Press Whines, ‘Bush Doesn’t Coddle Us’

President Bush has a love-hate relationship with the press. Some of them love him, some can’t stand him, but all of them are begging for more – more face time, that is.

NBC’s David Gregory and New York Times correspondents Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger recently complained to The New Yorker: "The Reagan Administration coddled us. This crowd has a wall up. They never get off their talking points.”

Sanger, one of the reporters who occupies office space in the White House that’s dedicated to the press, said: "You have to report the Bush White House from the outside in. You’re reporting the ping, the sound that comes back.”

Bush tells his staff, "I want to know that you’re talking about what we want to talk about, not what the press wants to talk about.”

Though Bush has given interviews to Fox’s Brit Hume, NBC’s Tom Brokaw, CBS’s Scott Pelley and ABC’s Diane Sawyer, he will not talk to either Dan Rather or Peter Jennings, who has interviewed every president since Richard Nixon.

Clinton ex-staffer George Stephanopoulos doesn’t get nearly as many Bush administration officials as other Sunday morning shows and Bush has shut out the New York Times ever since he was elected.

When a reporter at a press corps barbecue on Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch responded to the president’s implied indifference to the press by asking how he knew what the people thought, Bush shot back, "You’re making a huge assumption that you represent what the public thinks."

White House staff say Bush refers to the pack journalism tendency of reporters to play to cameras by triggering frenzies with certain questions as "peacocking" and the major weekly news magazines as "the slicks."

Some in the media like Bush personally, and he has good relationships with many, even giving some nicknames like "Stretch," but is often visibly annoyed when reporters are too impolite.

Bush had held only 11 press conferences as of Jan. 1 – perhaps the fewest of any president since television – and prefers informal press settings because otherwise, "Everybody has to get ‘purtied’ up," says White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, quoting Bush.

Though White House staff say the president has a "cagey respect" for the press, he also thinks they’re elitist, left-wing, and have little in common economically and socially with the average American.

"Bush at War" author Bob Woodward, who was reportedly granted unprecedented access to the Bush White House, said the administration is "more responsive" than any he’s covered.

But ABC News political director Mark Halperin remarks that Bush is "surrounded by advisers who understand that the public perceives the media as a special interest rather than as guardians of the public interest" and can "manipulate us forever and set the press schedule, access and agenda that he wants."

Even top administration officials do not often speak with the press at length. And reporters complain that Karl Rove and Andrew Card rarely return calls.

Bush staffer mark McKinnon said this administration doesn’t buy into the notion that wanting the media to like them will get the media to play nice.

"The vast majority of people in this building – the press doesn’t believe this – don’t want to talk to the press," explained Bartlett. "They want to do their job." Added Card, "The taxpayers ... don’t pay us to talk to the press."

Editor's note:
Urgent: President Bush needs your support – Click Here Now and show your support to your friends and family

If you love George Bush – you’ll love NewsMax’s "Bush Collection" – Check it out – Click here Now

Have an Opinion About This? Click Here to Send an URGENT PriorityGram Today