The Pravda President

Civil liberties and transparency advocates have long observed that Obama’s White House has been extremely secretive and selective about releasing national security information. The government refuses to acknowledge the existence of the CIA’s drone assassination program in court even as senior administration officials leak favorable classified info that all but claims Obama flew into Yemen on rocket boosters himself and fired a pinpoint strike right into al-Awlaki’s ass. The administration followed a similar strategy with the Stuxnet cyber-attack and worked extensively with Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers to create a propaganda movie while remaining publicly opaque about the Bin Laden raid.

Politico recently expanded this analysis of the administration’s lack of transparency to include the White House’s day-to-day stonewalling of media. It labeled President Obama “the puppet master” after exhaustingly detailing the White House’s continuous attempts to contain and strictly control press coverage. Administration officials frequently call reporters to try to influence coverage, have refused interviews from any major newspaper in years and select press conference questioners based on the favorability of their reporting on the President. Obama’s also given only one-third as many post-announcement or photo-op talks with the media as President Bush.

Executive branch recalcitrance and manipulation of the media is nothing new, but it’s been getting worse in recent years. George W. Bush famously captured the mainstream press in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, using selective leaks and misinformation to push the nation to war.  He also successfully pressured news outlets to suppress major stories about his domestic spying program for a year. During the 2012 campaign, both Mitt Romney and President Obama requested and received veto power for all quotes from senior campaign officials, family members and candidates used by many MSM outlets including Bloomberg, The Washington Post and the New York Times. According to Politico, the Obama administration has also pioneered the production of its own media content (photos, videos, blog posts etc…) which it can directly release to the public or offer to the media. Given this recent history, is it a stretch to envision a near future where the White House demands that, in exchange for access to government created media (i.e. propaganda), newspapers and TV stations must run the content unedited? Does that differ at all from the state-controlled media in an authoritarian regime?

Access-hungry reporters have no idea how to push back against White House restrictions, choosing to accept their diminished role and play ball rather than risk a further diminution in access. But what if instead of throwing up their hands and growing more obedient, they played their FUCKING ROLE and acted ADVERSARIALLY!? If administration officials refuse to comment on the drone program, interview Yemeni tribesman who’ve lost family members; interview angry congressmen tired of being sidelined; interview international legal scholars who question the legality and ethics of incinerating young foreign men. Similar approaches could be taken to political events like sequestration, Medicare cuts, Obama’s pre-K push etc… If the executive branch refuses to offer anything substantial or on the record, then don’t quote anyone from the fucking executive branch and rely exclusively on other interested parties.

The sad truth is that mainstream outlets have become so subservient to government interests that publishing genuinely critical articles, without copious and lengthy anonymous rebuttals from government officials, is basically unthinkable. So the White House will continue to restrict access, administration staffers will continue to use the press for favorable leaking and the American media will continue its gradual transformation into an official mouthpiece of the government.