Obama's Second Swearing In

Even before the Democratic National Convention, “Transparency” became the buzz word for the election. Upon his selection as the Democratic candidate the Obama team quickly adopted it and has carefully repeated it time after time. So when reporters learned that President Obama was sworn in a second time and had only allowed only four print publication reporters to cover it. That the only documentation of the event, beyond those reporter’s notes, was a poorly recorded taping (by one account on a hand held personal tape recorder owned by a Bloomberg reporter) and a single photo from a White House Photographer to document it. The mainstream media, which had recently praised as the Obama media as the “Most open and transparent administration in years”, was visibly displeased.

At his first press briefing on Thursday, the new White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was assaulted with questions concerning the apparent secrecy as well as the reason for the second swearing at all. In response, Gibbs stated that the decision to keep the second swearing in to a small and comparatively unremarkable ceremony should not be interpreted as an attempt at secrecy. He went on to state “There’s audio. I’ve heard that audio. I was there. Far easier to get tickets for this one…We took a print pool in there. We released a photograph from the White House. And as I think the pool reported, as soon as it happened, we reported it out. … We think it was done in a way that was up front and transparent. We think that it also did it in a way that demonstrated again that this was done out of an abundance of caution and only that.”

Based on reports provided by the various media outlets yesterday, it does not appear that this single event has resulted in the end of Obama’s honeymoon with the press. Rather, to continue with the analogy, it should be viewed as a small squabble. Something that can be over looked for now but if other squabbles follow, will be brought up again by those reporters who were not invited to par take.

Source: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, WashingtonPost, AP, BBC, CBC