"I don't think there is a honeymoon," he said. "The accountability starts immediately."

Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Jan 23, 2009

Inside the bubble

Jon Banner, the executive producer of "World News with Charles Gibson," recognizes the pressures on his White House correspondent.

"Being inside that bubble at the White House requires great discipline," Banner said.

How will the ABC News executives assess whether Tapper has been successful?

Banner said Tapper's mandate is to "break news, inform the public on the tone of the Obama presidency, and hold them accountable. We'll know in a year if he has kept (the administration) honest and broken some news here and there. This White House is disciplined so it's easier said than done."

Banner also discounted the expectation of the media giving Obama a much-discussed "honeymoon period," in which reporters look the other way at occasional flubs and generally give him the benefit of the doubt as he eases into the White House.

"I don't think there is a honeymoon," he said. "The accountability starts immediately."

Banner has no doubt that Tapper is the right person for the job of keeping Obama's administration on its toes. Tapper, he said, " the perfect reporter for the time we live in. He is very aggressive (and can) present the news to a digital audience. He is a force of nature."

For his part, Tapper has a clear picture of how the Obama administration regards him and his counterparts.

"I would imagine that they think I'm a pain -- if I'm doing my job right," Tapper said. " I don't come to this job automatically assuming they are making the right decisions. That's my job: to let our viewers know, to the best of my ability, what is really going on."

http://www.marketwatch.com/m/story/e32609d9-a019-4fc1-b6c3-e8d78a738ed1/0

Bush had no accountability in 8 years. None.

Obama must be accountable from day one. Damned librul media strikes again!

Do I really need :sarcasm: ?

Right on cue, the White House press awakens from its Bush slumber
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200901270006

In fact, the media's lullaby treatment of Bush at the outset of 2001 became so pronounced that even some members of the Beltway press corps acknowledged the unfolding phenomenon and how it so obviously contrasted with the high-octane coverage the outgoing Democratic administration had been bombarded with. "The truth is, this new president has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton," Politico's John Harris, then with The Washington Post, wrote during Bush's first months in office. (Harris went on to cheer, "ood for Washington in giving a new president a break at the start.")


The other Clinton/Obama connection is how the press detests the way new Democratic White Houses treat the media. Of course, the irony is thick, considering the utter contempt the Bush White House displayed toward the press. The way former chief of staff Andrew Card famously dismissed the press as just another D.C. special interest group desperately seeking access, the way aides quickly formed habits of not returning reporters' calls for weeks and months, and the way the Bush White House waved in a former male prostitute using an alias and without any valid journalistic credentials to toss softball questions during briefings. That's how Republicans brushed back the press. But it's the Democrats whom reporters lash out at. It's the Democrats whom reporters denounce with righteous indignation within days of the new administration's taking office.

Back at the outset of 1993, journalists complained that the new Clinton communications team limited their access by closing off portions of the White House to reporters, that aides didn't sufficiently schmooze journalists, and that the new president did not have enough formal press conferences. (And don't even ask what reporters did when their pals in the White House travel office got fired.) "They're dissing us," Los Angeles Times California editor David Lauter, then-White House reporter, complained in April 1993.
...

But did the press ever needle Bush with uncomfortable questions when he made social calls? Please note that in August 2006, when Bush made a rare unannounced visit to the White House press room -- and this was years after Bush had broadcast his open contempt for the press -- there were no tough questions. As Froomkin reported at the time:

So there was something entirely appropriate about Bush stopping by the briefing room yesterday not to answer (or even be asked) a single substantive question -- but to insult pretty much everyone in spitting distance.

Bush mocked members of the media to their face that day by tossing out several insults, and none of them asked a substantive question. Obama was gracious with reporters and was rewarded with a gotcha moment, which the press corps then obsessed over.

Coverage of Repiglickins:


Coverage of Democrats:

..."I don't recall anyone recalling that they cried when President Bush was inaugurated," Tapper wryly noted.

Now that's false. They weren't tears of joy, but I remember lots of tears...