PRESS FREEDOM | Informing citizens, ensuring accountability
16 January 2009
Bush Press Secretary Ends Tenure with Call for More Journalists
Perino acknowledges industry is changing, but democracy needs a free press
Washington — White House press secretary Dana Perino opened her final briefing with a special tribute to the White House press corps and said the United States needs more journalists “for the sake of democracy and the sake of our country.”
Perino addressed a White House press briefing room January 16 that was filled to capacity with journalists and White House staff. She opened with a humorous slide show of members of the press corps who have been covering President Bush for the past eight years.
“It has been challenging on occasion, and there may have even been a day or two when the president wanted to switch jobs with you,” she said as a picture of President Bush shouldering a television camera flashed on screens mounted behind the podium.
Expressing her hope that there had been mutual respect between the Bush administration and the press, Perino said, “I believe this administration has done our best to cater to the press corps’ every need.” As she spoke, photos showed former Bush adviser Karl Rove serving food to reporters on Air Force One, the presidential plane.
NATION NEEDS MORE REPORTERS, PERINO SAYS
The press secretary acknowledged the news industry currently is “going through a change and a transition and a transformation,” with the increased influence of bloggers and challenges to traditional media sources such as newspapers, many of which are struggling to stay in business.
“I really do think for the sake of democracy and the sake of our country we need to have more of you,” she told reporters. “And good, tough reporting takes a lot of money and it takes investment, it takes time, and it takes the willingness from your editors to be willing to go off on assignment and to really hold your elected leaders to account.”
President Bush has described the relationship between U.S. presidents and the press as being “unique” and “necessary.”
“Sometimes you don’t like the decisions I make, and sometimes I don’t like the way you write about the decisions. But nevertheless, it’s a really important part of our [democratic] process,” Bush told reporters in 2007. (See “Press’s Relationship with U.S. Presidents Rocky but ‘Necessary’.”)
Speaking on the ABC television network’s This Week program December 28, Perino said that, along with defending the president to the press, “an even tougher job sometimes is defending the press to the president.” But, she added, “it’s part of the job.”
In her final briefing, she expressed her hope that a new business model can be found to help the struggling journalism industry.
“I don’t think that journalism is dead, but I think that we all have a responsibility to make sure that it survives,” she said.
WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY MAINTAINS “BRUTAL PACE”
Looking ahead, Perino offered best wishes for her successor, incoming press secretary Robert Gibbs. “Please go easy on him — for a week,” she joked.
From her own experience, she said the job entails “a brutal pace and a lot of information coming at you,” but that she had been pleased to serve President Bush. Asked if she would consider the job under a future Republican administration, she said it would be a “tough sell.”
“I think it’s good to get off the stage,” she said. In the immediate future, Perino said she hopes to give speeches about her experiences as a press secretary and that she and her husband will be volunteering in South Africa as part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program.
“I talk about the statistics all the time and how only 50,000 people were being helped in sub-Saharan Africa when the president took office, and now it’s over 2.2 million,” she said.
“I say those statistics a lot to make the case for why that program is so good, but I want to go and experience it personally, firsthand.”
