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Cover Your Access

April 13, 2010

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The Washington Post today has a front-page piece about White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, speculating that Gibbs might — indeed, “sounds eager to” — some day leave his press secretary position to become a full-time strategic adviser to President Obama.

At one point, Post reporter Jason Horowitz describes Gibbs as “talk[ing] about the media as a predictable, hyperventilating rabble obsessed with access…”

Later, Horowitz himself talks about the media in much the same way:

In the Gibbs era of Obama message control, reporters in the briefing theater are slowly being reduced to a chorus complaining about access…

Further along, Horowitz observes first hand Gibbs addressing reporters’ “further grievances about lack of access.”

And then, Horowitz writes: “There are a few things about Gibbs that irritate even the least excitable reporters in the briefing room, though none of them would speak for the record out of fear of retaliation.” As in, less access?

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Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.