Like an anxious group of children trying to unlock a treasure trove of delicious sugary candy, the White House press corps can be an equally anxious group while attempting to extract newsy information from their favorite piñata -- the White House press secretary.
These days, Robert Gibbs has the honor of playing the central role in this classic and dysfunctional fairy tale between the press corps and press secretary that adds a new episode every afternoon in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.
In the midst of fielding tough questions on the presidentially mandated collective budget cut of $100 million from cabinet agencies to the government's response to swine flu -- oops, I mean H1N1 (we're not supposed to remind people it all started with pigs) -- Gibbs joined Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room to answer the most important on all of our minds: how would he grade the press corps' performance over the first 100 days of the Obama administration?
Without any hesitation, Gibbs dutifully answered "a strong A."
The reason became crystal clear on Monday when the Center for Media and Public Affairs released a study on the coverage of President Obama's first 50 days in office. The results were pretty astounding by any measure.
Collectively among all the network nightly news programs, there was 27 hours and 44 minutes of stories on Obama. Compare that to 15 hours and 2 minutes during President Bill Clinton's first 50 days and a paltry 7 hours and 42 minutes during President George W. Bush's. You would think the beginning of the Clinton and Bush terms provided no news worth mentioning with the large contrast in numbers.
On the print side of things, the New York Times ran 115 front page stories on Obama, totaling an equivalent of 28 pages in their paper. Remember, they run all the news that's fit to print! And obviously stories about Bo the dog, too.
The study covered only the first 50 days and the coverage has certainly taken a step back since then. The big question was how long the honeymoon period would last and we got our answer -- not long. Obama certainly helped to extend the days of goodwill by touring the Briefing Room during his first week in office and making frequent appearances in the press cabin of Air Force One on his first trips -- but those days are since long gone, and the critical eye of the White House press corps has returned.
This is all good for the American people. We are finally getting the opportunity to hear a more balanced version of events to make informed opinions on the policies of the day.
Certainly there is still plenty of fluff demanding air time out there, but a lot less than there was in the beginning.
And just as every good fairy tale has an important moral to tell, so does this one. Of course Gibbs gave the press corps a "strong A" -- for the first 50 days at least, they were doing all the work for him!
Pete Seat, a Schererville native, is former deputy assistant press secretary to President George W. Bush. He can be reached at peteseat@gmail.com. His column appears in this spot every other Thursday. The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.
