group has accomplished its task.

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americans are fools

they never did say the total tab

guarantee it was first class flights and five star treatment