"Gibbs Departure Offers Opportunity To Fix White House Press Relations"--Dan Froomkin

[KoKo]

A long article by Dan but and excellent read for us Dems. Has many good quotes from people all the way from Helen Thomas to Bush's former Press Secretary.
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Gibbs Departure Offers Opportunity To Fix White House Press Relations
Dan Froomkin for Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/10/gibbs-departure-white-house-press-relations_n_805935.html

The modern White House press secretary operates in a defensive crouch, fending off questions rather than answering them and revealing as little as possible.

But does it have to be this way? What if the next press secretary took a different approach -- and offered the media and the public a more expansive view into the goings-on inside the West Wing?

The imminent departure of spokesman Robert Gibbs gives President Barack Obama -- and his new chief of staff, William Daley -- a chance to reset the relationship between the White House and the press, and to live up to Obama's campaign promises about transparency and accountability.

"We all know how close Robert is to the president. He's as close as maybe any press secretary has ever been," said Julie Mason, a reporter for the Washington Examiner and board member of the White House Correspondents' Association. "But we don't get anything for that. It doesn't translate into better information. It just translates into frustration, because you know he isn't telling you what he knows."


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Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.

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