When the White House Controls Information

Susan Milligan authored an interesting report in the Columbia Journalism Review about the openness  of the current White House [ see http://www.cjr.org/analysis/the_president_and_the_press.php?utm_content=bufferea272&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer ]  

It points to the Obama Administration as one of the least open in moden memory.  It reminded me of a comment my brother made to me after he read a draft of my newest book on Cyberwar.  He said Cyberwar looks like something being done in politics, and not just something done by governments at war.  Milligan has hit on some basic Information War principles being used by the White House to manage information, and blames the press corps for much of what has become a one-way transfer of information.  Very little comes out of press conferences, and they are rarely given.  Questions are repeated by reporters who want to be seen asking them, while the White House is seen answering them multiple times.  Many important questions are never asked.  

Policy decisions are seldom discussed until made.  In the current discussion of the nuclear deal with Iran, the President thinks it best to wait for a deal to be made public before we decide whether it is good enough.  Once a deal is made, it has to be good enough because it will not be changed.  The debate will be over.  

"Evidence suggests that the relationship between the President and the press is more distant than it has been in a half century."  The President seems to see the press as an enemy.  Watching the press respond  to Hilliary Clinton's use of private email on her own home computer or the feeding frenzy surrounding the recent visit of the Israeli Prime Minister, gives us some reason to see why.  For reasons we can never explain, the White House seems to never want to admit a mistake, even one they did not make.  They want to explain why a certain thing happened, when admiting the error and moving on might be a better way to approach a failed decision.  It is really OK that Hillary had that email in her basement computer network - the real thing we are worried about is whether it was preserved for history?  Don't we think it is unusual and a National Security risk to do that sort of thing?   It is really OK that the U.S. France, and Germany are trying to make a deal with the Iranians who do more to promote terrorism in the Middle East than any other country?   They see bad decisions as things that need to be expalined, even when the explanations are bordering on the rediculous.  

This goes back to credibility, the most important element of persuasion.  The Russians tried to convince the world that Ukrainian Nationalists did not shoot down a commercial airliner and that there were no Russian troops in Ukraine except those who went there on vacation.  They developed incredible stories to convince us that these events occured in different ways.  The U.S. is falling victim to the same kind of strategy.  It thinks the pubic will buy anything that is packaged well and said quickly, whether credible or not.  That is arrogance unbefitting our American institutions.