President Obama crowed on a Google+ chat from the White House last week that “This is the most transparent administration in history.” The White House's definition of "transparency" has apparently changed drastically over the past couple years, going from the traditional see-through, 'nothing to hide here,' which we all took it to mean and instead turning into a one-way street of information propagated through cream-puff interviews and social media. North Korea media policy, here we come.This evolution has been apparent during Obama's tenure, but the outcry against it has finally reached a fever pitch among the Mainstream Media - yes, the same MSM who were always so eager to lap up the President's spin, and who are comprised of ever-increasing ranks of the President's ex-cronies. Media outlets' press corps stationed in DC have been shut out on an increasing basis, or scooped by the White House selectively leaking information to stanch "Obama can do no wrong" reporters, or bypassing the media completely and just posting news onto social media. Politico has an interesting article up, which discusses the tactics the White House has taken on, and how it has stymied the dialogue between President and media, and also to a great extent has excused Obama from addressing tough questions or issues that he wants to ignore. From the Politico piece:

“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford. “The president’s day-to-day policy development — on immigration, on guns — is almost totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”“This administration loves to boast about how transparent they are, but they’re transparent about things they want to be transparent about,” said Mark Knoller, the veteran CBS News reporter. “He gives interviews not for our benefit, but to achieve his objective.”

The White House now creates its own content, which is distributed to media or social networks in a prescribed manner, rather than make members of the administration available to the media. Obama himself hasn't granted interviews to virtually any of the top newspapers in the U.S. in several years. They also have fallen in love with dumping bad news or controversial bills onto the newswires the evening before a weekend, guaranteeing the least number of people will see it, and the least amount of media will cover or criticize it. To Politico's count Obama has done this nearly 24 times thus far. Of course, Obama also loves to schedule interviews on MSM outlets that he'll encounter no resistance on, like "The View," or "Oprah." Or even one of his famous appearances on "The Tonight Show," or MTV to "take questions from Youtube" that are vehemently screened to make sure it's all vanilla and palatable to Obama's sensibilities.This administration is quite literally trying to adopt a communist-style way of communicating with the public - one that cannot be questioned by a theoretically neutral media. The message is massaged and doctored to fit the way the White House would like it perceived, and only information and topics that are OK'd by the government to discuss are available to the media or the public. If it's negative, the President won't be commenting on it, and if he does it will be through a statement or via a press conference where very few questions are allowed, and only to selective members of the press corps. This is just the latest example of Obama having his untouchable agenda and he has no problem going completely around anyone who threatens to derail his message, his actions or his goals. Like Congress, for example. The media is just the newest addition to the club.Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!