White House Media Policies Revealed

Dana Milbank writes in Friday's Washington Post that the Scooter Libby trial "has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.

"With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. 'Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday,' she said. 'Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday.'

"Martin, perhaps unaware of the suspicion such machinations caused in the press corps, lamented that her statements at the time were not regarded as credible. . . .

"Martin, who now works on the president's communications staff, said she was frustrated that reporters wouldn't call for comment about the controversy. She said she had to ask the CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, which reporters were working on the story. 'Often, reporters would stop calling us,' she testified.

"This prompted quiet chuckles among the two dozen reporters sitting in court to cover the trial. Whispered one: 'When was the last time you called the vice president's office and got anything other than a "no comment"?'"

Martin's notes showed that she considered "Meet the Press" a good venue for Cheney for this reason: "Control message." And, Milbank writes: "She walked the jurors through how the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others."

Tim Rutten writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The lesson to take away from this week's unintended seminar in contemporary journalism is that the vice president and his staff, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, believe that truth is a malleable adjunct to their ambitions and that they have a well-founded confidence that some members of the Washington press corps will cynically accommodate that belief for the sake of their careers.

"It's a sick little arrangement in which the parties clearly have one thing in common: a profound indifference to both the common good and to their obligation to act in its service."

From Dan Froomkin's "The Unraveling of Cheney" in the Washington Post, January 29, 2007