Legendary ABC News journalist Ann Compton says President Barack Obama launches into “profanity-laced” tirades against the news media in off-the-record meetings with reporters, and she calls his administration “more opaque than any I have covered.”
Compton retired from the network in August after a 40-year career, and she made the comments about Obama in a new interview that aired Sunday night with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN.
“I have seen in the last year Barack Obama really angry twice,” Compton said. “Both were off-the-record times. One, profanity-laced where he thought the press was making too much of scandals that he did not think were scandals.”
She added, “And I don’t find him apologetic. But I find him willing to stand up to the press and look them in the eye, even though it was off the record, and just give us hell.”
Watch an excerpt of the C-SPAN interview with Ann Compton:
[jwplayer BmL8Gazf]
While Lamb wondered if Obama had a point, Compton said, “We cover what we are allowed to cover. And when policy decisions and presidents are inaccessible and don’t take questions from the press on a regular basis, I think they reap what they sow.”
During the interview, which was actually recorded in October, Compton blasted the Obama administration as “opaque”:
Before I walked out the door on September 10, I was a strong voice for complaining that this particular administration has been more opaque than any I have covered about what the president does in the Oval Office every day. He is far less accessible on photo-ops with meetings. Even some meetings on the record, meeting in the Roosevelt room with financial leaders from, from Wall Street or on issues with environmental groups, or with issues with environmental groups, with public-opinion leaders, I think most presidents have been far more forthcoming than the second Obama term, in terms of what the president is doing every day and we almost never get photo-ops.
I think I went through a time of three or four months where I was never in the Oval Office once on my pool day. Part of this may be that the president feels a little bit on the ropes. His job approval rating is down to 40 percent consistently for the last couple of years since his reelection. He also has his own tools. He is the first president with his own journalistic tools. They’ve all had photographers. He has his own videographers. He has a newscast on Friday mornings on WhiteHouse.gov. It is anchored by his former deputy, now press secretary, Josh Earnest. I think it is fine if the president of the United States wants to present his own version of what he did all week. Most of it is behind the scenes shots of him with Supreme Court justices and leaders coming in from Wall Street. It is fine that he puts it on the Internet and that everybody can see it. Those same elements should not be blocked from the White House press corps.
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