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Ari Fleischer – White House press sectetary, presidential aide, quote fixer

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I may be the only one bothered by this, but Howard Kurtz raised a troubling incident in his column today in the Washington Post.

As Kurtz explained, the Post’s Jonathan Weisman, a business reporter, spoke with a White House economist who was hesitant to speak on the record. To accommodate the economists’ concerns, Weisman sent the quote he got from the official to Ari Fleischer’s office for “approval.” “The office fiddled with the quote, and after Weisman objected, the office fiddled again before the comment was printed,” Kurtz explained.

This is disconcerting for a few reasons. First, journalists aren’t supposed to be running quotes by government press flacks for “approval.” Weisman later realized this, and announced last week that he had “violated journalistic ethics” by using a quote that had been fixed by the White House press secretary’s office. Fine, Weisman won’t be making that mistake again.

More importantly, what makes Fleischer think his office should be responsible for authorizing and altering quotes from administration officials? I know that Rove & Co. demand loyalty and discipline above all else, but this is ridiculous. As Weisman himself said after the incident, “I believe that reporters should stop playing along with a system where quotes are vetted by the White House press office and can be rejected and even modified.”

I firmly believe that the press corps has gone easy on Bush since the campaign, but these tactics escalate the problem to new heights. When the public reads a quote in the newspaper, we need to trust that these are the words uttered by the person quoted. Once the White House press secretary is altering the quote to his liking, and the reader doesn’t know about the interference, the independence and objectivity of the article (and the process) is undermined.

Kurtz quoted White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan as saying the practice of approving quotes is “infrequent.” Sorry, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.