The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has a piece today about, in part, how some reporters have protested background briefings like the one the White House held yesterday in which reporters were fed off-the-record, pro-Sotomayor quotes by officials who would soon thereafter appear on TV saying the same things.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, craftily, turned it back on the reporters: Stop complaining. Why, just this morning you used an anonymous source in a story… Or, per Kurtz:
Gibbs said it was “interesting” that the AP had no qualms about relying on unnamed “officials” in breaking the news of Sotomayor’s nomination. “I’m not sure today is the day I’d make that argument,” he said.
Can we get a little consistency here, guys? You grant anonymity to someone who leaks you a big scoop; You grant anonymity to an official who prefers to speak talking points unnamed before talking those same points in person on TV.
UPDATE: The LA Times’s James Rainey also writes about this today, arguing “just because Washington culture has cornered reporters into occasionally accepting anonymous sourcing as a necessary evil, doesn’t mean a ‘change’ administration should insist on reinforcing the same old ways.”
Rainey also quotes Stephen Hess, “a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and chronicler of the Washington press for decades,” as follows: “Yes, every now and then there is a dogged reporter. But if you feed a dogged reporter a dog biscuit, you will see how easily he will eat it. And how much he will appreciate it.”
Gibbs has little room to point fingers about anonymous sourcing. He was the spokesman for a secretive 527 that aired anti-Howard Dean ads comparing Dean to Osama Bin Laden back in 2004. Gibbs embraced the slime ad against Dean, and refused to say who had funded the ad.
#1 Posted by CAB91, CJR on Wed 27 May 2009 at 02:11 PM
It seems a rather odd protest for two reasons;
1) The background sources are ultimately going on the record with the same exact information. In other words, the condition of background is not an attempt to conceal a source.
2) Reporters are under no obligation to use and/or print anything they hear on background.
It's not unreasonable that an administration would present the best possible case for its nominee. It's the job of the press corps to seek out other sources to add counterpoint or support.
#2 Posted by Xavier, CJR on Wed 27 May 2009 at 11:27 PM