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With many reporters skipping White House press briefings in these waning days of the Bush administration, journalists from some very obscure news outlets are moving up to the front row. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank thinks that's as it should be.
This week's New York Times story on John McCain hinted at a political and sexual scandal. Brooke explains how the article's use of anonymous sources and innuendo made the The New York Times, and not just McCain, the focal point of the media's scrutiny.
This week House Republicans staged a walk-out to express their outrage at House Democrats for finding the Bush Administration's Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton in contempt of Congress. Bob weighs in as the parties accuse each other of orchestrating media stunts.
Tucked away into President Bush's 2009 budget was language that eliminates the FOIA ombudsman. The newly-created position was at the heart of legislation that Bush recently signed into law, and was intended to expedite government's response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Cox Newspapers' Rebecca Carr explains that without the ombudsman position we shouldn't expect any improvements in the painfully slow FOIA process.
The release of a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran prompted mea culpas and soul searching from pols and the press. Bob talks with two White House correspondents, the Chicago Tribune’s Mark Silva and US News and World Report’s Ken Walsh, about how the President and his press secretary, Dana Perino, reacted to the news on Iran.
This Thursday, Congress sustained the President’s veto of an expanded Children’s Health Insurance bill. But two poster children, Bethany Wilkerson and Graeme Frost, got the lion’s share of media attention. Reporter James Carroll covered Senator Mitch McConnell’s connection to attacks on Frost.
With the opening of the Supreme Court's new term this week, Jeffrey Toobin's recently published book might help shed light on the inner workings of the notoriously tight-lipped nine. Toobin says that while gaining access and writing about the Court isn’t easy, it is necessary.
This week, a copy of the Government Accountability Office's Iraq assessment was leaked to the press, apparently for fear that the final version would be watered down. This not to be confused with the White House assessment from July … not to be confused with the upcoming … well, Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung parses the flurry of official reports.
