The administration is denying that officials threatened to exclude the paper from events. | REUTERS W.H., SF Chronicle spar over video

The Obama administration is pushing back against accusations of intimidation in a tussle with the San Francisco Chronicle after a high-dollar fundraiser in the city last week.

The White House is denying that officials threatened to exclude the Chronicle from presidential events in its coverage area after one of its reporters recorded a video of a group of singing protesters, who interrupted President Barack Obama during an event restricted to print reporters. The reporter then posted the video on the newspaper’s website.


“The San Francisco Chronicle violated the coverage rules that they — and every other media outlet — agreed to as part of joining the press pool for that event. If they thought the rules were too restrictive they should have raised that at the beginning,” White House press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. “However, no reporters have been banned from covering future presidential events and the White House of course would have no problem including any reporter who follows the rules in pool-only events.”

When a group of 10 protesters interrupted President Obama to demand the release of the WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning, it was only matter of hours until the first video surfaced online. The group, which calls itself the “Fresh Juice Party,” had recorded footage from the vantage point of its breakfast table at the high-dollar fundraiser.

But Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci also took her own video, which she posted online with her article after the event. Now, the paper’s editor, Ward Bushee, claims that the White House has threatened to exclude the publication from local coverage because Marinucci broke pool guidelines. The Chronicle claims that the White House’s posture on this video runs counter to its transparency mantra.

Bushee wrote in an email to POLTICO that his paper’s report was “accurate” and the White House’s statement denying that a threat was made to exclude their organization is “not a truthful response.”

“Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday,” Bushee said. “It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.”

The guidelines that govern Obama’s “pool” coverage include restrictions on when written pool reports can be issued and when photos and videos are allowed. They are ultimately determined by the White House, but are agreed to in consultation with the White House Correspondents Association, which acts as a representative of the national news media.

Essentially, Obama could legally close all fundraisers to the media entirely, but he is following a tradition dating to President Bill Clinton that allows limited press coverage at nearly all political events — permitting more coverage at some events than at others. At a recent White House press briefing, CBS’s Mark Knoller asked Carney to clarify why certain events are open to cameras while others are not, but to no avail.

The written guidelines issued by the WHCA about pool coverage are silent on the issue of whether reporters are allowed to take cell phone or video footage at events that are only for print reporters. They specify guidelines only for events where the full pool is present. These general guidelines say “print poolers can snap pictures or take videos” and aren’t responsible for sharing them with the rest of the press corps.

Still, the White House insists that Marinucci, as well as all the other pool reporters at the fundraiser, were fully informed that video and photo coverage were not allowed before the event began. And most members of the national media who regularly travel with the president are accustomed to a “gentlemen’s agreement” of sorts with the White House that they will abide by a set of pre-determined rules in exchange for the ability to cover the president on out-of-town trips.

The brouhaha has also put the White House Correspondents’ Association board in a difficult position. The Chronicle is neither a member of the association nor of the national media for whom the board’s rules primarily apply. Yet they are a member of the media, and failing to come to the Chronicle’s defense could undermine their own demands for greater access in the future.

Strictly enforcing a “print pool only rule” primarily protects the press corps TV members (CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX) who send staff to some fundraisers but are not allowed to record video, audio or still photos. Many of them were annoyed to find video coverage of the event online from another news organization in the pool, while they had no images.

“The position of both the White House Correspondents Association as well as the TV networks by and large is that one way to rectify a situation like this would be for the White House to open up fundraisers to cameras, so that the TV networks as well as the rest of the press corps would have full access to what is going on behind closed doors,” said CNN’s Ed Henry, the TV representative on the WHCA board. “In this particular case, the White House Correspondents Association is disappointed that the reporter involved posted material, in this case video, to their website before they shared the information with the rest of the media.”

Because the White House chooses the media outlets that are included in the local pool during out-of-town trips, the correspondents association’s authority to police the actions of local media is limited.

Henry said that the controversy reflects the rapidly changing nature of media, where print reporters also take photos and record videos, and television, radio and photojournalists also write blog posts. The White House’s current rules were simply not created to accommodate the increasingly blurry lines between print and multimedia.

He added that the board will take a look at the rules in consultation with the White House next week to address some of the ambiguities in the pool guidelines — and to push for more access for television, radio and photo journalists.