President Obama holds off-record meeting with top White House reporters

February 22, 2013
By DYLAN BYERS  

Photo: Google

President Barack Obama held an off-the-record meeting with top White House reporters on Thursday afternoon, POLITICO has learned.

(PHOTOS: Obama, the puppet master)

The meeting, with reporters from major print and television outlets, comes days after the White House Correspondents Association complained publicly about their lack of access to the president during a golf outing in Palm Beach, Fla., and one day after Obama met with local television reporters.

White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on the meeting.

(VIDEO: Carney answers press corps concerns about access)

"Potus has meetings all the time. I don't comment on all of them," he told POLITICO in an email.

WHCA president and Fox News White House correspondent Ed Henry did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the meeting.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama, the puppet master)

On Sunday, Henry released a statement on behalf of the White House press corps expressing "extreme frustration... about having absolutely no access to the President of the United States" during his vacation in Florida and promised to fight for greater transparency. POLITICO followed that news on Monday night with an extensive report about the president's media relations strategy, noting that Obama's careful "limiting, shaping and manipulating" of the media had left reporters "scrambling for access." The president held one-on-one, on-the-record interviews with reporters from local television affiliates on Wednesday.

(Also on POLITICO: The true meaning of White House access)

In a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Carney said he was "completely sympathetic" to the press corps' concerns about access.

POLITICO was not invited to the meeting, though it has been invited to similar off-the-record meetings in the past.

source: POLITICO
additional editing: mine