BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: As the president shuffles his cabinet for a second term the White House press corps is undergoing its own changing of the guard. At the Washington Post, Amy Goldstein, Mike Allen and Dana Milbank are moving out. Peter Baker, Jim Vandehei and Mike Fletcher are moving in. Over the years we've talked to Dana Milbank many times. One of our favorite stories was his expose of the Goyal foil, named for an Indian reporter who former press secretary Ari Fleischer turned to when he needed to get out of a tight spot. Mr. Goyal could always be relied upon to ask a question about the India Pakistan dispute, to groans from the rest of the press corps.

BOB GARFIELD: But sometimes Dana Milbank himself became news. For instance, when it was his turn to write the White House pool report, a brief synopsis of events written by a designated reporter to be used by the rest of the press corps. Recently the White House had taken it upon itself to distribute the White House pool reports to friends of the administration everywhere. Milbank fought back by writing this: 'Time Marine One pulled up at Andrews - 8:47. Wheels up for Air Force One - 8:57. Number of engines on Air Force One - 4. Time aloft - an hour sixteen. Having your pool report distributed to White House staff and a thousand strangers - priceless.' Dana welcome back to the show.

DANA MILBANK: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Is there any story that you've done in your tenure there that stands out for you?

DANA MILBANK: Well there are many that I'd like to forget of course. But the one that sort of defined my time on the beat was one in October of 2002. So it was just before the midterm elections and I put a rather provocative headline on it on the front page. And it said 'Bush, The Facts Are Malleable.' And the whole White House basically exploded. Then I sort of became their official punching bag.

BOB GARFIELD: Yeah that was a landmark story because you were really the first to observe on the front page of a major newspaper that the administration was filled with liar, liar pants on fire. Although to suggest that you were kissing cousins before that is probably a stretch.

DANA MILBANK: (laughs)

BOB GARFIELD: You came to the Post, it was from The New Republic wasn't it?

DANA MILBANK: Yeah. Wall Street Journal, then The New Republic.

BOB GARFIELD: And while there you were given wide berth to fill your pieces with reporting but with analysis, point of view, irony, edge, snideness. At the Post your occasional political notebook pieces were also on the cutting side or even openly mocking of the White House. How did you, unlike a lot of White House reporters, reconcile Dana the reporter with Dana the disgruntled observer of an appalling spectacle?

DANA MILBANK: I think you're correct in saying that sometimes what I'd write would be snide, my editor's word is snarky, and often hostile to the administration. But what I hope you're not finding in it is some sort of ideological opinions being expressed in them. It's just sort of a general hostility to power and a constant needling of whoever happens to be in charge at the time. But I decided early on that having sources in the White House was highly overrated and what you realize with this White House in particular, because things are so nailed down in terms of holding tight to information, that it's hard for them to really punish the reporters they don't like and reward the reporters they like because basically nobody's getting any information anyway. You're sort of oddly at liberty to call it as you see it.

BOB GARFIELD: Well I'm glad you made that point because I've watched a certain number of White House press conferences. There have been very few but nonetheless I've watched them. And while I understand that that doesn't represent White House reporting in its entirety, that it's only just a little show business slice of it, nonetheless I came away feeling just embarrassed over the performance of the White House press corps.

DANA MILBANK: You are correct in perceiving that the president and his administration have at times made the White House press corps look sycophantic and even foolish. That is not because the White House press corps is sycophantic or foolish, it's because you have a clever White House that has learned how to play us and we have had to learn to cover this White House in other ways.

BOB GARFIELD: Since the days of the Reagan administration and Mike Deaver the White House has learned how to control the message of the day. And now in the era of 24 hour cable news coverage the message of the hour, practically the message of the minute. But what if, beginning with White House news conferences, the press corps decided just not to play along. And just to report the news based on what it regards as the news instead of letting the agenda be determined by the White House.

DANA MILBANK: Well that does happen. I mean there have been several times on these foreign trips when we know the president's going to take two questions aside and we know he's going to take the question from A.P. and Reuters. That we just don't even go to the president because we don't want to be used as props. It seems to me that it's not so much that we're not doing our jobs well, it's that we don't even have any impact when we do our jobs well. And we've reached a point where people, depending on their ideology, go to different places to get their news. Using the web, using their choice of Fox news or of different types of newspapers, they can go to someplace that's going to select facts for them, to reinforce their preconceived view. This is not a good thing for the mainstream media. It's not a good thing for democracy I'd argue, but it's happening. Look, we've been reporting all the time about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The lack of operative ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Well guess what? Seventy five percent of the people who voted for George W. Bush in this election believe that Iraq was involved in 9-11 or had very close ties to Al Qaeda and believe that at the time we invaded that country they had actual weapons or very elaborate programs for producing weapons. So it's not so much a media failing, I think, it's the declining influence of what we regard as the mainstream media.

BOB GARFIELD: Do you ever shave in the morning and say to yourself what exactly is the point of going to the White House to report the days' events if every single word I write will be colored incorrectly by readers based on their political point of view?

DANA MILBANK: Well it's going to happen no matter who the administration is. We're going to get it either way. I suppose it would be tempting to throw in the towel and say that maybe this century-old experimentation in a neutral, non-partisan press is going to end in failure with terminably declining circulation and viewership. It seems to me that the alternative is to do what I think we've begun to do here at the Post and that is throw a lot of resources into covering something like the White House to get away from the daily spoon-fed news and to contextualize and present the news in a more accessible and entertaining way.

BOB GARFIELD: And what are you going to do now when you get up in the morning?

DANA MILBANK: Well, I'm going to start drinking.

BOB GARFIELD: And then when you arrive at work what will your assignment be?

DANA MILBANK: (laughs) I'll be doing a twice weekly column in the new section about political Washington. It's sort of a non-ideological reported column and I'll be writing more general feature stories as well. But I'll no longer need dread the late night phone call about what story I did not find that my competitors did.

BOB GARFIELD: Well I must say, it has been a real pleasure for four years reading your dispatches from the White House and the world. And good luck in your new assignment.

DANA MILBANK: Well I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

BOB GARFIELD: Outgoing White House correspondent Dana Milbank works for the Washington Post.