White House shuts out Herald scribe


How often does this happen? This doesn't seem right to me

My first thought is that I'm sure they get more requests than can be granted... what *should* be the criteria for which journalists get in?

I understand your concern, though, and I share it a little bit.

The Herald and The Globe are two of the major papers in Boston. The Obama administration has a history of not including the Herald at Obama or Obama-administration events. The Herald does have a history of being the more critical of Democrats while the Globe has a history of being more critical to Republicans. Both papers should be allowed to attend the events as long as they are covering them not making the news by grandstanding or causing an issue.

You say "major papers", but every city has around 2-3 that could be considered major. Which do you choose, and where's the cutoff?

The Globe outsells the Herald by a pretty substantial amount, and in terms of its Sunday papers its not even close. The Herald is also more of a tabloid type of paper, and its credibility and sources have frequently been brought into question. This Mitt Romney thing is hardly its first offense - It's a paper that has been blatantly editorializing its front pages for a long time now. Plastering opinions all over your front page like graffiti is a bit of a nono in the industry if you want to present yourself as an objective news source.

Any agency that

- Calls itself a newspaper
- Publishes headlines that are almost declarative statements
-- Except for the question mark tacked on the end
--- Which gets you out of the requirement where the story can't be a lie

...has no business taking up a press slot at anything important. You've all seen them -- "Obama Secretly A Muslim?" "9/11: CIA planned attacks?" "Oprah's Secret Harem of Children?"

...Along with anyone who does this. (Found on fark.com)

Headline: Teens Found Dead Near Four Loko Can Died of Accidental Overdose

"Four Loko is a controversial malt liquor nicknamed "Blackout in a Can" which is popular among college-age drinkers."

Article: The overdoses were:
methadone - anti-addictive opioid used to treat morphine and heroin addiction
alprazolam - Xanax
hydroxyalprazolam - produced by your liver when it metabolizes Xanax
doxylamine (one kid) - short-term sedative antihistamine used in cold medicines
ethanol (one kid)

Four Loko contains 6 to 12% ethanol (numbers from the article), which was found in only one autopsy.

So: One kid drank a Four Loko, and she and her three friends overdosed on various retarded-unsafe chemicals. But look back at that headline. There are 9 sentences in this article, and 5 of them are about the kids and the overdose. The others are about Four Loko and how deadly it is.

Who defines 'fairly'? This isn't the administration's first run-in of this nature with local news media. It's pretty low to oust a paper from an event in its own city out of dislike.

Ok, say there are 2-3 major newspapers in a city. So that would mean they would have to invite those 2-3. They can choose them all, and have several dozen slots left over. If they have ample closet space they can fit even more.

There are lots of organizations that could be considered biased. For example, the Obama admin has given a WH press room credential to TPM, which is pretty much the left's version of hotair.com or Michelle Malkin.

So much for a new era of transparency.

Out of a few hundred cities that each want access? An event being local to Boston isn't going to keep them from asking.

If they can re-print the story of a speech with limited Q&A, sure it would. A paper can ask for a private deskside after the speech, doesn't mean they will get it. In the balance, for instance, telling the San Francisco Chronicle there is no room for them in Boston is more digestible than asking a Boston paper to stay away out of dislike.

I highly, highly doubt it would. People in the news industry want ANY kind of exclusivity they can get, and being as close to unfiltered, pure news is as beneficial as it gets for them. Sure, there are times when you have to call in your resources for more important things, but a Presidential visit is something that MANY outlets - newspapers, radio, TV, bloggers - will be eager to get their hands on.

The fact that they're in a particular city shouldn't mean they should be more willing to cater to their reporters, IMHO. It's all for the sake of pretending they're being cordial to a host, anyway. I'm in favor of more respectable, objective news sources getting spots instead of giving it to more locals just because it happens to be their city.

If TPM and Huffington Post or whoever else still has credentials, they should be shut out too. Even so, the fewer unobjective sources the better. I'm pretty tired of journalism being redefined as anything under the sun, so long as it includes bits and pieces of an actual story.