{"id":3926,"date":"2003-03-09T08:43:23","date_gmt":"2003-03-09T13:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=3926"},"modified":"2003-03-09T08:43:23","modified_gmt":"2003-03-09T13:43:23","slug":"breaking_news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/09\/breaking_news.html","title":{"rendered":"Breaking news"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s wild consternation in Washington, as Presidential Press Corps Doyenne Helen Thomas was snubbed<\/a> at last week’s press conference. Indeed, some folks seem to see this as yet further proof of Dubya’s pettiness and attempts to duck hard questions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Well, let’s see. Thomas is not exactly a model of impartial journalism, for starters. Nor has she given Dubya much reason to offer her <\/i>respect, having received none himself.<\/p>\n

For four decades the White House correspondent for United Press International, Mrs. Thomas, 82, has in recent months harangued Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, asking how President Bush can slaughter innocent Iraqis in a quest for oil.
\nNow syndicated by Hearst Newspapers, Mrs. Thomas has also denounced Mr. Bush outside the confines of the White House briefing room. “This is the worst president ever,” Mrs. Thomas told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., in January. “He is the worst president in all of American history.”<\/p>\n

And so it’s a surprise that he chose not to let her “speak” for the press corp, and didn’t choose to let her <\/i>get air time for her <\/i>views? After all, whose press conference was this?<\/p>\n

Tradition is a fine thing, but it’s not like Ms Thomas’ “position” was graven in stone. And while it’s dangerous for the President to seem like he’s ducking tough questions (though given the questions he did take, that hardly seems to have been the case), he’s not under any particular obligation to give anyone among the reporters <\/i>to have a soap box to speak from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s wild consternation in Washington, as Presidential Press Corps Doyenne Helen Thomas was snubbed at last week’s press conference. Indeed, some folks seem to see this as yet further proof…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fourth-estate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11480,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/08\/18\/another_day_another_rat_j.html","url_meta":{"origin":3926,"position":0},"title":"Another day, another rat jumping","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 18-Aug-07 11:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Less than a week after Karl Rove jumped ship from the Bush Administration, Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, is bailing as well.\u00a0 To his credit, though, he's not...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8593,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/10\/03\/another_interes.html","url_meta":{"origin":3926,"position":1},"title":"Another interesting nomination","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Oct-05 3:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Evidently Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to replaced O'Conner on the bench has folks on both sides of the aisle all a-twitter. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is said to...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5430,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/11\/sauce_for_the_g.html","url_meta":{"origin":3926,"position":2},"title":"Sauce for the Gander","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 11-Mar-04 9:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Scott rightly points out that, after the GOP (and then-candidate Bush) laid into the Clintons for \"selling\" sleep-overs in the Lincoln Bedroom to major contributors, it's more than a bit...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132940,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/27\/george-w-bush-supports-a-free-press-and-a-welcoming-immigration-policy.html","url_meta":{"origin":3926,"position":3},"title":"George W. Bush supports a free press and a "welcoming" immigration policy","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 27-Feb-17 10:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"'\"We need an independent media to hold people like me to account,\" Bush told TODAY'S Matt Lauer. \"Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it\u2019s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power. ... It\u2019s kind of hard to tell others\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":137893,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/21\/silencing-the-inconvenient-press.html","url_meta":{"origin":3926,"position":4},"title":"Silencing the Inconvenient Press","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 21-Feb-19 6:28pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Justice Clarence Thomas' musings -- supported by Neil Gorsuch -- that there's nothing in the Constitution about public figures having a much higher hurdle to prove libel, and therefore New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) should be reexamined, is not just about celebrities being more able to sue lascivious\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21032,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/13\/unblogged-bits-fri-13-may-11-1730.html","url_meta":{"origin":3926,"position":5},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Fri. 13-May-11 1730)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 13-May-11 5:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... To my libertarian friends - A healthy society is not a landscape of all-against-all individuals. Nor is it a collectivist hive-mind in lockstep. There is, and should be, a tension between personal freedom and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}