West Wing Reportage

This evening, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Walter Isaacson, Michael Lynton, Susan McCue and Michael P. Meehan to the Broadcasting Board of Governors:

Walter Isaacson is President of the Aspen Institute and serves as chair of the board of Teach for America. He is the former Chairman and CEO of CNN and former editor of Time Magazine.

Michael Lynton is the Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Susan McCue is President of Message Global, a strategic advocacy firm she founded in 2008 for social action campaigns. She was the founding President and CEO of The ONE Campaign to combat extreme global poverty, and before that was Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from 1999 to 2006.

Michael P. Meehan currently serves as President of Blue Line Strategic Communications, Inc. and as Senior Vice President at Virilion, a digital media company.

FNC's Major Garrett along with CBS' Chip Reid, NBC's Chuck Todd and CNN's Ed Henry will interview President Obama tomorrow morning in Beijing (about 9PM EST tonight).

Each network will get about 10 minutes with POTUS.

CORRECTION: We earlier posted that ABC's Jake Tapper would be interviewing President Obama but we're told that ABC gave up their interview spot in Asia because Jake interviewed the President last week at the WH.

Drudge, TVNewser and other outlets note tonight that Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett may get an interview President Obama on his upcoming trip to Asia.

Today in the White House briefing room...

General David Petraeus did an interview live on CNN, but we hear he declined questions from any other reporters while there.

White House correspodent Bill Plante also anchored CBS' webcast "Washington Unplugged" from the briefing room today. He previewed the President's trip to Asia with fellow White House reporter WSJ's Jonathan Weisman.

The webcast also included a Veterans Day piece by CBS' Fernando Suarez- a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the honor guard for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. That video is after the jump...

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Those journos relying on persuasion, manipulation or transitional confusion to snag a certain seat in the White House briefing room, are finally out of luck. The seating chart changes from earlier this year have been made "official" with the addition of new nameplates.

Look down! Who's seat are you in?

Chart from WHCinsider.com

About 30 people met with the WHCA board on October 15th to discuss alternatives to the current distribution of pool reports.

During the discussion, ideas emerged such as posting reports on a website, distributing them to all but delaying distribution for non-travelers, distributing to all but imposing a fee, seeking foundation grants for travel so more organizations make the trips and raising WHCA dues to help defray the cost of travel.

The WHCA board intends to make a final decision in January.

If you're certain White House reporters, the answer could be lunch with President Obama...

Politico reports that CNN's David Gergen, WaPo's Chris Cillizza, Newsweek's Jon Meacham and Howard Fineman, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker, Politico's Mike Allen, NPR/Fox's Mara Liasson, TPM's Josh Marshall and NYT's David Brooks, Andy Rosenthal, and Gail Collins joined the President, David Axelrod, Anita Dunn, Bill Burton and Robert Gibbs for an off-the-record lunch today.

Lunch apparently lasted two hours and green salad, halibut and pear tart were served.

No wonder there's so many speculated cases of swine flu among the White House press corps...

Today during press secretary Robert Gibbs' daily briefing, a reporter sneezed-- but not into her elbow, as the press corps had previously been advised by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to do so.

"You're screwed Ann, just FYI," Gibbs joked with ABC radio's Ann Compton, who sits near the sneezer.

C-SPAN has the video here (scroll to about 21 mins in).

Notes from a briefing room press insider...

Yep. What She Said: In an abbreviated briefing today (running against the seventh of the big Sit Room Af-Pak strategy meetings), Press Secretary Robert Gibbs backed Secy Hillary Clinton's sharp comments yesterday that she finds it "hard to believe" that Pakistan couldn't find al Qaeda if they really wanted to, calling Clinton's remarks "completely appropriate." Of today's strategy meeting, RG said he certainly has not been told it's the last; it is indicative the assessment is "nearing its conclusion"; there is no next meeting scheduled (but there could be one next week); and the decision "certainly could come earlier" than the Nov. 7 runoff, "but I don't anticipate that it would."

Econ with Prof. Gibbs: The WH's rollout of Recovery Act recipient reports showing 640,329 saved/created jobs had several reporters embarking on math lessons. "Can we get a blackboard in here?" CBS Radio's Mark Knoller asked while Fox's Major Garrett tried to square numbers on WH reports of Cash for Clunkers and Recovery Act contributions to the GDP--to which RG said he'd have to check but called a truce by having Major agree that the economy was growing. "And some coffee?" NYT's Jeff Zeleny pleaded. (No coffee cart, but the class did get to pick from a bowl of Halloween candy served by the press office before RG's briefing.)

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FishbowlDC Exclusive:The White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) board late last month discussed a proposal to post pool reports written by reporters on its own website, seizing control from the White House, which has long distributed the reports.

The issue has been a dicey one over the years. During the George W. Bush administration, the White House refused to say who was on the distribution list of more than 1,000, which included lobbyists and government officials across town.

Why, board members asked during the meeting, do the pool reports still go through the filter of the White House press office? White House veteran George Condon of Congress Daily, called to appear because of his knowledge on the issue, explained that it started with the Eisenhower administration when poolers used carbon paper. It was simply faster to have the official White House stenographers help get the information out.

But the practice continued into the Internet age, and, despite the ease of group mailing, reporters traveling in a tight pool with the president still send their reports directly to the White House, which forwards them to reporters.

The board discussed whether it would be feasible to post pool reports on the WHCA website for reporters to access, which means the WHCA -- not the White House -- would decide who can view them. No decision was made, but the board agreed to have an association "town hall" to discuss how to change the pool report guidelines.

One little tidbit that emerged during the meeting also involved the pool, but concerned who should remain in the small group in the case of a national emergency.

Condon noted that on 9/11, the Bush White House shrunk the press pool from 12 members to five, causing controversy. When that happened, former President Bill Clinton apparently called Ron Fournier of the AP to reveal that the Bush WH had invoked the "nuclear bunker pool."

Nobody in the press had heard of such a special pool and nothing ever came of it. Condon suggested outlining guidelines before the next crisis.

The WHCA, which voted to raise the cost of the annual dinner to $225 per seat, also decided to continue its tradition of having a holiday party.