Report: White House-press relations more tense than ever

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 4 March 2015

A new report from the Columbia Journalism Review suggests that relations between the White House and journalists are more guarded and unproductive than ever.

"An exhaustive study of every official exchange Obama had with the press corps in 2014, supplemented by a review of daily press briefings and interviews with more than a dozen current and former correspondents and White House press secretaries," CJR summarizes, "reveals a White House determined to conceal its workings from the press, and by extension, the public."

When press do get direct access to the president, these increasingly rare encounters are often more focused on provoking a reaction over a controversial topic than "addressing long-term accountability issues." Meanwhile, new technological resources like social media have allowed the White House, in turn, to bypass the press corps entirely and present a crafted message directly to the public without the hassle of questions from reporters.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.