Help figure out who has been calling on Obama
A guessing game: Who visited White House in administration’s early days?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32.....ite_house/

Here’s your chance to help figure out who has been visiting the people’s house during the early months of the Obama administration.

Although President Barack Obama has announced that he will make public the names of most visitors to the White House, there’s a catch.

Under the new White House policy, names of visitors during the first eight months of the administration are not being released wholesale. Those visitors will be revealed only if a member of the public requests specific names to be checked against the visitor logs.

It’s a guessing game. The White House rules don’t allow you to ask for “everyone who visited on Feb. 3,” or “anyone who visited green jobs czar Van Jones ,” but you can ask for all visits by specific people, whether former Sen. Tom Daschle or New York Times columnist David Brooks or an Obama campaign donor from your hometown.

The Obama administration on Wednesday set up an online form for requesting information on visitors during the period from Jan. 20 through Sept. 15. If you use the form to request visitor information, please help msnbc.com follow up by letting us know what records you requested, and what answer, if any, you receive from the White House. Just send an e-mail with that information.

The White House calls the release of information “voluntary,” while continuing to argue the Bush administration’s position that the records are presidential, not agency records, and therefore are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act . A federal district court has ruled twice that all visitor records belong to the U.S. Secret Service, not the president, and therefore should be open under the FOIA. The Obama administration says it doesn’t agree with the court, but is voluntarily making most of the records available. No previous president has taken that step.

If you want to make a request that goes beyond what’s possible using the White House form — such as a request for all visitors to a certain official —you can use a fill-in-the-blanks FOIA request that we’ve prepared.

For example, here is a headline from the Washington Post website “Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Case”. Now for the casual uninformed reader just glancing the headlines and not reading the article, they came away with the conclusion Scooter Libby was found guilty of leaking Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent, which was not true. I remember when the verdict came down and I had to explain to people I work with he was not convicted for leaking her name.

A better headline for you would have said “Obama yields on most White House visitor logs.” Now the headline reader doesn’t come away with the conclusion that Obama is releasing all the logs as your current title can be construed.

Here is what you wrote:

“”We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history,” President Barack Obama said on Friday.

“Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process,” he added.

The nonprofit, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said it was dropping its two lawsuits against Obama, and two previous lawsuits filed during the presidency of George W. Bush.”

6 paragraphs later, there is a rebuttal, from the AP, of all sources…which tells you how ridiculous your regurgitation of the White House propagana is.

The story is clearly that the White House has NO INTENT of releasing record of visits that would be controversial.

And you served slavishly as the WH’s Ministry of Propaganda in this report.

For the record, I think most of us here realize that MSNBC online is not the same entity as the supposed cable news channel. But your eagerness to distance yourself from them does you great credit.

Please don’t be a stranger.

Now, if you would just pay attention to the part where I explained that this report didn’t come from MSNBC, but from a separate company, msnbc.com,then your pejorative introduction would be left with one original word remaining: “[F]rom.”

As for the future, the White House is saying it will release nearly all the logs — except those fitting in certain exceptions. (You can read the policy in full on our story in a PDF file). Of course, we’ll never know which logs were withheld because of what exception. That’s why we’re continuing to pursue the fight under the FOIA law.

That’s all from here. Enjoy your holiday.

Unfortunately, words have meanings.

BTW, are you getting paid to defend the indefensable? Good work if you can get it.

But if I were you, I’d be practicing my burger flipping skills.

To describe CREW simply as a non-profit organization is a crime of omission. Perhaps you don’t know any better. But Media Matters is also a non-profit organization. Would you not slap a three word label on them?

Somehow I suspect that if CREW were a similarly aggressive ‘conservative’ non-profit, MSNBC would not hesitate to describe it a little more thoroughly.

But back to your earlier points, I do admit that your objection is valid. And that I was too harsh in my characterization of your piece as disinformation, etc.

Again, as I pointed out, in the article you provided the very information that put the lie to the headline — and the quotes from CREW that you included.

I still contend, however, that the overall gist of the headline and article is misleading. Mr. Obama is not yielding in that he has not agreed to give over what is really sought from the logs. Not now, nor probably ever.

Meanwhile, CREW can and has declared victory. And Obama can and has claimed transparency. And most people will think that is indeed the case. Unless they examine your article more carefully, as we have done here.

But most people won’t read your article all that carefully, and they will see the headline and the CREW quotes and think everything is fine and dandy.

“Your proposed headline, “Obama refuses to release WH logs,” was true for the past few months, but it’s not true any more.”

That is not how I see it. It sure looks to me like for all intents and purposes the White House is still refusing to release the pertinent logs. And they will continue to release only such logs which they feel like releasing — and not what have been sought.

I believe any fair reader of this article will understand that we have pointed out the limitations of the White House plan as straightforwardly and directly as possible, and more directly than any other news organization. Of course, that is understandable, because this is an issue we’ve covered before; we filed a request, as CREW did; we were denied the records, and we’re continuing to pursue those records. (Copies of those documents are linked from the box with our article.)

I assume this is just what you would want a news organization in a democracy to do, no matter who is president, right?

On your follow-up question: I didn’t portray CREW as a credible source, or as noncredible. You don’t seem to understand that quoting what a participant in a news story has to say about the events is not an endorsement of that person or organization. CREW (a nonprofit organization, yes, that’s what it is) has filed the lawsuits in this case, so what they have to say about the settlements of their own lawsuit should be in the article, no? If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see we provide a copy of CREW’s annual tax return. I don’t believe you’ll see that on other news articles. Again, we’re giving you more information about CREW than others do, and somehow you perceive this as, what, carrying water for CREW? It makes no sense. I understand, you want me to slap a label on CREW, a three-word label that characterizes their politics; that’s not so easy to do in a situation where CREW has pursued the same records from the most recent Republican and Democratic administrations, and wouldn’t just that sort of easy labeling be the sort of thing you would object to, if it were applied to you?

I understand that your main objection is to the headline, but I hope you’ll agree that it is true and captures the complexity of the situation: “Obama yields on White House visitor logs,” and the subhead, “Names of most visitors will go online — but not for first 8 months of term.” President Obama indeed says he’ll release visitor logs. He has yielded — that is, he did it after being sued. And he’s not releasing them all — those from the first 8 months will mostly not come out. All that is in the headline and subhead, and all that information was in the description of the article on the cover of our Web site for hours on Friday.

Your proposed headline, “Obama refuses to release WH logs,” was true for the past few months, but it’s not true any more.

Are you unaware of who and what they are? Don’t you know their actual background or recent history?

Surely, that is something your readers could benefit from knowing.

“Obama yields on White House visitor logs”

And I did go on to say:

“Note that every detail in this story puts the lie to its headline. Mr. Obama most assuredly is not releasing the pertinent White House visitor logs, despite his claims to the contrary and even despite several court rulings.

And just in case anyone things we might have an objective and honest watchdog media, apart from MSNBC…”

Still, thanks to the headline and the quotes from CREW, etc., the casual reader will still get exactly the wrong impression.

Which can’t be all that accidental.

As Mr. Obama likes to remind us, words — even in headlines — have meaning.

The White House announces that it’s releasing visitor logs, and nearly all reporters fall for that line, and repeat it.

Our story, on msnbc.com, explains that it’s not entirely true. The headline: “Obama yields on White House visitor logs
Names of most visitors will go online — but not for first 8 months of term.”

We explain that it’s true that Obama will be the first president to release visitor logs. But we also explain that you can’t get the records for the first 8 months unless you know whom to ask for. We explain that there are exceptions. We explain that the Obama administration is still making the Bush argument that these records are not covered by FOIA.

And your reaction to this is not, Gee, this was the most imformative story I read on this topic; this reporter refused to have the wool pulled over his eyes. You don’t say, I’m glad msnbc.com filed its own request for these visitor logs, and continues to pursue that request, although CREW has settled.

No, you say, “Some truly professional disinformation from his lickspittle slaveys at MSNBC.”

Wow.

P.S. We’re not MSNBC. That’s a TV company. We’re msnbc.com, the No. 1 news Web site. We have one owner in common (NBC), but we’re half-owned by Microsoft. So MSNBC is our half-sister, not our parent. Separate companies, different editors.

Uh huh!