Woodward: The White House vs. the press

last updated 8 January 2015

“All administrations are sensitive to criticism,” said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post, but “no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt” for the press as Barack Obama. The latest evidence of that hostility comes from veteran Post reporter Bob Woodward, who called White House aide Gene Sperling last week to confirm Obama’s role in devising the current sequester of automatic spending cuts. Rather than discussing the matter calmly, Sperling yelled at Woodward for 30 minutes, and followed up with an email in which he vowed that Woodward would “regret” writing that the president was “moving the goalposts” on the sequester by asking for more tax increases. By issuing this “veiled threat” against the hugely respected Woodward, the administration has demonstrated “its intolerance for dissent.”

Please shed no tears for poor Bob Woodward, who is a “demonstrable liar,” said Andrew Sullivan in Dish.AndrewSullivan.com. The Sperling-Woodward emails have since been published, puncturing Woodward’s claim of being threatened. Sperling apologizes for raising his voice on the telephone, and Woodward replies that “I for one welcome a little heat.” As for the “veiled threat,” Sperling does write that “as a friend” he thinks Woodward will “regret” writing his story—but because the story’s incorrect. Woodward was at least half wrong, said John Cassidy in NewYorker.com.He was right that the idea for the sequester originally came from White House aides. But in signing the sequester legislation in 2011, Obama clearly stated that “we’ll need a balanced approach,” and not “just spending cuts,” to close the deficit. So in sticking to that position today, Obama is definitely not “moving the goalposts.” Maybe the legendary reporter, now 69, needs a fact-checker.

Look—the Woodward flap may be a “poor example,” said Dana Milbank in WashingtonPost.com. But “there’s little argument that 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has become a frat house for the thin-skinned and the foul-mouthed.” Every journalist who covers Obama’s White House has received “obscenity-laced emails” from presidential advisers, suggesting an administration in a mode of “perpetual combat.” And what’s unusual about that? said Michael Tomasky in TheDailyBeast.com. Every Republican White House is “uncompromising, brusque, blunt, and boorish” with the media. Democrats are expected to welcome criticism and pointed questions, so when they push back, they’re seen as “churlish” or even sinister. Why the double standard?