The most puffed-up press lobby on Earth used to be the White House Correspondents’ Association. I recall attending a global summit in Venice, when they flew in and out with the president, never leaving the island where he was staying. No mingling; just spoon-feeding at briefing time so they could all file the same tale and claim the same expenses. But times are getting tough for the erstwhile lords of Pennsylvania Ave: President Obama, on one CBS reckoning, has given 870 different interviews, too many awarded outside the magic circle.
Thus, the association has issued a list of demands designed to bring Obama (and possibly Hillary Clinton) to heel, including an insistence that the commander-in-chief takes questions at least once a week, and holds full press conferences once a month. He or she will allow the pool “to witness and record him at work on a regular basis”. That pool must move “as a full group representing each sector of the media. When in rare circumstances the White House makes the president available to a partial pool … the rest of the pool will get access to see, hear and question the president in a close succession”. Oh, and on Camp David and/or residential retreats, “the White House will disclose where the president is at all times, what he is doing, including the appointments he is keeping, the calls he is making and other public business”.
Which might remind you to lob a rock in the next pool you see – and that journalism’s seventh deadly sin is self-importance.
