Friday, January 23, 2009

Politico Calls Foul on Pres. Obama, I call Foul on Them

I have said if Pres. Obama did something wrong I would be after him. So reading the headline on Politico.com and others about Pres. Obama being upset and angry about being asked questions I thought..hmm now we can't have that..

He said he would be open and transparent and if he is already starting to fuss with the media about questions then we are going to have a real problem. Here is the headline in question:
Obama flashes irritation in press room
So, I went to find the video. Well, the video on Politico is only like 48 seconds long and it really doesn't show anything, but from what I could see it didn't look like he was angry. or miffed or irritated.

So, I did a search to find another look. And I found one at MSNBC that is 5 minutes long. He comes into the press area of the White House, meets with the reporters, talks with them about Gibbs, his press secretary and the 1st presser and is just having a general chit chat.. Then Jonathon Martin asks him a question and the Pres. tells him no, I just came to say hi...not to answer questions...if we do this I won't come down to visit...this is informal...let's wait.. But Martin wants to push.. everyone else is telling him to stop..The Pres. pats him on the arm...is nice about it I think...and they go on their way..

So, why the headline?? Just to garner attention is my opinion. To try to make Pres. Obama look bad, maybe. I have thought several times that Jonathon Martin has done this. He is like David Gregory, Ed Henry and a few others in the media, I think he leans a little to the right. That's fine, I don't have a problem with you being that way, but do you have to let your bias show when you are trying to tell the world you are a member of the Main Stream Media?? If you are going to report fairly, you should at least be impartial.

At least that is my opinion. Maybe I am letting my favoritism show, but then I have never claimed to be impartial. So, I think I can do that. But if you claim to be an independent or impartial reporter you shouldn't let your bias show.

Watch the video, see what you think....

3 comments:

NEWSGUY said...

It's a non-story. Obama was trying to just do an informal meeting with members of the White House press, nothing formal. The MSNBC crew was playing a version of gotcha journalism, which I have been guilty of in the past but only when I had a real bad actor in public office in my sights or some kind of a con artist. You walk into an office, camera rolling and stick a mic in the victom's face. It's even easier these days than in the past, with wireless mics. The victim almost always looks bad.

In this case there was no reason for this footage and it just makes MSNBC look silly. Why they even released it is beyond me. It should never have seen the light of day.

Obama maintained his cool as usual and even got the assembled crowd of reporters to laugh at one point. There was no news value in the clip at all.

D.K. Raed said...

After watching the vid, I think the Politico guy is nuts. There is a big difference between being irritated and just showing firmness of purpose. As he said, he wasn't there for a press conference, just a quick pop-in to say hello & see the press digs. Sounds like Jonathan Martin was looking for an attn-grabbing headline.

On Daily Show last night, I saw a clip of Biden saying something snarky about Roberts having messed up the oath. Obama gave him the sternest look I've seen yet, a non-verbal reprimand. John Stewart interpreted it as Obama's "shut the f*ck up look". So if Politico wants to know how to tell if Obama is "irritated", they should look at that vid. (I'd link it but I can't link in comments) ...

Fran said...

This really is a whole lot of nothing to report about.
Looks like this happened the day after the inauguration.... + 10 inauguration balls. Talk about an exhausting day.

Obama is good about throwing it back at the press-- Sir I said this is an informal stop by to say hello (what part of that don't you understand??)

Bush treated the press like the plague.
He was given a list of manufactured, pat responses, and he replayed those till they were warped.
Stay the course, I don't have all the answers, 9-11,

He had the least amount of press conferences than any other president.

Being required to stand, speak, & think all at once was too much for him, all at once.

It's one thing to stutter while thinking of an intelligent response, for Bush he would just stutter & fade. It was painful to watch.