GG's DD, oh & NoMo's 2

[GGraessle]

Posted by: AKvetch
In reply to: No one in particular Date:6/14/2003 1:45:27 AM
Post #of 16035

On June 8, the following post was made on this thread and was promptly deleted as being a “political post”. Today I received an e-mail from the journalist who wrote the article. Because he says his article is NOT political, it properly belongs on this thread, and I ask the powers that be to restore my original post for that reason. The supporting e-mail follows the post.

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A RANT -- A timely comment on the frustration of a journalist -- so close, and yet so far, from a news source.

[Note: this is NOT a political post--it is how a journalist sees his travels to get information for his stories, and is posted for the purpose of encouraging non-political chat on the subject of being a reporter.]

Across the globe in Dubya's bubble

By Rob Watson
BBC Washington correspondent
Published: 2003/06/08 21:57:58 GMT

If you think covering a presidential visit involves sitting on Air Force One and chatting about the state of the world with George Dubya, think again.

Travelling with the United States' president this week has not been an intimate affair.

In fact it is about as far from intimate as you can get.

One of the president's aides told me there were more than 600 staff on the visit, though - he quickly added very proudly - this was a drastic cut from the days of President Bill Clinton, who apparently considered travelling with anything less than 1200 people as being positively lonely.

What you lose in intimacy you certainly do not make up for in spontaneity.

Modern summitry creates what I call the neutron bomb effect: the presence of world leaders resulting in the mysterious disappearance of all the normal people... while leaving buildings intact

These trips are as carefully planned as a military campaign.

So much so that, in advance of the trips, staff will travel to countries to time how long it will take the president's motorcade to drive from one location to another and other such vital measurements.

Presidential time

Each day, the journalists, or the White House Press Corps as we are known collectively, are issued schedules from which I cannot resist quoting:

"1005 PM local: The president and Mrs Bush depart Krakow Balice International Airport en-route Copernicus Hotel. Drive Time: 20 minutes.

"1025 PM local: The president and Mrs Bush arrive Copernicus Hotel and proceed to suite for RON."

Who's RON? RON stands for "rest overnight".

The president himself is often a very elusive quarry.

That is because most of the things he does are not open to the press but rather limited to something called pool coverage.

Let me translate.

Pool coverage means a handful of folks representing television, radio, newspapers, the news agencies and weekly magazines who are ferried along to where the president is going to be, and they then report back to the rest of us on what happened.

In seven days of following the president I saw him in the flesh precisely three times, and most of those at some distance.

Bubble-wrapped

Journalistically these trips are definitely not all they might be.

Whether intentionally or not, the White House arranges them in a way that confines reporters to what we call the bubble.

The bubble being the difficulty of breaking out of the schedule laid down for you by the White House.

We spend so little time in the countries that we visit that doing something enterprising like trying to find some non-Americans to talk to could result in you missing the next connection or a rare briefing from a presidential aide.

The bubble also contains such goodies as a buffet, the technical means to file stories, and a hotel bed.

It is, in fact, quite possible to go on these visits without changing a single US dollar into the local currency, such is the power of the bubble.

To some extent, this latest trip was a double whammy combining the reality-distorting effects of the bubble with the surreal nature of modern summitry - first at the G8 in Evian, then in the Middle East.

Modern summitry creates what I call the neutron bomb effect: the presence of world leaders resulting in the mysterious disappearance of all the normal people from the places the leaders have chosen to huddle while leaving all the buildings intact.

In the usually bustling Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba, the streets were totally empty, no cars or people, while in Evian it appeared that only those thoroughly in favour of global capitalism had been allowed to remain.

Looking for Ron

And then to complete the disorientation, the oldest trick in the book: sleep deprivation.

I am not accusing the White House of doing it deliberately, but the last seven days really do seem a blur of planes, coaches and late-night check-ins and early morning departures from the world's chain hotels.

Take for example last Sunday, where we woke up in St Petersburg, flew to Geneva, took a coach to Lausanne, a ferry across Lake Geneva to Evian and another bus to a press filing centre before a final coach ride - an hour up a mountain - to our hotel for five hours' sleep.

As one reporter joked, what does not kill you makes you a better journalist.

So after travelling 17,000 miles and visiting seven countries in seven days, what about the president's mission of patching it up with Europe and planting the seeds of peace in the Middle East?

Was it a success?

I think I am going to have to sleep on that one.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2973122.stm

Published: 2003/06/08 21:57:58 GMT

© BBC MMIII

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Dear [deleted]

Thanks for your e-mail. It was passed on to me by the programme in London. My piece was definitely intended as being non-political. I was just trying to give a flavour of what these Presidential trips are like for the travelling press and to show that such trips are not a chance to have a good leisurely chat with the President. Understandably he's far too busy for that and the pace of these visits is such that everyone is working flat out, journalists and White House officials alike. I know what you mean about journalists writing pieces moaning about the trials and tribulations of being a journalist, it's not normally something I care for much either. I hope I didn't go into that too much. It was intended far more at exploding certain myths about how the press covers such trips. They really are pretty gruelling though. After I got back to Washington I was off sick for four days, perhaps I'm just getting too old for all of this.

Anyway thanks again for the feedback.
Yours sincerely

Rob Watson
BBC Washington Correspondent