LONDON: Midday last week in the Egyptian coastal resort of Sharm El Sheikh — and crisis in the press room of George Bush’s travelling White House. “This is absurd, the president of the United States is conducting high-profile diplomacy, and we can’t film him,” says David Gregory, a lanky, witty reporter who stars most nights from the White House for the NBC TV network, now standing tall in the face of a White House press aide. “Do you know how stupid this looks? The president’s launching a major peace initiative in the Middle East and the story we have to go with is that we can’t show him doing it.”
For the White House, and specifically the National Security Council, spokesperson Anna Peres remains unflappable. “We are in Egypt, David, and as you might imagine the Egyptians make the rules,” she tells Gregory, trying to explain why the networks’ pool crew has been ejected from the presidential meeting-room, their mobile phones confiscated, even their TV equipment sequestered.
“Whose side are you on, Anna?” Gregory fires back. The question hangs in the air for a decidedly stressful hour, until the standoff is resolved by Egyptian State Television producing images of George Bush meeting Egypt’s President Mubarak. Indeed, to our amazement, the Egyptians produce images of Bush speaking informally to Arab leaders, the kind of straight talk the White House never intended us to see and broadcast.
A week on the White House press plane, hopping from one diplomatic flashpoint in the Middle East to the next with the Bush bandwagon, produces a number of such moments — and any number of questions. How skillful is the White House manipulation of its press corps? How restricted is access to decision-makers? And to what extent are the US media supine post 9/11? What’s so striking, for anyone who’s worked with the Blair machine in recent years, is the starvation diet that faces White House correspondents. The hors d’oeuvres on board the White House plane are tasty, fine Burgundy (yes, French wine on a Bush plane) flows in the galleys, but reporters rarely see a spokesperson in the loop of high-grade information — or obtain a quote that doesn’t come straight out of the spin doctor’s handbook.
“Access is horrible, truly horrible,” says John Roberts, chief White House correspondent for CBS. “Sometimes we don’t get fed anything of value for days and information is used like starvation rations. These people work on the basis that you’ll end up grateful for whatever you get.”
“I’m not a very formal guy to begin with,” Bush tells the pool. “I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things. The meetings (in the Middle East) are informal, they’re kind of relaxed. I think one of my styles is trying to relax people.”
Asked whether his diplomacy has exceeded expectations, he answers, “I’m a master of low expectations.”
In conclusion, quizzed about who will do the follow-up work to keep the roadmap for peace on track, Bush turns to the language of the Texas cowboy to outline the job that now falls to a special presidential envoy. “They’ve got the guy on the ground that is going to — he’s just going to — I used the expression, ride herd. I said, we’re going to put a guy on the ground to ride herd on the process.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.