Hold that Vegetable Garden Exclusive!

Sunday, 12th April 2009

Commenting on this post about the Damian McBride Affair, Shippers makes an excellent point: things are ~~just as bad, if not~~ worse, on the other side of the Atlantic. Consider this example, culled from Politico's daily Playbook:

The WashPost's First Dog exclusive - which the WP says the First Lady's office offered in March to stave off a premature story about the White House vegetable garden, which had been promised as an exclusive to The New York Times (we're not making this up) - is rained on by weekend Web leaks. But the WP has first word that the adorable black Portuguese water dog, a gift from Senator and Mrs. Kennedy, will be named "Bo." (And that the Obamas will make a donation to the D.C. Humane Society, since he didn't come from a shelter.)

As Shippers says, at least the lobby demands a higher price than that. And look! The WaPo has the dog "scoop" in March but sits on it for, what, two weeks? Why? Unbelievable and yet, you know, typical. Madness. Still, that's how a house-trained newspaper behaves...

UPDATE: I guess the Post would say that it played this game with the White House because these stories are so trivial, but readers might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. If the Post - and other papers - will bargain with the administration on this, what stories wouldn't be subject to such a cosy arrangement?

Filed under: Newspapers (382 more articles) , Washington (169 more articles) , Westminster (186 more articles)

Previous Back to Alex Massie Next

Blogs: Martin Bright | Susan Hill | Melanie Phillips | Coffee House | Faith Based

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (2)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

porkbelly

April 12th, 2009 7:22pm Report this comment

Check out this article on Slate that details the extent of press poodledom: http://www.slate.com/id/2215702/

Mark Solomon

April 13th, 2009 12:47am Report this comment

We may laugh at how tame the US press is to the Hopeychanger, but we forget that the same situation existed here viz-a-viz Tony Blair until the Iraq war or even later. Because of 18 years of Conservative government, the press forgot that their role is to hold the government of the day to account (given that the modern Commons no longer fulfills that role) and so they had to change from being anti-Tory to anti-Labour.... some of them, notably the BBC, still haven't made that change, so the US press can be given a bit more than 100 days leeway....

Post comment