Bush admin more accommodating to the press than Obama admin

It’s like a guy beating his girlfriend – just plain wrong!

The Washington Post reportsthat the Obama White House has been acting like thugs when it comes to their demands for free prime-time coverage. Surprise, surprise! Ballerina turned Chicago politico Rham Emanuel acting like a goon. Not only did he pressure the major networks to run Obama’s drivel in prime time, he went over their heads to their corporate ownership. (Via memeorandum) (Emphasis mine)

In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.

Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, the company spun off from Viacom.

Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months. But network executives have been privately complaining to White House officials that they cannot afford to keep airing these sessions in the current economic downturn.

Talk about killing the golden goose! Compare the Obama White House to the Bush White House:

Tensions have been building behind the scenes. Some television executives say the Bush administration informally floated possible news conference dates in advance, while Obama officials basically notify the networks of their plans. Such an approach prompted calls between White House officials and the top executives at each network, and a meeting between Gibbs and the Washington bureau chiefs.

But little changed. White House officials essentially dictated the timing when they decided to hold an evening session on the 100th day of Obama’s term and again on July 22. In that instance, network executives say, the White House announced the event on its Twitter feed less than an hour after informing them.

Since the Reagan era, when cable news was in its infancy, prime-time presidential pressers have been a relative rarity. George H.W. Bush held one in 1992, but the broadcast networks dismissed it as an election-year event and refused to carry it. The following year, when Bill Clinton held his first evening news conference, CBS and ABC stiffed him; NBC carried the first half-hour; only CNN and PBS aired the whole thing. George W. Bush held four such events in eight years.

But the networks have deemed Obama a box-office draw, featuring him on everything from “60 Minutes” to “The Tonight Show” to a 90-minute ABC town meeting on health care.

It may have worked for a while, but the American people are getting sick of lectures from President Obama. One woman was so sick of seeing him on her television every time she turned it on she put the TV up for sale. There’s always some new crisis for Obama and TOTUS to address. But crises get old fast, especially when invented by the dude whose mug is on the screen promoting them. Most Americans are too busy wondering how to make it through this recession to bother tuning in to the guy who never has anything new to say.

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