Fox News Channel Senior White House Correspondent Major Garrett has thus far eluded the Inside the White House Press Corps hot seat (although he makes a cameo in my Ed Henry interview), but that oversight has been rendered moot. For about 3 hours last night, Major fielded questions from across the Twitterverse, and the result was informative, charming, and all around awesome. If you don't follow Major on Twitter, you should. In the meantime, we've got the interview for you.

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Fox News White House Correspondent Major Garrett was trying to tweet his followers a link to his FoxNews.com blog with some State of the Union excerpts prior to the speech last night. Instead he tweeted a link for hookers in Vegas. It's just one example of the dangers of URL-shortening. (more...)

The sparks kicked up by C-Span's request to televise healthcare negotiations have erupted into a firestorm, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was grilled about the President's campaign promise of complete transparency, and responded testily. CNN's Jack Cafferty delivered a stinging j'accuse to President Obama, calling the pledge a "lie just to get elected."

At today's White House briefing, Robert Gibbs answered another raft of questions about President Obama's campaign promise to show all healthcare negotiations on C-Cpan. He was testy from the start, referring Chip Reid "to yesterday's transcript."

When pressed, Gibbs reiterated his answers from yesterday, asking if the media had lacked information about the healthcare reform process in producing stories. Finally, Fox News' Major Garrett asked Gibbs if the President kept his promise. The answer he gave was surprising.

"Yes." That's not what I got from his answers yesterday. It sounded more like "We did pretty well with that," a debatable position, but there's no way to square this with the President's promise to air everything.

On the other end of the scale sits Jack Cafferty, whose apoplectic comments during the 2008 campaign made him an unlikely darling of liberals. He came out firing at Gibbs and the President, saying the transparency promise was a lie.

While Gibbs is clearly wrong, Cafferty well overstates his case here, saying that President Obama "hasn't even made a token effort to keep his campaign promises of more openness and transparency." To be sure, the failures at transparency are big ones, but this administration still has a record of openness that is unprecedented.

The decision to skip formal conference committee negotiations, and not to televise them, is going to continue to cost the administration politically. The calculation here, I believe, is that entrusting the healthcare reform bill to a full conference of a Congress that can't get out of its own way is a recipe for disaster. If skipping conference saves the bill, it may well be worth all the bad press.

I started out this year wondering if the white-hot intensity of the 2008 campaign could be even partially sustained, a daunting question for a $10-a-post blogger trying to hustle his way into a career in journalism. I'm ending it as a White House reporter and political correspondent for two national online publications, well on my way to going from Pinocchio to real boy. Along the way, I learned some lessons and saw some things that I'd like to share with you. This isn't a roundup of the (Best/Worst/Most) of 2009, but rather a peek behind the curtain.

My story starts in the middle of the year. It was mid-June, and I had just gone through a well-publicized breakup with Politics Daily. I was sitting in the front row of the White House press briefing room, tapping away on my laptop before the briefing, when Lynn Sweet approached me.

Lynn had been my stablemate at Politics Daily, and we had only met for the first time a few weeks earlier. During that initial meeting, she talked to me for almost an hour, dispensing frequent "razz the new guy" barbs and journalistic lessons learned. I considered it a profound honor to have my chops busted by a legend like Lynn Sweet, whose work I had enjoyed so much during the campaign. If someone has to tell you "Go cover City Hall, kid," you could do a lot worse.

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Last February HuffPo's Sam Stein made news when he became the first 'blogger' (though really he's a reporter who writes for a website) to be called on by the President of the United States during a press conference. Many people who follow these things saw it as a bit of a watershed moment wherein the Internet was officially deemed a respectable, trustworthy news source. (more...)

video Well, it finally happened. After all the back and forth between the White House and Fox News, Major Garrett (who described himself after the interview as a "conscientious objector" in the feud) sat down with Pres. Barack Obama earlier this week (as other networks did as well). Here's how it went. (more...)

A little less than a week after Mediaite confirmed from Fox News that Major Garrett would interview Pres. Barack Obama in China, then the White House essentially denied, we now know that yes - the interview is taking place. After months of tension between the two sides, this could be a sign of a new era. But let's not overplay the olive branch - four other networks get the interview as well. (more...)

Outgoing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn made a parting strafing run at Fox News on Friday, calling the network out for airing misleading crowd footage, jumping the gun on an announcement of a Presidential interview and letting its opinion tail wag the news dog. In doing so, she heavily name-checked her should-be successor, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart. (more...)

developing In one of the first truly significant steps in the new relationship between the White House and Fox News, Fox News confirms to Mediaite White House correspondent Major Garrett will interview Pres. Barack Obama next week. The news was first reported by DrudgeReport.com. (more...)

audio Is everyone ready for this pay czar interview drama to be over? Major Garrett was on Fox News Radio show Brian and the Judge this morning, and told his side of the story. Which actually ends up shedding some light on a few areas of the issue. (more...)

The drama surrounding executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg's Thursday round-robin interviews with the press pool just keeps going and going. Mediaite reported Saturday that Fox News claimed the White House had apologized for a "mistake by a low level person at the Treasury Department," a claim which the White House now refutes. (more...)

developing UPDATE - This story was originally published without key information that changes some key points of the story. It no does not appear that the story is "starting to unravel" as the headline claims, rather, the story has changed since its first reporting. Mediaite gave Fox News every opportunity to make clear their side of the story, but did not share key information until Saturday afternoon, which lead to Fox News: White House Apologized For Pay Czar Interview Snub “Mistake” In the so-called "war" between Fox News and the White House, it looks like the Obama administration has scored a much-needed victory. (more...)

exclusive We reported earlier that when Fox News was banned from a round-robin interview with Obama administration "Pay Czar" Kenneth Feinberg, the bureau chiefs of the other major networks banded together to thwart the White House. Now, Mediaite has learned exclusively that the Treasury Department, who set up the interviews, denies the story. A Treasury Department spokesperson tells Mediaite the following:

There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing.

Reporting on the story has been sketchy thus far, with Fox News being the only network to report it so far. In their report, they also fail to make it clear that it was the Treasury Department, not the White House, who was responsible for setting up the interviews. Neither Fox News nor the Treasury Department has provided copies of the bulletins that were sent to the press pool, which Politico reports were missing Fox's name. Politico also reports that Treasury contacted the White House about the omission, and in a statement, the White House told Politico “The fact that Major Garrett conducted and interview with Ken Feinberg at a time when all the other networks did speaks for itself..." TV Newser points out, via an anonymous source, that a decision by the other nets to skip the interviews may have been more financial than principled:

The pool is paid for by and rotates between ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, allowing each network to do quick interviews using the same camera crew. If the White House were to exclude one of the members, the other networks would have to provide their own crew for the interview.

As yet, none of the other network bureau chiefs has gone on record to corroborate Fox's reporting. We have made inquiries with several of them, and are awaiting a response. We have also contacted Fox News about Treasury's statement, and are awaiting a response. Update: The CBS Evening News ran a segment on this story tonight, including a snippet of a Chip Reid White House standup in which Reid says, “All the networks said that’s it, you’ve crossed the line.”

video Look what Jake Tapper started. When ABC's White House correspondent Tapper questioned press secretary Robert Gibbs over the administration's tactic of attacking Fox News, Gibbs avoided much of an answer. But yesterday's round-robin pool interviews of new executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg saw the White House trying to ostracize Fox News again - and their partners in the pool taking a stand, again. (more...)

video President Obama was asked if it is appropriate to be "working the umps" in regards to White House officials repeatedly calling Fox News "not a news organization." The President appeared neither aggrieved nor apologetic in accessing the contentious relationship between Fox News and his administration, though he did claim that it was "not something that I'm losing a lot of sleep over." (more...)

video At today's White House press briefing, I wanted to give Press Secretary Robert Gibbs a chance to respond to criticism that the administration is attacking Fox News with plastic army men.  Or something. Gibbs resisted the bait at first, instead opting to rehearse his next career day lecture, but zeroed in a little on followup: (more...)

exclusive It happened to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. It may have happened to Anderson Cooper. After a summer of Celebrity Swine Flu Watch, Mediaite has learned Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett is the latest reporter to contract the H1N1 virus, or Swine Flu. (more...)

VIDEO The gloves are off. Anita Dunn went on Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources on CNN this morning to air some of her specific grievances with mainstream media practices, spending most of her time criticizing Fox News. Dunn — officially the White House communications director and unofficially the field marshall of Obama's Call 'Em Out Patrol — really cut to the chase when it came time to talk talking about FNC, which has continuously chafed the current administration. (more...)

It was a sign that things were bad: David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama, sat down with Fox News founder and chairman Roger Ailes for coffee while the whole White House crew was in New York City two weeks ago for the United Nations General Assembly. (more...)

Major Garrett is Fox News' Senior White House Correspondent and the occupant of Row 2, Seat 4 (both the seat and the blog). He is also the 3rd member of the Cartoon White House Press Corps (South Park icons FTW!) He's a tough, tenacious questioner of the Obama White House, and while his exchanges with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs can get intense, he's always a consummate professional. Not to mention a man of the people. In between Twittering the briefings, doing liveshots for Fox, honoring our troops and Sunday afternoon football, he found time to answer our 5QQ - Five Quick Questions. (more...)

Turns out when President Obama sends out his spokesperson to inform the Air Force One press pool that he wants them to "relax and have a good time. Take walks on the beaches. Enjoy Matha's Vineyard," and furthermore assures them that "nobody's looking to make any news," what he actually means is that one day into his Martha's Vineyard vacation he is going to hold a press conference to announce that he will be reappointing Republican Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman. How's that for relaxing! From here on out the President has no one to blame but himself for all the wound-up reporters crawling around Martha's Vineyard. (more...)

VIDEO The White House briefing had a bit of extra excitement today as Fox News correspondent Major Garrett had a testy exchange with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Reflecting on the tension a couple hours later, Garrett said he understood why Gibbs got annoyed. (more...)

There was a report in US News, yesterday, that has different corners of the blogosphere going at the White House Press Corps like 'roid-raged 5th graders at a pinata. The criticism centers, not around the corps' threat of a "more adversarial tone" with the Obama White House, but around the reasons for it:

Print reporters in the White House press corps are seething at perceived slights against them by President Obama and his team. Many print journalists see their role being diminished as Obama and his aides seem to lavish attention on television anchors and reporters and on liberal bloggers, and this is raising the adversarial tone at the daily briefings of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

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