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This post has been updated. --MTF

Criticisms of the White House press corps come fast and furious in MediaLand and Blogistan. (From accusations like they’re ‘an extension of the Clinton spin machine’ to its ‘meekness’ in covering the Bush presidency.) But very rarely do they come from the White House press corps itself.

Until this week.

ABC’s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz was the subject of a Washington Post profile by Howard Kurtz on Monday, where he detailed her ventures to Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A few paragraphs in, Raddatz tossed a bit of grenade at her friends and colleagues in the White House press corps – or, at the very least, the position of White House correspondent – when she said:

"I'd probably go crazy if I had to stay every second at the White House and not go out and be a reporter," she says by phone from Pakistan. "I don't want to be a stenographer.”

From this writer’s vantage point, Raddatz seemed to be implying that covering the White House was not quite the same as what she thought it mean to “be a reporter.”

Needless to say, this wasn’t taken well by some of those she sits with in the White House briefing room.

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