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 Final Press Briefing of the Bush Administration - White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 1/16/09 — Friday, January 16, 2009 — Q What is the message that you are leaving for your successor? MS. PERINO: For Robert? Well, he doesn't need a lot of advice from me. This is a fabulous job. It is a great opportunity to work with all of you. And I will certainly miss the back-and-forth, as I hope you will, too. But it's really good to have -- get new energy and new blood in here. And I think that they've shown that they're a good, professional organization, and he'll have, I think, absolutely no problems. He won't miss a beat when he gets up here. Q Dana, speaking on behalf of the President, is there anything that you feel that perhaps the American people or the press corps has misunderstood about the administration, or about his goals, or something that you would hope would have been clearer in conveying from where you sit? MS. PERINO: Well, I think we've done -- you know, over the past couple of months we've had a strategy to try to get the President out there and talk to the American people on a range of issues, all the consequential decisions he's made and the progress that we think that we've made, accomplishments that we've made. And last night was the President's farewell address and a chance for him to talk to the American people. I don't know whether this is lost on people or not, but let me just repeat it; that one of the things that I've always admired about President Bush is that no matter what anyone says about him, he lets all of the negativity roll off his back, and he cares deeply about every single American, no matter what they believe, if they support him or not. And he has made decisions based on the best interests of the country. Q Do you have any regrets or anything that -- or things you're particularly proud of or -- MS. PERINO: I'm sure that that I'll have -- I'm going to go on a six-week trip with my husband, and I'm sure there will be long enough flights for me to think about all the things we could have done better. Any press secretary always wants to be more proactive, but news happens all over the world. And now with the 24/7 news cycle, in many ways sometimes you feel like you're just trying to keep up with that. And so it's not a regret or a disappointment, it's just a fact of life. I told someone earlier today that on Friday, I had finally cleaned out my in-box, got it down to 997 emails. And when I got here on Monday morning, over the weekend -- and I had been working over the weekend -- I had then 2,172 emails. So it's a brutal pace and a lot of information coming at you. And that was just on a weekend where we didn't have a lot of news. So I think it's time for me to exit stage left. Q Right. MS. PERINO: Right -- thank you. Q What about -- what are your thoughts about us, in terms of -- (laughter.) What are your thoughts about the coverage President Bush got? Do you think -- I'm just interested from your perspective, do you perceive a bias? Do you think he was treated fairly? Do you think that other Presidents have gotten an easier deal? I was just wondering what your thoughts are. MS. PERINO: Well, the tribute today was all in fun, so I hope that no one took it the wrong way. Q Give us something to take the wrong way. (Laughter.) MS. PERINO: Here's the thing. I don't think that I would always be asked about my feelings about liberal bias in the media if there wasn't any liberal bias in the media. If it was a moot question, then we wouldn't always have the discussion. But I will say this about the reporters -- Q For the record, I just asked about bias. (Laughter.) MS. PERINO: For everybody that's in this room, I think that -- and I was on a panel with Mike McCurry about a month ago and we both had the same feeling -- that in this room, and the reporters who show up every morning and are here late at night and work the weekends, that the people that are covering the President out of here, and the presidency, strive so hard to be fair. And you have to fight for us with your other bureaus and with your other reporters, and I really think that everybody in this room, on a scale of one to ten, I give you a nine in terms of fairness and -- in fairness in working with us and then listening to us. I do think that outside of the White House briefing room, think the -- but I think the increase in the amount of commentary, I just think it's quite remarkable that everyone says they want to add more commentary to their news pages. In some ways, I think, well, how is that even possible? It seems sometimes that that's all that there is. But I do think that in this room I think that that's true, and Mike McCurry said the same thing. So I think by comparing Presidents and presidencies, I think it's probably similar. But there's no doubt that your industry is going through a change and a transition and a transformation, and I really do think for the sake of democracy and the sake of our country we need to have more of you. And good, tough reporting takes a lot of money and it takes investment, it takes time, and it takes the willingness from your editors to be willing to go off on assignment and to really hold your elected leaders to account. I don't think that journalism is dead, but I think that we all have a responsibility to make sure that it survives. Bush Administration | Dana Perino | Media Bias | Press Briefing | White House Press Corps | White House Press Secretary Labels: Bush Administration, Dana Perino, Media Bias, Press Briefing, White House Press Corps, White House Press Secretary >> Full Story
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 7:57:00 PM  Dana Perino Interview by Juan Williams on The O'Reilly Factor 12/18/08 — Friday, December 19, 2008 — Dana Perino | Iraq | Media Bias | White House Press Secretary Labels: Dana Perino, Iraq, Media Bias, White House Press Secretary
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 4:11:00 AM NBC News Bias - White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 5/20/08 — Tuesday, May 20, 2008 —  MS. PERINO: Mike.Q On the back-and-forth between you guys and NBC News, one of the issues Ed Gillespie brings up is NBC calling Iraq a civil war for a period, and then Ed notes that it stopped around September of 2007. Then Ed asks in his exchange with NBC, "Will the network publicly declare the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?" I'm wondering if you guys have gotten a response on that matter, and if not, are you still calling for a response from NBC? MS. PERINO: We have not heard back from them on that specific matter. We anxiously await any response that we would get on it. But I think it's quite telling that they have been silent. The reason that we sent the letter yesterday is because we had gotten fed up with the way that the President's policies are being mischaracterized, or the situations on the ground weren't being accurately reflected in the reporting. We had complained before. And it just reached a boiling point when things had boiled over when we believed that NBC News specifically edited out -- intentionally edited out -- something that the President said in response to a question in an interview regarding Iran, and that it mischaracterized the whole interview because of it. As regards the civil war, I remember very distinctly how there was quite the pomp and circumstance when NBC, on the Today Show, decided to declare -- that they were declaring that Iraq was a civil war. But since then, after the surge and things certainly improved in Iraq, NBC has never had a corresponding ceremony to say that Iraq is not in a civil war. I was just curious to find out what they believe. And the same goes with the economy. When we got the numbers just two weeks ago on the GDP for the economic growth, it said that we had grown at 0.6 percent. And yet the anchor that night decided to disavow that number. We're just curious what part of the official government data that's been coming out for years do they not agree with. So we haven't had a response on that. And just another point on this is that President Bush is going to continue to state what United States policy is for the next eight months, and certainly during the six months that there's an election going on. If, for example, if tomorrow President Bush says that he believes that the tax cuts should be made permanent, that doesn't mean he's attacking anybody; he is stating his policy. And we just want to make sure it's really clear that we're not going to allow the President's policies to be dragged into the '08 election unnecessarily and unfairly. Dana Perino | Iraq | Media Bias | NBC | President Bush | Press Briefing | White House Press Corps Labels: Dana Perino, Iraq, Media Bias, NBC, President Bush, Press Briefing, White House Press Corps >> Full Story
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 8:23:00 PM
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