Not cool, Mr. Gibbs. Witness the following exchange between President Obama’s press secretary and ABC’s Jake Tapper. Then recall the overtures toward transparency previously made by the Administration. Then cringe.
As the Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation (which, full disclosure, helps fund CJR’s transparency coverage) writes,
Transparency isn’t just a bunch of web sites and data and releasing information online (although that’s all great, too), it’s also allowing conversations to be held with candor. Everyone knows the press wants to be adversarial, but the Press Secretary’s office should no longer continue with the tradition of stonewalling and evasion. Gibbs should be allowed to speak more freely and openly, and thus be more transparent.
Amen to that.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.