{"id":8091,"date":"2006-08-01T14:31:03","date_gmt":"2006-08-01T18:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8091.html"},"modified":"2006-08-01T14:31:03","modified_gmt":"2006-08-01T18:31:03","slug":"what-are-they-going-to-do-to-the-briefing-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-are-they-going-to-do-to-the-briefing-room\/","title":{"rendered":"What are they going to do to the briefing room?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White House press briefing room is almost nothing like the one on The West Wing. I’ve only been in it twice (for a grand total of a couple of minutes), but I can attest that it’s a bit of a mess. It’s small, there are wires all over the place, there are lights that appear to be hanging by a thread, chairs are broken, etc.<\/p>\n

So when the White House announced that it was renovating the room, it seemed like a good idea. That is, until you consider what they’re going to do<\/a> to the place.<\/p>\n

For a decade, the daily White House news briefing has been televised. Now it is becoming television.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Fox News talk show host Tony Snow was hired as press secretary. Next up: a renovation of the briefing room, likely with a video wall that could display everything from “flags waving in the breeze [to] detailed charts and graphs,” according to a senior White House official working on the project. For TV viewers, the video feed could be the sole on-screen image, or could share the space with the speaker.<\/p>\n

White House officials say they are weighing how — and how often — to use the video capability. But the new technology could help transform White House briefings — midday exchanges with reporters in a utilitarian setting — into more interesting viewing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess it depends on what one means by “interesting.”
\n
\nThe Bush gang loves imagery. They study camera angles and lighting, poll test banner phrases, even orchestrate placement<\/a> on items such as the “Mission Accomplished” sign.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, the press briefings could become something of a sideshow. If a press secretary wanted to be able to reference video material to accentuate a briefing, fine. But that’s not really what this White House is all about.<\/p>\n

\"stage\"<\/p>\n

If you have a hunch that the press briefings will look a lot less like the picture on the left, and a lot more like the one on the right, we’re on the same page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House press briefing room is almost nothing like the one on The West Wing. I’ve only been in it twice (for a grand total of a couple of minutes), but I can attest that it’s a bit of a mess. It’s small, there are wires all over the place, there are lights that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}