USA Today joins boycott of White House propaganda

◼ Newsroom Protests Against White House Spread - Washington Free Beacon

USA Today Deputy Director of Multimedia Andrew Scott said in a memo to staff the publication will not use “handout photos originating from the White House Press Office, except in very extraordinary circumstances.”

USA Today is now one of more than 35 news agencies refusing to use White House photography.

Last Thursday, a coalition of major news organizations including the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, and CNN protested their photojournalists being locked out of public events in a letter to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

...The report, written by former Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., said the White House has harnessed in-house media to “dispense to the public large amounts of favorable information and images generated by [Obama’s] administration, while limiting its exposure to probing by the press.”

The Times’ David Sanger told Downie the Obama administration is the “most closed, control-freak administration” he has ever covered.

“He’s the least transparent of the seven presidents I’ve covered in terms of how he does his daily business,” ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton told Downie.

Other reporters described the Obama administration’s “across the board hostility” to press, overblown reactions to stories perceived as negative, and an overwhelming need to control its message.