Biden Staff Trying to CENSOR Pool Press Reports

 

Biden Staff Trying to CENSOR Pool Press Reports

Aug 16, 2012 01:32 pm | Jeff Dunetz

As he began his stump speech in North Canton today, Paul Ryan took a shot at Vice President Joe Biden's latest gaffe.

"It is great to be here in North Canton, or as Joe Biden might say, it's great to be here in Nevada," 

Earlier this week the SCHMOTUS mistakenly told a crowd in Danville, Va., that they could help President Obama win North Carolina in November. Not as big a deal as the Romney/Ryan ticket wants to put ya'll in chains gaffe but it is another log on the mistake fire.

Biden has a well-documented habit of saying the wrong thing. Sometimes its kind of cute like the famous "this is a big F***ing deal," other times its nasty such as the chains comment, and then there are the gaffes that make you wonder if his "headlights are on dim."

Remember the episode during the 2008 campaign when Biden said that President FDR 'Got on Television' to Talk about 1929 Market Crash."  He should have known that  FDR wasn't president when the market crashed, compounding market crash misstatement is  the first televised presidential speech was September 4, 1951 by Harry Truman.

Apparently Biden's handlers are determined to cut off the string of gaffes. Sometimes it takes the form of making sure to push the candidate right back into the car,  when he is done speaking, at the same time trying to shoo reporters back to the motorcade. That way there is no time for "off the cuff remarks."

According to a report in Politico today:

Biden's staff lives on pins and needles. This leads to odd decisions.
For example, on Tuesday the vice president made an off-the-schedule stop at a cafe in the little courthouse town of Stuart . After meeting the owner of a Daytona 500-winning NASCAR team, Biden was asked about Social Security and Medicare by a crowd of a couple dozen seniors. In the aftermath of Paul Ryan joining the GOP ticket, it's a topic Democrats are delighted to discuss. Yet just as Biden was saying "voucher-ize," his aides started to not so subtly nudge reporters that it was time to leave.

It might seem like an opportune time to have reporters present to record and amplify his party's message. But Biden aides sent the traveling press marching out.

Even worse according to the Jonathan Martin story  Biden staffers are trying to change "pool reports."

What's perhaps most striking about the Biden staff's attempts at press management is its effort to influence what goes in the pool reports from his off-schedule stops. Because the entire press corps cannot easily jam in, say, a diner or private home, it is standard practice to have a single designated reporter take notes and share the material with colleagues from other news organizations. These reports are designed entirely for the media, but are distributed by White House staffers. In the case of Obama, as with his predecessors, the reports are simply forwarded without comment by email to a news media distribution list.

But on two occasions during Biden's Virginia trip, his staff sought to have certain elements in the reports highlighted while reporters drafted them and discussed the contents with the reporters after the summaries had been sent but before they had before sent to the broader media.

Which is a nice way to say they were trying to censor/change the stories. This is not done, even with a mainstream media that is biased toward Obama/Biden.  These reporters want to feel as though they have some degree of independence left.

Staffers spinning reporters to frame events the best they can is, of course, commonplace in politics. But attempting to intervene in the drafting of accounts that reporters share with one another is all but unheard of and reflects the deep concern Biden's team has about offering any fodder to the opposition.

Chuck Todd of NBC weighed in on the report that Vice President Joe Biden's staff actively attempted to edit pool reports, an "outrage." He said that the system of distributing pool reports through political staffers may have to change as a result of Biden's staffer's behavior (Mediaite

)

Here's the bigger issue, it seems as if the SCHMOTUS and his gaffes are becoming a big issue and may steamroll to the point that it hurts Obama.  There is still time to make a switch, but will they even consider it? On one hand replacing Biden on the ticket with someone like a Hillary may invigorate the campaign. But on the other it would make Obama look indecisive and weak(er).

In the end the scheme of things a vice president has little effect on final tally of a presidential ticket. Its the guy on top people are voting for.  Despite renewed rumblings about Joe Biden and his gaffes, my money is on his staying on the ticket.

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