Why POLITICO wasn't invited to Obama's off-the-record meeting with top White House reporters today

POLITICO:

Obama, the puppet master

Obama boasted Thursday during a Google+ Hangout from the White House:

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

The people who cover him day to day see it very differently.

“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,”

“The president’s day-to-day policy development — on immigration, on guns — is almost totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”

said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford.

“This administration loves to boast about how transparent they are, but they’re transparent about things they want to be transparent about,”

said Mark Knoller, the veteran CBS News reporter.

They are also masters of scrutiny avoidance. The president has not granted an interview to print reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and others in years. These are the reporters who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions.

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