Don't Kill the Messenger – Control the Messenger

President Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Barack Obama; what do they all have in common? Besides the obvious, that they were all leaders of their countries, they all had relationships with the media in their respective countries.

A lot has been said about President G.W. Bush and his attempts to control the White House Press Corps. He utilized tactics that some say he learned from Margaret Thatcher’s actions during the Falklands War. Leonard Downie of the Washington Post said in a 2006 speech, “Wartime information control tactics employed by the Bush administration appear to be vestiges of what American officials and military leaders believed they learned from how the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher managed coverage of the 1982 Falklands War.” He went on to say that Thatcher would “…hand-pick and supervise British journalists allowed to accompany forces into a war-zone; the use of propaganda and purposeful misinformation about decision-making and strategy; and spoon-feeding so-called lobby journalists in daily secret briefings.”

In 2003, G.W. Bush held a prime-time news conference about the upcoming Iraq war. Instead of allowing the White House Press Corps to file in as normal to the press conference, they were summoned by the pair to the East Room of the White House. This gave the effect, Bill Plante of CBS said of a feeling “as if we were in grammar school and were being called on the line for something.” Additionally, Bush called on reporters for questions from a pre-determined list. The press had a field day with this one and was outraged. USA Today White House reporter Larry McQuillan called it “demeaning” after he realized he would not be called upon. “He’s a smart man who knows how to answer questions. It created an image in the press corps that some were favored and some were not. Does that mean I’m being punished or that others are being rewarded?”

Not all reporters had a problem with this. Mike Duffy, the Washington bureau chief for Time said, “Every time a president has a press conference, it’s a relatively controlled setting. The president can call upon whomever he pleases. I don’t think it’s worth getting worked up about.” But other reporters call this an outright attempt to control the White House Press Corps. “This was a speech disguised as a presidential press conference. What you saw was political media control at a high level,” said Tom Rosensteil from Project for Excellence in Journalism. He went on to say that there was plenty of talk in Washington about the W.H. Press Corps looking like “lapdogs.”

Before Bush and Thatcher, even before television, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first President to fully make use of mass media. His fireside chats that were broadcast on radio all across the country were well scripted, dramatically themed speeches that allowed the aristocratic FDR to come across as a “guy next door” type of “regular Joe.” His chats were written by policy advisers and stylized by the playwright Robert Sherwood. These talks were in essence, propaganda tools and were utilized quite effectively.

The common thread among the above mentioned leaders is that they all were low key about what they did to help shape their message. Prior to this time in our country’s history, our presidents knew that having a good relationship with the media was predicated on working with them to help shape their message. In Washington, appearance is everything and seeming to work with the media goes along way towards how a president’s message is taken. It is understandable that all presidents want to have a say in how they are presented to the American public, but no president has ever had the gall to freely boast about it.

Enter Barack Hussein Obama and today’s White House Press Corps. His White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn openly brags to the Dominican Republic, “Very rarely did we communicate anything through the press that we didn’t control. One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters,” said Dunn, referring to Plouffe, who was Obama’s chief campaign manager.

“We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it,” Dunn said. “Whether it was a David Plouffe video or an Obama speech, a huge part of our press strategy was focused on making the media cover what Obama was actually saying as opposed to why the campaign was saying it, what the tactic was. … Making the press cover what we were saying.”

Maybe that is why she is targeting Fox News. Maybe that is why she is so intent on demonizing them; they don’t just sit back and reprocess the White House talking points. In this day and age of one party rule in Washington the press is the last line of defense, so to speak for the American people. Who else will hold them accountable? It is sad that the main stream media is so intent on pleasing the Obama administration that they have not called him on his tactics.

Well, most of the media that is. In July of this year Helen Thomas and Chip Reid took the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs to task over just such tactics.

I can only hope that the media in this country wakes up and starts to become more skeptical of this administration. Where is the outrage that the media showed towards Bush, or towards Thatcher? Where is the media’s sense of self preservation?

Chicago style politics conducted on a national scale is something that we should all be scared of. But it is that very Chicago style of political business as usual that dictates; don’t kill the messenger – control the messenger.