White House snub makes Boston Herald gleeful
Talk about handing your opponents a club to beat you with.
This morning’s Boston Herald could barely contain its glee that the White House press office did not select a Herald reporter for the media pool — the small group of reporters who stick close to the President and share their notes with the rest of the media — for President Barack Obama’s fund-raiser this afternoon at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End.
“Prez’s Mitt Snit,” the Herald's front page bellowed. “Peeved Obama Bans Herald Reporter … Because We Ran This Page 1 Article,” with an arrow pointing to the front page of the March 8 edition, which touted a Mitt Romney op-ed on the day, not coincidentally, that Obama made his last visit to Boston. (Here’s the complete version.)
The Boston Herald, of course, tries very hard to be Boston’s print version of FoxNews, and if that is what you want to be, nothing could better than a snooty brush-off from a White House press aide.
The Herald’s Hillary Chabot is only too pleased to quote the snootiness at some length. According to Chabot’s story, here is what press aide Matt Lehrich wrote in e-mails to the Herald:
I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters.My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits.
Lehrich goes on smarmily tell Chabot pool duty for the Obama had been previously arranged with the Boston Globe by the White House Correspondents Association, and that the Herald will certainly be considered for future presidential pools.
As we have in the past — including the multiple occasions on which the Herald has supplied local pool reporters — we will continue to consider the Herald for local pool duty for future visits.
Columnist Joe Battenfeld, a veteran political reporter, finds this all a bit much.
But using the White House press pool to possibly punish or reward media based on what the White House considers “fair” coverage? This is taking the control freak thing to new levels.
Herald readers, too, find the snub outrageous. By mid-afternoon, Chabot’s story on the Herald website has received nearly 800 comments.
In short, the Herald could not have dreamed up a better one-day readership booster.
One problem: Lehrich is correct in saying leading your newspaper with an op-ed by the president’s potential Republican challenger on the day the president comes to town “raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits.”
Actually, no, he’s not right. There is no question about whether the Herald was unbiased in its coverage of the last Obama visit. It was, as it always is, totally and complete biased against Obama. At the moment, that is pretty much Herald policy.
Lehrich’s correctness in identifying the Herald’s bias, however, does not excuse his puerile banning of the Herald from today’s press pool. His action just ain’t right. You occupy elected office, you should be ready to take your lumps, and so should your staff.
Battenfeld is wrong about "taking the control freak thing to new levels." This kind of petulant snubbing of reporters by politicians and their aides goes on all the time, at every level of politics.
How foolish of the White House to play that game — and how dumb of the White House to get beaten at it.
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About the author
Mark Leccese, a journalism professor at Emerson College, covered Massachusetts politics, business and the arts for more than 25 years as a newspaper reporter, editor and magazine writer. He has More »Recent blog posts
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