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Monday, January 30, 2006

He’s no prom queen, he’s our president

Posted by on January 30 at 12:08 PM

From Editor & Publisher (via Rawstory): The White House routinely regulates photo journalists’ access to Bush and stages pictures of the president to (assumedly) present him to the public in a less moronic light.

A review of Associated Press archives found that during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration, only 100 handout photos of events were released to the press. During the first five years of Bush’s presidency, more than 500 have been distributed.

The key is that each of these events was closed to news photographers.

…Veterans who criticized the practice said it both limits real news coverage of the president and allows the White House to choose only those images it wants people to see… But the opposition to White House-manufactured images is not just a press access issue, photographers contend. They point out the power such an arrangement gives the White House to literally control news.

Why would the Bush administration want to literally control the news? Maybe because Bush has a face that literally dares you to take it seriously. Jesus, they’re regulating photos of him and this is still the crap we see?


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Le sigh. Does it literally literally dare to take me seriously?

literally is like totally the best word ever; don't hate! participate!

he has the worst acting coach ever. he's like a 70s child star or 7 year old beauty queen: "now i'm sad," "this is me thinking," "uh-oh, i made a poopie."

literally is like totally the best word ever; don't hate! participate!

Fuck that. "Literally" is a fine word -- but when it's used to mean the opposite of what it's supposed to mean, well, that sucks ass.

Cienna, you're a good writer; but for the love of god, look up the word before using it again. Please!

Well, to the credit of those statistics, news coverage has increased a great deal in the years since Clinton was prez, thanks to the proliferation of the media's presence on the internet. We literally get up to the minute news with pages and pages of photos, whereas in the 90's a story only had maybe a few photos.

Look at even a website as simple as Yahoo and you'll see what I mean.

Oops, so my point... I think this is a product not of Bush manipulating the media so much as it is a product of media coverage in this day and age.

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