[Media-watch] White House intimidates writers/Bush press conferences too scripted - Suskind - 9/4/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

>From the Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California.
http://www.dailytrojan.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=656561

Daily Trojan - News
Issue: 4/9/04

Bush's press conferences too scripted, author says
By Zach Fox

Ron Suskind, author of the recent controversial book on former Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill, and Michael Barone, senior writer for the U.S. News
& World Report, argued politics in a heated discussion as part of the
Annenberg series "Dean's Open Forum," on Thursday.[8 April, 2004]

The forum was hosted by Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School for
Communication, and featured an open discussion about the possible outcomes
of the upcoming presidential election and the current policies of the Bush
administration, including the handling of the press and the war in Iraq.

One of Suskind's most severe critiques of Bush was not only Bush's lack of
press conferences but also his management of those conferences.

For each press conference, the White House press secretary asks the
reporters for their questions, selects six or seven of the questions to
answer and those reporters are the only ones called upon to ask their
questions during the press conference, Suskind said.

This system makes it so that the president has answers already prepared for
questions that he knows will be asked, Suskind said.

"He needs unmanaged time in front of the nation right now," Suskind said.
"The White House has to engage in a way that it hasn't engaged in before."

Suskind also said that the White House uses intimidation to force writers
into only writing favorable stories about the administration.

"If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and
say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White
House will ever talk to you again,'" Suskind said. "(The White House is)
pissed, and ... angry."

Barone said Suskind's evaluation of the press' relationship with the White
House must be taken into perspective considering that "90 percent" of the
press corps is Democratic.

Suskind called Barone's estimation of the press' political affiliation
"absurd."

Barone rebutted with an evaluation of how the press treats different
administrations.

"The press corps is not lenient to the Democrats, as we found out during the
Clinton administration, but they are consistently anti-Republican," Barone
said.

Both of the speakers agreed that the Bush campaign has developed a
streamlined message for the press.

"You only need to make one phone call, and you've heard everyone's story,"
Barone said.

Barone and Suskind slightly differed on the issue of a campaign's unified
message in that Barone said that the Clinton campaign also had a policy of
everyone having the same information - though it was less of a centralized
message than that of the Bush campaign.

Suskind said that he could call 30 people in the Clinton administration and
get different information so that he could discover the truth.

Suskind also made the distinction that the press is adversarial to Bush
because he lied about policy, whereas Clinton lied about personal issues but
never about policy.

Cowan introduced Barone to the audience by saying that there is "nobody more
knowledgeable about American politics." Barone is editor of "The Almanac of
American Politics."

Suskind was introduced as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author
of the controversial book "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White
House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill."

Barone began the discussion by offering an analysis of voting trends for the
upcoming presidential campaign.

The upcoming election looks very much like the 2000 election in that it was
possible that a candidate could again win the popular vote but lose the
electoral vote, Barone said.

The election will come down to the 17 swing or "target" states that will
receive the most attention from candidates, Barone said. California is not
considered to be one of the 17 target states, so the Bush campaign will not
spend money on advertising in the state.

"California is an expensive state, and (the Bush campaign has) only got $180
million," Barone said.

The Republicans have already won the race for control of the House of
Representatives, but the race for the Senate could be interesting, Barone
said.

The current breakdown of the Senate is 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one
Independent, while the House of Representatives has 228 Republicans, 205
Democrats and one Independent.

Since there are multiple seats that are up for election, the majority could
go either way with the Democrats possibly picking up as many as three seats
or the Republicans gaining as many as four seats, Barone said.

Barone predicted that the Republicans would gain one seat and maintain
control of the Senate.

The discussion also touched on the testimony of Condoleezza Rice early
Wednesday morning and on the situation in Iraq.

"The casualties we've had (in Iraq) are much more like the casualties for
training during peacetime than during war," Barone said.

Suskind said again that Bush needs to have more unmanaged time in front of
the press to explain the war in Iraq.

"Bush is not good at what he needs to do right now," Suskind said.

Barone also said that Bush needs to have a frank address to the nation on
the state of the war in Iraq.

"The president needs to do the type of explaining that Lincoln and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt did," Barone said.

Suskind also briefly addressed the controversy over his book and the
involvement of O'Neill in the publication of his book.

Since the discussion mainly focused on the war in Iraq and how Bush handled
the situation, the speakers' closing comments summarized their thoughts on
those issues.

Some writers have likened the war in Iraq to the Vietnam War, and this
misconception arises because the media "suffers from a lack of historical
perspective," Barone said.

On the other hand, Suskind focused on his view of Bush in his closing
comment.

"I am not pro-Bush or anti-Bush," Suskind said. I am pro-facts."