Obama press corps: Distort, don’t report

What a welcome respite it is to read the foreign press when the president travels abroad.

It's energetic, fun and unblinking.

Not like the American White House press corps, which seems plodding, uptight and patronizing by comparison.

Other than an occasional bold question from The Associated Press or ABC's Jake Tapper, the president seems to be treated as if he needs the loving help of the expectant media to be fully appreciated, as if there were -- as talk radio claims -- a secret Obama narrative among the "media elite" for which the facts must be manipulated to fit the story line.

You can decide for yourself what that narrative is, or even whether you buy the assertion. But there is no denying that every conscious person assimilates facts, and then arranges them to reinforce his or her views. On occasion (and this is the great hope of journalism), people change their minds based on the facts. Therefore, we need trustworthy reporters and newspapers to make the system work well.

I ascribe to a wry paraphrase of the Mark Twain axiom that newspapers should give readers the facts first -- and then distort them later in the opinion pages.

The Brits seem to do that better than we do when it comes to Obama, who to them is simply the president of the United States, not "The One." (What a concept!)

Take last week's presidential visit to the United Kingdom, for example. The press there covered it all -- the wheat, the chaff, the gaffe and, most fun of all, just plain weird events that happen to most any Yankee abroad.

In Ireland, our president guzzled a pint of Guinness for the cameras. We should see our presidents chugging beer more often, in my opinion.

Obama then visited Moneygall, the home of his distant Irish relatives. Doing a "Roots" kind of shtick, the president talked about rediscovering the missing apostrophe in O'Bama. Now, I don't care who you are, but with apologies to Larry the Cable Guy, that's funny. If the American press corps were not so uptight about race, we'd enjoy such moments more often without the racial undertones unnecessarily injected by "serious" journalists.

In another event, the president's limo (nicknamed "The Beast") high centered on a speed bump, leaving the occupants stuck in an awkward state. Irish bystanders proceeded to tease the driver about his "skills" before the president and his entourage got out and switched to the backup limo ("The Beast Two", I presume).

Had that happened in Manhattan, I fear we'd have been "treated" to a boring two-page spread in The New York Times with a detailed drawing of "The Beast" analyzing how dangerous the motorcade failure was for our helpless president, and who (besides capitalism, Big Oil and Wall Street) shares the blame. There'd be an ensuing editorial about how this had never happened to any other president, calling for national standards on the height of racist speed bumps.

Then, of course, there's that odd Scotland Yard story. Here's the lead from the British newspaper the Daily Mail:

"More than one person has wanted to call Barack Obama a 'smart alec,' and now British police will get the chance to do so without getting reprimanded.

That's because Scotland Yard has tapped the code name 'Chalaque' to refer to the U.S. president for security reasons during his upcoming state visit to the United Kingdom May 24-26.

"Indarjit Singh, a Punjabi speaker in the UK who is director of the Network of Sikh Organisations, told the Sunday Times the word 'is sometimes used when we want to denigrate someone who we think is too clever for their own good.' "

And who could forget the president's visit to Westminster Abbey? It was supposed to be a ceremonial nonevent.

Then somebody looked at the VIP guest book to see how the president had signed in. Here's the report from The Telegraph:

"But the president seemed to have made a gaffe during the occasion -- signing Westminster Abbey's distinguished visitors' book with the wrong year.

"Mr. Obama dated his entry in the book May 24 2008, rather than the current year.

"Apparently Mr. Obama was heard to ask the dean what the day's date was -- but managed to get the year wrong."

Now, all of these stories don't make President Obama any more or less a good president. In fact, in some ways the "just the facts" approach to the president by the Brits makes him more real and more likeable.

So, just the facts first, please. There's always room for distortion later.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com), the former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and a member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.