In bed with the president?

Juan Williams comments on the relationship between the press and the Obama Administration:

Even President Obama thinks his relationship with the American media is reaching troubling levels of coziness for a democracy with a supposedly free press.

At last weekend's Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner in Washington he joked that during a sleepless night grappling with a problem "I rolled over and asked [NBC "Nightly News" anchorman] Brian Williams what he thought."

The bada-bing drum roll for that joke was drowned out by self-conscious laughter from an audience that began the night with a cartoon tribute to the President as a Super Hero able to leap tall buildings and zoom across the globe to defeat evil pirates.

The president drew more nervous laughs from the media when he said he didn't mind attending the dinner because "why bother hanging out with celebrities when I can spend time with the people who made me one."

It's time for the press to stop being Obama's toady and treat him with the seriousness he deserves. So far, it's Hollywood on the Potomac all the time for Obama but at some point the press has got to get back to covering him as a serious, political leader. That means covering the manipulations, the flip flops, the failures of the administration. -- Instead of covering him like "Entertainment Tonight" they've got to start covering him more like a reality show -- one like "Jon & Kate." Ultimately, while the administration might be happy with their strategy at the moment, over time the press will lose its credibility and the Obama White House will have no way to deliver important messages to the American people...

...The Pew study concluded that half of all the stories done about President Obama focused on his "personal and leadership qualities" as opposed to his policies. President Bush and President Clinton had only about a quarter of their coverage devoted to non-political news.

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