Washington's communication culture is streaked with profanity. | Photo illustration by Anita Ford The new 'no comment': F--- off

The reporter’s e-mail was insistent, his questions obviously skeptical. The State Department official’s response was defensive, his mood obviously annoyed.

Then the missiles started flying.


“Why do you bother to ask questions you already know the answer to,” Philippe Reines, a communications adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asked the reporter.

“Why don’t you give answers that aren’t bullshit for a change?” responded Michael Hastings, a reporter for the BuzzFeed website.

Reines then called Hastings an “unmitigated asshole” and suggested that he “[expletive] off.” Hastings responded with a sneering remark about Reines’s personal life. Reines closed by telling Hastings that he was now designated as “junk mail” on his computer and telling him to “have a good life.”

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This exchange gave Washington reporters and political operatives alike a prurient thrill when BuzzFeed published it in full several weeks ago. In truth, however, the fact that the whole thing went public was the only remarkable thing about it.

“The email happened to be posted, but somebody has a conversation like that every day,” said Peter Baker, a White House reporter who has covered the last three administrations, now with The New York Times.

It is one of the signature developments of Washington during the Obama years: a flourishing F-bomb culture, one that has spread far beyond the White House and now pervades government-media relations in both parties, all across the capital.

The close 2012 presidential campaign has been an especially ideal environment for this new mind-set of nonstop combat — marked by blazing email trails, streaked with profanity and accusations of incompetence and bad faith.

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These kinds of confrontations, while hardly unheard-of in earlier eras, now happen with frequency and ferocity that represents a fundamental change.

Operatives representing government and campaigns blame a pattern of hyperventilating and shallow coverage by the media, and say getting aggressive — and at times volcanic — with reporters is a natural response when confronted with frivolous or insulting inquiries, or complicated questions that come with a warning that a story will be posting within minutes.

Reporters blame a pattern of swaggering non-responsiveness among press aides, in which operatives often seem to be posturing to win favor with colleagues and bosses for being tough and infuse what should be routine interactions with a mood of snarling, self-important melodrama.

Beyond these dueling accusations, there is clearly a convergence of larger factors that have helped transform Washington’s media culture.

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The biggest by far is technology. A nonstop newscycle that began a generation ago with cable television has accelerated vastly with the ascendancy of the Web and, during this election cycle, the pivotal role of Twitter. Operatives say what might look like minor stories or nuisances can metastasize in minutes into major uproars, forcing them to be uncommonly aggressive in confronting unfavorable story lines.

And both reporters and operatives acknowledge that the amount of reporting now done by email and instant message, and sometimes by Twitter, often has the effect of depersonalizing journalism, and makes it easier for insults to fly and tempers to boil over.

“The level of pugilism is higher. The tonal quality of politics has descended and become much more vitriolic. People scream at each other in a way they didn’t used to,” Mike McCurry, the former Clinton White House press secretary, told POLITICO.

“It’s poisonous heading toward toxic,” said Jim Manley, the former spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Top White House spokesmen have teed-off at top journalists at such establishment platforms as The New York Times and The Washington Post editorial page. Reporters at POLITICO and elsewhere have been pulled out of briefing rooms or chased down the street by finger-waving flacks demanding that they show greater respect to their bosses. Baker described “long, ridiculous email flame wars” that nevertheless “don’t solve any of the issues.”

One spokesperson said that during the 2008 campaign, when controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was at its height, Obama’s then-deputy press secretary Ben LaBolt would “be screaming so loud at Brian Ross [of ABC News] or Fox News that people came out of their offices to see what was going on.” Dan Pfeiffer, now White House communications director, “would wander out of his office as if he was just talking on his cellphone,” the source said, “but really he was checking to see if he needed to monitor somebody.”

Veteran newsman Al Hunt, the executive Washington editor of Bloomberg News, said that Pfeiffer and White House press secretary Jay Carney “went ballistic” on him after he reported on a background briefing that they had tried to change to “off the record,” despite the fact that the official giving the briefing said it was “on background.”

“They claimed we had violated all the ground rules, and were never going to be invited back again. I essentially said, “F— you” — the official has more authority than the flack,” Hunt told POLITICO. “The next morning, Bloomberg was excluded from the meeting for White House regulars. They’d instructed [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner to disinvite us.”

From the White House perspective, a sensational and traffic-obsessed press corps is increasingly hard to manage. Replying to a POLITICO reporter’s inquiry, sent by email, a top deputy in the White House press office accused the reporter of trying to “drum up some criticism on short notice to facilitate the publishing of another blog item that will hopefully land you the Drudge Report link that you covet.”

“This cycle, this stuff happens literally every single day,” one former White House spokesperson said.

Confrontations like these have a more familiar ring to veteran reporters and political aides in New York City, where a tabloid culture has long defined the media culture and press aides like Zenia Mucha, who worked for Al D’Amato and George Pataki, and Sunny Mindel, for Rudy Giuliani, became legendary for their aggressive style. But in Washington — historically a more collegial town, where journalists traditionally were a part of the establishment rather than a raucous force outside it — routine shouting arguments and digital flame wars are a cultural shift.

For some, aggressiveness seems to be, in part, a way of establishing one’s bona fides. After Carney left Time magazine to join the administration — first as a spokesman for Vice President Joe Biden — he became well known for his blustery tirades, coming off a little like a former smoker on an anti-tobacco crusade as he lectured former colleagues about their alleged journalistic failings. Carney, whose edges softened a bit after becoming the main White House press secretary, did not return a phone message that he says his office did not alert him to, and did not return emails at an address that he said is incorrect. After an early version of this story was posted, he did not comment.

“It’s a macho-ness,” said Manley, describing the new style of press relations. “I have to admit that there have been handful of occasions where it made me feel a hell of a lot better, even if a handful of them were completely over the top and egregious. It’s a little bit of trying to prove you’re a tough guy, trying to play the refs, on the expectation that you’ll be in better footing the next time.”

Brad Dayspring, former aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, admitted that he “can run a little bit hot.”

“I look at myself as the center, and my boss as the quarterback,” Dayspring said. “When you have that kind of mentality, you aggressively attack, repeatedly.”

But nothing contributes to the current culture of confrontation so much as the always-on mentality made possible by the Web and social media.

“The onset of digital media, especially Twitter, tends to inflame the tensions. You used to have a real-time conversation. Now you get back to your desk and all of a sudden your boss is getting destroyed for something that you didn’t even know had happened,” Dayspring said. “The entire business is in overdrive; there is never a slow moment.”

“The 24/7 news cycle, the fact that every movement is tweeted, what a candidate is having for dinner is a short blip on cable news — it creates tension,” Manley explained. “The press feels the need to cover every single minute, every single action, and it puts the flacks in a defensive crouch automatically.”

Reporters and media operatives agree that the increases in speed have put more demands on both sides: Reporters who used to file one story at the end of the day are now expected to write, tweet, blog and make television and radio appearances throughout the day. By the same token, those on the communications side have to be at the ready around the clock. To meet these demands, reporters and press representatives spend less time meeting with each other, opting instead to handle much of their correspondence over the phone or, increasingly, by email and instant message.

“Going after someone with an obscenity-laced attack from reporter to flack, or flack to reporter, happened 30 or 40 years ago. But it didn’t happen electronically, it happened over a drink at the end of day,” Joe Lockhart, the veteran Democratic press secretary, said. “It’s amazing just how sterile the relationships are now. There are technologies that bring people together and technologies that separate us. The current technology has allowed people to report things quicker, but it’s driven a wedge between reporters and the people who cover them.”

“There used to be time to get answers, to establish a relationship. Now it’s feels like a fast-food media environment,” said Ron Bonjean, the veteran Republican spokesman. “The media is going through the drive through, and if they don’t get it in time, they go with the story even if it may be somewhat inaccurate.”

Because email and instant message are so impersonal, reporters and flacks are less wary of flying off the handle.

“People will say things to you in emails that they would never say to you to your face. They’ll go further in emails than they would have on the phone or in person,” Baker said. “There is something liberating about typing. You get these emails full of words that wouldn’t be acceptable in the family newspaper.”

Communications people also complained of reporters using email and avoiding phone calls simply to give the appearance of reporting.

One Republican spokesperson described an experience that is all-too-familiar to those on the PR side: “I’ll get an email from a reporter which says, ‘I’m posting something in 20 minutes, I need a comment.’ That isn’t journalism, that’s ‘I need to check a box,’” the spokesperson said. “There are very few reporters who are willing to take the time to understand an issue.”

But if reporters seem impatient, it is due in part to the fact that government and campaign officials have no problem ignoring emails and phone calls, or stonewalling them for hours — an eternity in the contemporary media environment, where there is a premium on speed.

“One thing some reporters don’t understand: Not calling back is a tactic. This isn’t about social graces. It’s a tool, and one that usually works to our advantage,” one high-level government spokesman said.

“I certainly don’t blame journalists, [but] I don’t blame flacks for being more guarded,” said Paul Begala, the Democratic strategist and former Clinton aide. “If you are on the flack side of things, every decision is a calculation of risk vs. reward. The risk of being human or funny or controversial is so high, and the reward is so low.”

Though the reporter-flack relationship is inherently adversarial, these measures have given rise to a new feeling of distance and mutual distrust.

“There isn’t a sense that, at the end of the day, you put your jobs aside and understand you’re all in this together,” Lockhart said. “It’s much more transactional now, 24 hours a day, not 12 hours a day. The relationships are more distant, more superficial, and as a result there is a little bit of a slash and burn mentality on both sides.”

“There is a different style people have now,” Hastings explained. “The media marketplace is so competitive, the pressure on communications people is so big. One remark can dominate a news cycle for days and forever define them. If you’re a communications person, you have to be aggressive.”

Communications people, especially, feel the pressure of today’s hyperpartisan media environment, in which more news outlets than ever are looking to amplify a gaffe or cry foul on the opposite side, and nearly every story is embraced as a weapon or a shield in a nonstop ideological war.

“Part of the frustration people might have is, it’s a more partisan media,” Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, told POLITICO. “People who work for campaigns believe that some of the folks asking questions are working for institutions that are out to destroy their candidates.”

“There is a younger generation of flacks who believe certain news organizations are either for them or against them, either rooting for them or trying to screw them,” Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director and chief White House correspondent, said. “The fact is, a majority of the mainstream media is not that way. But flacks treat them that way. Younger flacks are somehow accepting those stereotypes.”

One government spokesman echoed those fears when he explained just how much time communications people now have to spend dealing with partisan outlets.

“People will bitch about the White House press office: ‘Why are they so antagonistic?’ But if you were sitting where Dan Pfeiffer or [National Security Council spokesman] Tommy Vietor sit, you’d realize a fair amount of what comes over transom is not just ridiculous, it’s nasty,” the spokesperson said, citing inquiries about the president’s birth certificate and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “If you’re sitting in these kinds of jobs, it’s a harsh shift from when Eagle Publishing calls with some crazy conservative theory and when The Washington Post calls. It gets muddied.”

Age, too, can be a factor. While older hands complain about the “breakdown of collegiality,” younger reporters and flacks seem hardly aware that things were ever any different.

“You probably need to go back a little earlier than me. I came up in the school of ‘f—- you’ communications people,” one young Republican spokesperson said.

“In my experience, the best press secretary-reporter relationships involve cussing each other all day then going out for ice cream,” said Reuters correspondent Sam Youngman.

Youngman, who is 35 and has covered three presidential campaigns, is actually old by the standards of the campaign trail, where many reporters are covering their first presidential campaign alongside traveling press aides who are equally inexperienced. With so few old hands on the trail, there are few mentors to show these novices the ropes.

“The age gap is problematic. When I was on the campaign in 2000, a lot of the reporters were graybeards. Now most campaign reporters have never previously covered a presidential campaign,” Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, said. “In the older days, young reporters could turn to a David Broder or a veteran reporter, and the veteran would put their arm around the reporter and help the reporter. Who does a reporter turn to for wisdom on the trail? And if I’m a press secretary with a complicated story I want to put out, who am I supposed to turn to?”

Fleischer also cited the problem that the informality of Twitter has created for many young journalists.

“Many reporters have split personalities: They’ll tweet madly with a lot of snark, then turn seriously to a communications person and say, ‘I’m really an in-depth, substantive reporter, can I get 10 minutes on the phone with the candidate?’,” he explained. “Reporters who love to tweet and reporters who love substance are having a hard time living side by side in the same person.”

The risks of this relative youth and inexperience came to fruition on the campaign trail in Europe this summer when the Romney press corps, which had hit a boiling point because of restricted access to the candidate, started shouting questions like “What about your gaffes!?” while he was leaving a Polish war memorial.

But if the press corps’ callowness showed that day, so did that of traveling press secretary Rick Gorka, who had hit his own boiling point after days on the road with this restless press corps. As the reporters shouted at the candidate, he told one of them in a shouted whisper, “Kiss my ass!”

“There is no one around to referee the vocab used in the relationship,” McCurry said. “Press aides are screaming at reporters because they crossed some boundary line in the sand, and no one is telling them to rein it in. When I was first the press secretary, one of my mentors would say, ‘That’s too sharp, a little over the top. Calm down, take a deep breath.’”

It’s even worse on the campaign trail, McCurry said, where “any perceived marginal slight becomes something you want to make a federal case out of.”

Reporters, who believe the relationship with the people they cover should remain fundamentally adversarial, still argue that neither side is benefiting from the current climate of confrontation.

“It’s counterproductive,” Baker said. “Some [press aides]] believe if you push against a reporter on one story, you may think you’re getting into their head for the next one. But I tend to think it’s opposite. The best flacks I work with deal with you professionally. If they don’t like something, they take the time to explain why they thought it was wrong.”

“In general,” said Hastings, “a kind word gets you further than a ‘f—-you.’”