WH Gaggle Watch: Day Two
Day two, strike two. If you’re joining this story in progress, a brief update: Last week we came up with the idea of reporting on the White House’s morning gaggle where Jim “Jeff Gannon” Guckert suddenly got so famous a month ago. We’ve been trying since Monday to get one of the “easy and available” day passes that allowed Gannon access for two years. No such luck.
On the up side, we seem to be getting stonewalled at a higher level than before. When we tried calling the White House Press Office this morning a very non-perky young woman told us: “Oh, if you’re with Fishbowl D.C. you need to talk directly to Media Affairs.” We never even got a chance to explain what Fishbowl was! At least yesterday morning the Press Office people were polite and helpful.
Full daily report, including your daily dose of Jenny and Caroline, after the jump. Yesterday’s first installment is here.
Day Two
After striking out in person yesterday morning, we turned back to working the phones.
Midday we made the first call of the day: We spoke with intern Caroline and politely gave all of the same information we’ve given before. Since the Press Office at least had been nice enough to reject access rather than simply not returning calls, we asked whether we should try to go through them again. Caroline informed us that all day passes have to go through Media Affairs. She promised someone would get back to us.
On the second call, mid-afternoon yesterday, intern Jenny seemed to get sort of annoyed when reminded we spoke on Monday. We asked for Caroline but it turns out she was away from her desk, and all of the non-interns were (again) in a meeting. Thus Jenny was stuck answering all of the same questions again. We asked when the meeting might break up and when we might expect to hear back from someone, and she said testily, “I don’t have that information, sir.” You can say one thing about Jenny and Caroline: They’re polite to a fault.
We spoke with Jenny a third time just after 5 p.m. yesterday when we called, and she seemed even more annoyed this time. However, we did get some more information out of her. The most amusing aspect of the call? We asked her who the head of the Media Affairs office was, and Jenny said she’s unable to release that information-despite not only the names but their salaries being publicly available. We did ask whether speaking to Ken Lisaius, who’s listed as the deputy director of the office, would do any good, but Jenny explained that he wasn’t the spokesperson with whom we needed to speak. (She did seem a little impressed we knew a name. Point for us!)
Expressing some frustration with two days of stonewalls, we asked to hold while she tried to track someone down since everyone was (yet again) in a meeting, but Jenny politely told us she couldn’t tie up the line. (Aside: You’d think that for something like the White House they’d be willing to splurge on having enough phone lines.) We finally asked, “Do you have any suggestions on how we could get cleared in?” “I’ll see what I can do,” she ended the conversation. We’re still waiting to hear back.
The last time we called yesterday, we thought we’d employ a little trickery: Call late and hope that someone other than the interns were answering the phones by then. Unfortunately, perky Caroline headed us off at the pass: the mysterious spokesperson we needed was finally out of his marathon meeting but now he had already left the office. Damn. The plus side? We knew we were making progress because Caroline at least recognized Fishbowl this time. She seemed more amused than annoyed, thankfully.
This morning, rather than waste another $2.70 trip to the White House, we thought we’d call once before leaving the apartment. Hence the call to the Press Office and hence the quick transfer to Media Affairs intern John. John! Good golly! We hadn’t spoken with him since Monday. It was great to hear his voice again (He actually sounds a good bit younger than Caroline and Jenny.). He told us our mystery spokesperson was out of the office. At least he’s not stuck in another meeting…
So no gaggle today. Perhaps tomorrow?
The scoreboard as it stands:
Fishbowl: 0
White House: 2
Phone Calls: 10 (includes two calls to the Press Office to check on the gaggle time)
Trips to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: 1
Humiliation Factor: Low
Frustration Factor: Medium (Rising)
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Nadine Cheung
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