Transcript
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. The White House changing of the guard is in full swing, marked by the confirmation hearings this week for secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice. Another promotion of particular interest to us is that of the newly appointed White House communications director Nicolle Devenish. She's not unknown, having run communications for Bush's re-election campaign and served as Jeb Bush's press secretary.
Initial reports suggest the change might make life a little easier for White House reporters, but Washingtonian magazine national Harry Jaffe thinks the primary beneficiary will be President Bush.
HARRY JAFFE: A very, very smart move on the part of the White House. From what I've heard about Nicole, she is a genuinely nice person. She's a young woman, she's attractive, who doesn't come from the Texas group of pugnacious, we-hate-the-press point of view.
You know, we journalists are actually human beings, and dealing with us in a straightforward, kind of warmhearted kind of way actually will get the proper response, or a better response. So, I think that she understands that. And the other thing is, is that her role in the White House heretofore was to deal with the regional press.
That means that if you're the Washington Post, you might not get an interview with the president. But if you come from a radio station in Dubuque, or you work for a newspaper in, I don't know, Kansas City, and you want to come in and have an audience with the president, you're quite likely to get one.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, that was always the Bush strategy - to go past the big-timers who knew a lot and go to the regional press where it was assumed they wouldn't have the facts necessarily at their fingertips about geopolitics.
HARRY JAFFE: Who ran that part of the press operation? Nicolle Devenish.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. She's made nice so far with a, a bruised and battered press. The New York Times profile, Elisabeth Bumiller's profile of Devenish was described by CJR's Campaign Desk as about as hard-hitting as an US Weekly profile of Hilary Duff. Is she going to be getting this sort of hands-off treatment, or is this just what Bumiller does?
HARRY JAFFE: You know, look - this is a game we're playing here. Elisabeth Bumiller needs information from the White House. You know, the journalists really, in this town, really would rather not get totally frozen out. They'd like to have their questions answered. Elisabeth Bumiller wrote a very sweet profile of Nicolle Devenish. Well, why not? Nicole Devenish is not walking into the situation and saying, you know, you're a bunch of slime and you know, stay out of the White House, we're not going to talk to you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. I'll tell you why not, Harry. The reason why not is because of the phenomenon in Washington called the beat sweetener. You do a lot of pieces that the White House will like, and then you can assume that the White House will talk to you. Well, it hasn't worked much in the first term, because the Bush White House spoke to practically nobody. But if this means that there's an opening, then that means there'll also be a lot more beat sweetener stories, and those aren't necessarily going to inform the public.
HARRY JAFFE: Look - this is the beginning of the dance of the second term. You know, why not sweeten the beat a little bit? You know, in talking to Harry Jaffe, let's face it, you're talking to a member of the Washington press corps. That's how the game is played here. It didn't play well in the first term, because I think that the press did a terrible job at ferreting out information leading up to the war in Iraq, so that was a major, major series of missed opportunities by the Washington press corps.
I truly believe that this second term will be different on both sides. I think that the team that the Washington Post has in place is a very, very good team. They're not willing to play footsie with the White House, and I think the same is true of the New York Times.
You know, let's not also forget the fact that we reporters can only report what the Democrats do and what the Republicans do. I just think that there is going to be much more conflict within the Republican Party, and if the troops are not going to be lockstep with what Karl Rove wants them to do, that will make great reporting.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Harry, thank you very much.
HARRY JAFFE: A pleasure to be with you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Harry Jaffe is national editor at the Washingtonian magazine.
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