Is The Press Going To Change The Way It Covers Dick Cheney?
Yesterday, the Hotline's Marc Ambinder wrote a blog post suggesting that, in the wake of Vice President Cheney's hunting accident, "major television networks and some print entities are trying to figure out a way to follow the Vice President during his weekend sojourns."
The post did not say that any media outlet had decided to change its strategy for covering Cheney, whose schedule, unlike that of the president, is often kept private, making it difficult for the press to keep tabs on him. But the headline claims that media outlets will "ramp up efforts to track Cheney," and the piece says that among the ideas being discussed by the networks is to establish "an informal pool to stake out the Naval Observatory and to exchange, on a limited basis, editorial information to facilitate that pool."
I spoke to Janet Leissner, the CBS News vice president and Washington bureau chief, about whether CBS News and the rest of the media was considering covering Cheney differently. Leissner, who presently chairs the network pool, told me that there is no serious discussion taking place about forming a pool to stake out the Naval Observatory. She also said that she doesn't believe that the vice president will be covered differently in the future than he was prior to the hunting accident.
"This isn't a question of resources, this is a question of access," she says. "When we have access to public figures, we send reporters and producers and camera crews to cover them. But the vice president was on private property. It doesn't make sense to stand five miles down the road from a ranch where the vice president might be quail hunting with all the resources in the world if you can't get in there."
Both Leissner and Ambinder, who I also spoke to for this post, say it would be impractical to stake out the Naval Observatory for multiple reasons, among them the facility's multiple entrances and the fact that the vice president is often not there. But Ambinder says that there are serious discussions taking place within media organizations about how better to cover Cheney, and maintains that staking out the Naval Observatory is under discussion, at least at some outlets.
Ambinder, who notes that Leissner is "a very well respected news manager," also says he finds it "a little bit depressing" that she believes that Cheney cannot be covered more effectively. "If she says it can't be done, then it probably can't be done. But the vice president is the second most powerful person in the world, and that to me at least warrants the old college try to do more," he says. "This incident does seem to call for a more aggressive approach to reporting on the vice president's activities, particularly as they relate to out of state travel."
The post did not say that any media outlet had decided to change its strategy for covering Cheney, whose schedule, unlike that of the president, is often kept private, making it difficult for the press to keep tabs on him. But the headline claims that media outlets will "ramp up efforts to track Cheney," and the piece says that among the ideas being discussed by the networks is to establish "an informal pool to stake out the Naval Observatory and to exchange, on a limited basis, editorial information to facilitate that pool."
I spoke to Janet Leissner, the CBS News vice president and Washington bureau chief, about whether CBS News and the rest of the media was considering covering Cheney differently. Leissner, who presently chairs the network pool, told me that there is no serious discussion taking place about forming a pool to stake out the Naval Observatory. She also said that she doesn't believe that the vice president will be covered differently in the future than he was prior to the hunting accident.
"This isn't a question of resources, this is a question of access," she says. "When we have access to public figures, we send reporters and producers and camera crews to cover them. But the vice president was on private property. It doesn't make sense to stand five miles down the road from a ranch where the vice president might be quail hunting with all the resources in the world if you can't get in there."
Both Leissner and Ambinder, who I also spoke to for this post, say it would be impractical to stake out the Naval Observatory for multiple reasons, among them the facility's multiple entrances and the fact that the vice president is often not there. But Ambinder says that there are serious discussions taking place within media organizations about how better to cover Cheney, and maintains that staking out the Naval Observatory is under discussion, at least at some outlets.
Ambinder, who notes that Leissner is "a very well respected news manager," also says he finds it "a little bit depressing" that she believes that Cheney cannot be covered more effectively. "If she says it can't be done, then it probably can't be done. But the vice president is the second most powerful person in the world, and that to me at least warrants the old college try to do more," he says. "This incident does seem to call for a more aggressive approach to reporting on the vice president's activities, particularly as they relate to out of state travel."
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