On same day it confirms Deep Throat, WP praises Bush press accessibility

[DeepModem Mom]

Washington Post editorial --

Mr. Bush and the Press
Wednesday, June 1, 2005; Page A18

ONE OF THE unattractive distinctions of President Bush's first term was his inaccessibility to reporters. Through his reelection last November, Mr. Bush met the press for full-scale, solo news conferences just 15 times. During one journalistic dry spell in 2003, the president went five months without holding a solo news conference. White House officials argued that Mr. Bush disdained the formal news conference, with its self-promoting reporters and "gotcha" mentality, and they said he was available to reporters in other venues, answering news-of-the-day questions in quick encounters or holding mini-news conferences. But these are inadequate, watered-down alternatives -- Question Time Lite -- and in any event these sessions, too, were often scarce.

We write, though, not to criticize Mr. Bush's performance during his first term but to praise that of his second. Yesterday the president held his seventh news conference in as many months (and that doesn't count a session with newspaper editors in April at which Mr. Bush answered questions)....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053101598.html

[blm]

1. How about that Kerry made a point to assure press he'd have monthly

press conferences because it is a presidential duty to engage the people of this country and their representatives in the press.

[mopaul]

2. irony has died

along with absurdity, surrealism and logic.

things don't HAVE to make sense any more.

[spanone]

3. Ben Bradlee, then editor of WP had BALLS.

The MSM was willing to take on Nixon and his crooks, today they bend over and take it up the ass.

[indepat]

4. The Post's rapturous atta' boy warms me cockles

[Strawman]

5. Sounds like "the soft bigotry of low expectations"

We don't care if he gives us any substance whatsoever in his press conferences, just that he puts on the show of having them.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. So true -- never thought about Shrub knowing about all there is to know...

about low expectations. He's spent a lifetime benefiting from them.

[applegrove]

7. Let us see Bush call and have a press conference in a week where

there is no huge breaking news event. Let's see him be a man!

[burythehatchet]

8. hmm, what does "gotcha" mentality really mean?