The Obama Presidency: A Giant Reality TV Show

I’ve written many times about how the Obama Administration (which promised to be the most transparent), is actually the least transparent. It’s not just the refusal of FOIA requests, the NDAA, banker immunity and attacks on whistleblowers. The Obama team is very purposefully putting out its own media propaganda, which it tries to pass off for news, while there is almost zero press oversight allowed. We find out from the Huffington Postthat:

Capitalizing on the possibilities of the digital age, the Obama White House is generating its own content like no president before, and refining its media strategies in the second term in hopes of telling a more compelling story than in the first.

At the same time, it is limiting press access in ways that past administrations wouldn’t have dared, and the president is answering to the public in more controlled settings than his predecessors. It’s raising new questions about what’s lost when the White House tries to make an end run around the media, functioning, in effect, as its own news agency.

Mike McCurry, who served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton, sees an inclination by the Obama White House to “self-publish,” coupled with tactics “I never would have dreamed of in terms of restricting access” for independent news organizations.

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