The White House press corps frequently relies on a pool reporter, an individual who is selected to attend an event where it would be impractical for the entire press corps to participate. The pool reporter then writes up an account that is distributed to the entire group. However, it has just been revealed that the White House has been censoring those pool reports on occasion. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post has revealed this highly disturbing practice, which amounts to official government censorship: Journalists who cover the White House say Obama’s press aides have demanded — and received — changes in press-pool reports before the reports have been disseminated to other journalists. They say the White House has used its unusual role as the distributor of the reports as leverage to steer coverage in a more favorable direction. The examples cited in Farhi’s report are fairly minor (are there others more serious?), but reveal a tendency to censor...(Read Full Post)