WP: Growing Separation of Press, State: WH press corps' first day in exile

[DeepModem Mom]

A Growing Separation of Press and State
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, August 15, 2006; Page A02


White House press secretary Tony Snow trekked across Pennsylvania Avenue to brief. (By Ron Edmonds -- Associated Press)

The White House press corps spent its first day in exile yesterday, banished from the White House compound for the first time since the John Adams presidency while the West Wing briefing room undergoes a renovation.

As if to deepen the isolation, press secretary Tony Snow, stepping over some plywood and into the new digs on Jackson Place NW for his daily briefing, adopted the Borscht Belt comics' practice of answering questions with questions....

***

Snow's performance...fits neatly in a renewed Bush administration effort to keep the media at a safe distance....

***

...correspondents...were...historians say, operating from the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time ever. "You can't even see the White House from the new press center," chief Associated Press correspondent Terry Hunt grumbled.

True, a rotating group of 18 correspondents and camera crews get to stay in a trailer near the White House. But they have to share a single toilet as they worry that they will not be allowed to return after the promised nine months.

One resident of the trailer park, the Chicago Tribune's Mark Silva, reported back to his colleagues on Sunday: "We passed the gutted press briefing room, the chairs gone, and paused to wonder about you-know-what."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081401000.html