the kicker

Snub Is In The Air

April 2, 2009

Are American reporters adopting that perceiving-slights-around-every-corner thing that some British reporters seem to have? (When in London…)

The New York Times‘s Helene Cooper is miffed that President Obama broke from the “standard form” of “‘joint press availabilities’ — bureaucratic lingo for press conferences where leaders from two different countries stand next to each other and take questions from reporters” (the “standard form” being, apparently, “that each official’s press corps gets the same number of questions”). Yesterday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown fielded four questions from U.K. reporters and President Obama entertained just three from the White House press corps.

This? On top of the missing swag bags?

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.