Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer predicts White House reporters will “make themselves look bad if left to their own devices” — that is, if permitted to shout out questions at presidential press conferences rather than being called on per a pre-selected list (as was the case for Pres. Obama’s first press conference). Fleischer tells the Washington Post:
When trust in the media is dropping along with the number of people who read newspapers and watch the news, the last thing journalists should do is act like fools on national TV, seeing who has the loudest voice — or the reddest dress — with their hands raised, yelling “me, me, me, me.”
ABC News’s Sam Donaldson, meanwhile, has a different prediction, telling the Post:
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.When people tell me how brilliantly President Obama and his people are handling the press, I just smile. Wait awhile.
