"It's difficult to understand why a president who spends so much time promoting the virtues of democracy would want to insulate himself from one of democracy's most important institutions, namely, a free and independent press," says Stanford University journalism professor Ted Glasser.
Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism: "It makes you wonder if the only people he is talking to are people who work for him or agree with him and whether everything he sees about America he learns through them or through the window of a motorcade.
Says Playboy editor James Kaminsky: "It's appalling to think that the man who runs the country somehow finds time for a long gym workout each day, but can't muster up the intellectual curiosity to peruse the newspaper. Is it laziness, arrogance or a willful combination of the two?....How hard is it to watch the damn TV news, even while working out?"
I'm with Bush - - I don't often read newspapers, either. (I may peruse the NY Post at Wawa while I'm eating lunch in my car, but that's it.)
Anything in the news that is important always ends up right here on Free Republic, complete with all the corrections of fact, analysis of spin, background and agenda of the source and the author, and cross-references with any number of other news sources. You simply do not get that anywhere else.
Thank you, Jim Robinson.