Free Republic

It’s time for the MSM to put its drool buckets in permanent storage. In the past month, we’ve had: – The Pleasanton (CA) Weekly bullied by the White House press shop over a benign article that irked the administration because it made Michelle Obama look snooty. – The San Francisco Chronicle punished by the White House because a print pool reporter used a cell phone to record video of protesters at an Obama Bay Area fundraiser. And now, the Boston Herald has been spanked by the White House for…running a front-page op-ed by Mitt Romney: The White House Press Office...

Several veteran and prize-winning journalists who covered presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush say that the current crop of White House correspondents are too timid and deferential and have played a role in killing the impact of presidential news conferences. "If you watch an Obama news conference, and watched a Bush news conference previous to that, where correspondents sit in their seats with their hands folded on their laps, [it's] as if they are in the room with a monarch and they have to wait to be recognized by the president," says Sid Davis, the former NBC...

The White House Press Office received another dose of bad press Wednesday as the Boston Herald lashed out at the office after being denied full access to a third consecutive visit by President Obama to Boston. The Herald, the smaller and right-leaning counterpart to the Boston Globe, lashed out at the press office, printing correspondence that indicated that the paper’s front-page placement of an op-ed by Mitt Romney was the reason for its exclusion. Matt Lehrich of the White House Press Office wrote to the Herald, “I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the...

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.” “I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

What are you afraid of, Mr. President? I know it must be tough dragging yourself to these glitzy fund-raisers and mingling with rich people who shower you with money and affection. Who needs an unfriendly reporter shouting an unscripted question at you, or checking to see whether any of the guests are getting government contracts? We all know Obama has an aversion to tough questions. During the campaign, he would refuse to engage with most local media, and reporters who camped out at the rope line got a stern talking-to from a campaign staffer. But using the White House press...

Reuters White House photographer Jason Reed describes how the president made his speech to a single TV camera, then immediately after finishing, he pretended to speak for the still cameras. Reed writes: “As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.” That means the photograph that appeared in many...

Update: Chronicle responds after Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia, then claims they didn't Update: In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area. Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib: Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications...

Yesterday, the Chronicle reported that the White House had threatened to kick veteran reporter Carla Marinucci off the press pool because she posted a video of a protest at a San Francisco fundraiser last week. Today Politico.com ran a story on the controversy that included White House claims that the Chronicle report was "not true." Let me assure readers that the Chronicle does not run a story of this nature -- plus an editorial and a blog by Phil Bronstein lightly. It may well be the case that Carla remains on the pool -- I can't tell from this statement...

The White House that fancies itself as the most transparent in history is not without its control-freak instincts when it comes to media access. It seems that Team Obama was none too pleased that veteran Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci posted a 40-second video of a group of supporters-turned-protesters serenading the president a cappella - "We paid our dues ... where's our change" - at a recent fundraising breakfast at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel. The protesters' objection: the treatment of Wikileaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning. The White House threatened that Marinucci would no longer be allowed to serve as...

The hip, transparent and social media-loving Obama administration is showing its analog roots. And maybe even some hypocrisy highlights. White House officials have banished one of the best political reporters in the country from the approved pool of journalists covering presidential visits to the Bay Area for using now-standard multimedia tools to gather the news. The Chronicle's Carla Marinucci - who, like many contemporary reporters, has a phone with video capabilities on her at all times - pulled out a small video camera last week and shot some protesters interrupting an Obama fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel. Read more:...

The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a group that creates advocacy campaigns themed to the spells and characters in the popular book series, is campaigning to promote net-neutrality regulations. The group first teamed up with Free Press on campaign efforts last year, as the Federal Communications Commission mulled whether to create rules reining in how phone and cable companies may treat Internet traffic. The executive director of the Harry Potter group, former comedian Andrew Slack, also participated in the Free Press conference in Boston earlier this month.

BOSTON - Even as the House voted to repeal federal Internet access rules Friday, top Democratic policymakers called free and open communications a vital part of American democracy. Speaking at Free Press’s National Conference for Media Reform, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she was pleased by Democratic opposition to the GOP-backed resolution, which cleared the House Friday afternoon. The resolution would nullify Federal Communications Commission net neutrality regulations that aim to prevent Internet service providers from blocking certain websites.

The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. ......... For a man with such radical views, Mr. McChesney and his Free Press group have had astonishing influence. Mr. Genachowski’s press secretary at the FCC, Jen Howard, used to handle media relations at Free Press. The FCC’s chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, co-authored a Free Press report calling for regulation of political talk radio. ............... Considering how openly activist the Berkman Center has been on these issues,...

Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money. “It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to...

Tim Wu, the coiner of the term "network neutrality", and a senior adviser to the FTC, has an interesting solution to solve the non-existent problems plaguing the tech industry. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: "In the class at MIT, Wu floats some hypothetical ways you could fight abuse... "something like term limits for monopolists. In theory, the government could say, 'Well, this company has clearly shown it's corrupt. ... So let's just nationalize their source code.'"

The internet is under threat. At risk is what's known as "net neutrality", or the principle of free access for each user to every online site, regardless of content. That's the view of the man who coined the above term, Tim Wu, whose new book, The Master Switch, was published yesterday. It argues the internet now runs the risk of not just political censorship – as seen in Libya and Egypt, and in the American reaction to WikiLeaks – but that of commercial censorship, too. Monopolies such as Google and Apple may soon decide to choose which parts of the...

Barack Obama has apparently set a new administration boycott of Fox News with this week's twice snubs of the news network.On Sunday, the administration sent the duo of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Sunday morning talk shows of ABC, CBS and NBC. Fox was excluded even though, as anchor Chris Wallace noted, the Fox show has more viewers than two of its three rivals.Monday evening, CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller posted on Twitter that Obama will be in New York City tomorrow for two Democrat fundraisers, the dedication of the...

EXCERPT A statement from the VP's office noted that "It is standard policy for the Vice President's office that a print pooler cover the speaking program at fundraisers. This has been the consistent policy throughout the Administration. At times, these fundraisers are at private homes and 'hold rooms' are provided for pool reporters to wait for the speaking program to commence. A hold room, however, should not be a storage room. This was the unfortunate mistake of an inexperienced staffer and the Vice President's office has made sure it will never happen again." Biden's office added that in this particular...

The White House website proudly says ‘President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.’ But try telling Vice President Joe Biden’s staff that, after they held a local reporter in a closet for hours after he was invited to cover a Florida political fundraiser because they did not want him talking with the guests. As the unaware $500-a-head invitees dined on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese, grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps, veteran reporter Scott Powers was locked away. The Orlando Sentinel...

Biden Aide Apologizes After Reporter Kept in Storage Closet During Fundraiser Published March 27, 2011 | FoxNews.com The vice president's press secretary has apologized to a local political reporter after he was kept in a storage closet during a Florida fundraiser. Scott Powers, a reporter with the Orlando Sentinel, was relegated to the storage space during a fundraiser Wednesday for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., apparently to prevent him from speaking to people before Vice President Biden showed up. The Orlando Sentinel published a brief account of the incident earlier in the week. Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander, responding to coverage of...