Should media be allowed to cover the White House events based on whether they give Obama positive coverage?

Should media be allowed to cover the White House events based on whether they give Obama positive coverage?

Obamatreatmentmedia

At what point will these types of events become news worthy? Doesn't the media get upset about this type of political favoritism? From the Boston Herald:

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit. . . .

But Lehrich said the Herald wasn’t purposefully barred from the press pool, saying local pool duty by the Boston Globe was arranged earlier with the White House Correspondents Association. And Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events.

“As we have in the past — including the multiple occasions on which the Herald has supplied local pool reporters — we will continue to consider the Herald for local pool duty for future visits,” Lehrich wrote.

Obama is in town today to raise money for his 2012 re-election campaign. His afternoon speech in the South End’s Cyclorama is open to all media, but only a selected pool can attend other aspects of his fund-raiser. Pool reporters must share all their material with other press. The Herald has been bypassed for pool duty during Obama’s last two visits despite asking the White House to be the local pool reporter.

“Newspapers don’t have to be unbiased to get access. You can’t just let only the newspapers you want in,” said Boston University journalism professor Fred Bayles. . . .

SF Chronicle: Obama White House Lying about threats it made to Reporter

SF Chronicle: Obama White House Lying about threats it made to Reporter

ObamaDishonest Obamatreatmentmedia

The SF Chronicle blasts the Obama White House here.

Update: In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

The Chronicle's report is accurate. . . .

As of about 1 PM today, there has been virtually no news coverage of this event from Friday. The SF Chronicle caught the Obama administration in a lie, but the rest of the media has ignored it.


Even more telling is how the few media outlets who have covered it have done so. I searched under "San Francisco Chronicle "White House" Reporter threats AND lie OR "not a truthful" OR "pants-on-fire moment"," and got only seven news stories.