The reports also say that about two weeks after the BP rig exploded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked the White House for permission to make public its worst-case models for the accident. The White House Office of Management and Budget initially denied the request…The government stuck to its public flow rate estimate of 5,000 barrels a day for more than a month, even though BP officials and government scientists acknowledged that the rate could be as high as 110,000 barrels a day.

Also? The government was apparently incompetent:

The government repeatedly underestimated how much oil was flowing into the Gulf of Mexico and how much was left after the well was capped in July, leading to a loss of faith in the government’s ability to handle the spill and a continuing breach between the federal authorities and state and local officials, the commission staff members found in a series of four reports issued Wednesday.

“By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the gulf,” one of the reports stated, “the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem.”

In the briefing today Roberts Gibbs (via Michael Scherer‘s Twitter) asserted that there had “never been an effort to not put out the most accurate and timely info” and “there is nothing that we knew about flow rates from here that we didn’t make public.” Clears things right up, no? And this is just the preliminary report, notes the Times: [The Commission] has not yet completed its work on the causes of the well explosion or the efforts to contain the oil, but the tenor of Wednesday’s reports indicates that the White House, cabinet officers, Coast Guard commanders and senior government scientists will shoulder a fair amount of blame for the response to the accident.”

Yesterday focused on attacks on Fox News – and one from a journalist who currently sits on the board at the White House Correspondents’ Association who could help decide whether FNC gets Helen Thomas‘ seat.

Today’s entry focused solely on the immediate reaction to Palin. While the full context isn’t here, and again, most of the participants self-identify as liberal journalists, the length to which there was attempted coordination is striking. This was the most blatant:

Suzanne Nossel, chief of operations for Human Rights Watch, added a novel take: “I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.”

Mother Jones’s [Jonathan] Stein loved the idea. “That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote.

Jeffrey Toobin of CNN thought the pick showed “some part of McCain doesn’t want to be president,” while current MSNBC guest anchor Chris Hayes just wanted some good talking points: “Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get.”

Time‘s Joe Klein formulated an entire column based on what was discussed on Journolist: “Here’s my attempt to incorporate the accumulated wisdom of this august list-serve community.”

It’s not surprising some journalists will bounce ideas off one another, though Journolist proves there was an even larger, coordinated effort. And if a Journolist-of-the-right comes to light at some point, it won’t necessarily be surprising either. But although Journolist’s attempts regarding Jeremiah Wright failed, their attacks on Sarah Palin stuck far more successfully (although she also proved in interviews to be arguably an easier target). For those on the right, this proves what they’ve believed all along – a media conspiring against them. But the Journolist lack of power is evident in their inability to force the conversation on Wright. In that sense, it is far more likely Journolist operated outside the mainstream, and did not have the actual influence The Daily Caller would like people to believe.

Meanwhile yesterday’s Daily Caller Journolist email set about Fox News revealed Time magazine’s Michael Scherer‘s take on Roger Ailes. “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization,” he wrote. “You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

As Politics Daily writes, Scherer currently sits on the board of the White House Correspondents Association, which will be voting on who takes over the front row seat in early August. FNC is up against Bloomberg and NPR. FishbowlDC has this comment from a Time spokesperson:

Michael Scherer fully disputes The Daily Caller’s account, which selectively quotes his emails and takes his comments about the changing news landscape entirely out of context. In his emails he vocally opposes any suggestions to restrict Fox News.”

We reached out to Scherer to see if he plans to vote August 2 on the seat, and who he plans to vote for.

—–
» Follow Steve Krakauer on Twitter

I asked Alvin Greene if there was anything that had not yet been written about by the press that he wanted to get out. “Bring the Air Force discharge up,” Greene replied. “Y’all go and get that.”

This was not the response I had expected. Greene has based his candidacy, in large part, on his military service—a total of 13 years in the South Carolina Air National Guard, U.S. Air Force, Army National Guard and U.S. Army. Tarnishing this record are the mysterious circumstances around what he calls his “involuntary” discharges from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. In both cases, he has refused to detail the reasons for his dismissal.

Alas, Greene would not give permission to one of his former officers to discuss his service, though according to Scherer “he says he expects the information to come out eventually, and he suggests that he will not be unhappy when it does.” Uh huh. I think the official term for this behavior is ‘political tease.’

I’m not sure what Greene’s motivation for jerking the media’s chain on this is, unless he is hoping to keep his name in the press long enough that come November voters who haven’t been paying attention to details will vote for him (again?) based on name recognition. Meanwhile, the mystery, such as it is, deepens.

If so it may be the longest death throe in history. The crux of the problem, naturally, is the Internet. It is providing the President with far too many ways to circumvent the fourth estate. Says Grove:

At the very moment that social media and enhanced technology are proliferating and gaining audience share by the tens of millions, giving President Obama powerful interactive tools to communicate directly with the public, the old media are in a world of hurt.

Uh huh. Get in line? What Grove, and the number of reporters he talks to, including Mark Knoller (who does not RT Robert Gibbs: “I rewrite them and I put them in context, because it’s not my job to give him access to all of my followers.”) and Jake Tapper (who does not like the White House flickr stream: “That’s not photojournalism; it’s hagiography.”) fail to note is how much more relevant this same technology has made them. UPDATE: Tapper writes to clarify: “I have no problem with the WH flickr feed and I like all the behind-the-scenes shots. What I don’t like is WH photojournalists being blocked from attending, say, a bill signing, with the WH arguing its official photograph is the same thing.”

Point being, how many out there were aware of Knoller pre-Twitter? Not that many I (sadly) bet. Same goes for Tapper, but to a much larger extent since I would be more than willing to bet Tapper slid (temporarily) into the This Week chair based on primarily on his online presence. Which is growing thanks to the very smart decision live-tweeting of show he has initiated in the last few weeks. Other morning hosts should be taking note.

If anything, I would argue that the Internet has made the White House Press Corps more relevant. Now the public has access to real time eyes and ears in a way that was impossible prior to the advent of Twitter. There is nothing irrelevant about that. In fact, I’ve always suspected it’s the White House that spends a lot of time scrambling to keep up.

With that in mind, Time’s Michael Scherer takes a look at some expensive anti-health care ad currently blanketing parts of the country and basically concludes it may be time to fasten your seat belts.

Across the country, groups on all sides of the health care reform debate have been targeting swing members of Congress with costly ad campaigns. Over the coming week, as the House gears up to take a final, deciding vote on reform, issue-ad spending by corporations, trade groups, unions and advocacy organizations may top $24 million, adding to the estimated $200 million that has already been spent on health care advocacy ads. “We are going to be at parity with the other guys in spending for the week,” said one pro-reform organizer, who had been monitoring the antireform ad purchases. “I think our side will spend $12 million for the week.”

Also, behold your Supreme Court at work:

Most of these advertisements come with little or no disclosure about what specific companies, unions or individuals are providing the funds. Thanks to the recent controversial Supreme Court campaign-finance decision in the Citizens United case, the ads also offer premonitions of what many of these same members of Congress may face in the fall, when unions and corporations will be able to spend money anonymously to advocate for candidates’ election or defeat in the weeks before the polls.

Below, an anti-health care ad. Below that, the Dems push back with a anti-anti ad.

Since its enemies are constantly in campaign mode while the Obama administration is beleaguered with the arduous task of actually governing, administration officials are having a harder time keeping up with the attacks and their sources than they ever have before. While it seems counte-rintuitive to consider the internet Barack Obama‘s enemy, Scherer might have a point in that a great chunk of the political blogosphere is now the stomping grounds of Republicans, Tea Party activists, and even the radical leftists that resent Obama’s attempts at bipartisanship.

Scherer’s conclusion that the Obama administration is being severely hindered by its complete lack of control over the media is based on his redefining of “news media” to incorporate every important yet often unclassifiable part of the web. It’s as conclusive as it is terrifying. Did you know that “Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, the latest Internet attack videos and that e-mail your aunt just sent you” count as essential elements in “the news cycle”? As much as traditional media might deny it, Scherer is absolutely right. The internet has equalized the playing field such that respected news sources are obsolete and irrelevant, meaning that any way White House opponents may choose to reinterpret their message is fair game. Take for example, the health care debate last summer:

A single phrase — “death panels” — nearly derailed health care reform, as town halls were flooded with angry voters who got their information online. That there was no proposal for anything that resembled a death panel did not matter; the idea went viral anyway.

It is in Scherer’s reasoning of why the Obama administration is losing its battle with the internet where his theory cracks a bit. Rather than point to the simple fact that one very media-savvy group of people could never stand a chance against the innumerable hordes of angry bloggers, he blames the fact that Obama and friends have a job to do: governing. He explains (emphasis mine):

But in a year-end review of communications performance, Pfeiffer and Dunn found that the President often lost control of the conversation by focusing too much on governing while the opposition campaigned against him, exploiting the cyclone’s appetite for controversy even when it lacked a foundation in fact.

Focusing too much on government would probably not have been such a problem if the President were not so vocally championing his views according to statistics Scherer provides himself. 129 press interviews, four prime-time press conferences, two major Congressional addresses and “countless daytime events” do not add up to “too much governing.” That said, the internet is a world where anyone with an opinion can spew it out, and those who would follow it are open to do so regardless of the evidence against it. Obama never really stood a chance.
[photo via Computer Weekly]

In an interview with Michael Scherer, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Obama would love to appear on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, but gave Colbert the bump.

From Time’s Swampland blog:

“Do you want to do the Daily Show?” Gibbs did not hesitate.

“I think the President would love to, just maybe not Colbert.” He went on to explain:”I have yet to see a politician best Stephen Colbert in an interview on his show,” Gibbs said, laughing. “I mean, he’s really, really good.”

It’s tough to argue that point, but I’d remind Gibbs that his boss is also “really, really good.” And couldn’t the President use a Colbert bump at this point?

A Comedy Central spokesman tells Greg Sargent that the President “has an open invitation to appear on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report anytime he wants to.”

Obama did appear via satellite as a candidate, but has not done The Daily Show since his election to the Presidency.

On Tuesday Time ran a piece by Michael Scherer about why the president should actually be concerned about his dropping poll numbers because it’s not just the economy, stupid. Though that’s a big part. Also a problem is the fact that Congress’ support tends to dwindle with the country’s and “change we can believe in” has become change we can’t be bothered to vote for.

The 2009 elections in New Jersey and Virginia were initially talked about by Obama allies as a test of the President’s organizing power. By the time the votes were counted, however, with Republicans winning two Democratic seats, no one at the White House wanted to claim any responsibility. That’s because the remarkable enthusiasm that greeted Obama’s victory in 2008, with record turnout among independents, blacks and young people, had gone away, along with the minions of Obama organizers…the enthusiasm gap bodes poorly for 2010, when Obama will be trying to minimize losses in the House and the Senate. According to the recent Battleground poll, just under two-thirds of Democrats say they are extremely likely to vote in upcoming elections, compared to 77% of Republicans and Independents.

Wow. Easy come, easy go, I guess? Meanwhile, traditional Obama media stalwarts like HuffPo, which basically built its online dominance on the back of the Obama campaign is now running banner headlines like “Now Obama Gets Involved: President Pledges Hands-On Role Merging Bills.” Snap! Even Chris Matthews, he of the shivering leg, sounded a tad cynical last night about whether and how Obama has been keeping any (all?) of the promises he made during last year’s campaign. And Salon’s Joan Walsh sounded downright skeptical about Obama’s near invisible support of the public option. (Video below).

I’m a pragmatist. I still have to say Obama got both sides mad at him. The left is not happy with him, we’ve heard from lots of diff senators that the president never pushed this, he never twisted any arms.

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan, is still knowing Hope. He thinks Obama’s first year was a success:

Change of this magnitude is extremely hard. That it is also frustrating, inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs does not, in my mind, undermine it. Obama told us it would be like this – and it is. And those who backed him last year would do better, to my mind, if they appreciated the difficulty of this task and the diligence and civility that Obama has displayed in executing it.

“Inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs” also does not make for easy headlines or quick content, neither does an always bad economy, so it may be a while — a long while if circumstances remain unchanged — before we get back to the victorious change you can believe in meme. Matthew’s video below.

Michael Scherer at Swampland picked up this fairly aggressive response to a Q&A at last Thursday’s job summit (between Afghanistan, the Kennedy Awards, and his visit to the Hill yesterday the President has had a busy week!). After agreeing with a audience member that the recession does offer America a chance to reinvent “If we can recapture that sense that we’re in this thing together and that we are willing to work hard” Obama took aim at the press as the purveyor of the sort of divisiveness that is keeping the country from being successful at doing just that.

But it’s not going to come easily and it is going to require a level of cooperation and a willingness to work strategically together that we have not seen over the last several years. And frankly, this town and the way the political dialogue is structured right now is not conducive to what we need to do to be globally competitive. And all of you are leaders in your communities — in the business sector and the labor sector, in academia, we even have a few pundits here — it is important to understand what’s at stake and that we can’t keep on playing games.

I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip thinking about the economy, when I sat down for a round of interviews. Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy. I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin’s book. (Laughter.) True. But it’s an indication of how our political debate doesn’t match up with what we need to do and where we need to go.

Scherer points out that Obama’s characterization of his interview questions is not quite accurate — he was asked about the jobs bill and the South Korean trade agreement. Still, does the President have a point? It doesn’t take a genius to note that in the last six months the coverage of the President not only has become a national pastime of sorts but also increasingly polarized. And polarizing sells. So does the sort of stunt-like news stories that have been derailing the President’s various agendas at every turn: Town Halls, Kanye West, Joe Wilson, Sarah Palin, The Salahis. Of course in a world where every type of media is scrambling to keep its head above water, let alone make a profit, it’s hard not to chase the ambulance. Perhaps Obama needs to quit complaining and try and figure out how to beat the press at its own game.

THE WHITE HOUSE CONSIDERS THE MOTIF OF MUCH OF THE U.S. COVERAGE TO BE ASININE. A senior administration official: “American leadership was absent from this region for the last several years, despite the fact that it is increasingly central to our economic growth and our security. President Obama put our alliances on a firmer footing, reasserted our leadership in the region, and continued to advance a complicated bilateral relationship with China that will play a large role in shaping the 21st century.”

And this from David Axelrod, who apparently felt the need to point out that the trip to China was not about ticker-tape parades:

DAVID AXELROD, surrounded by White House reports after the two-question “news conference” at South Korea’s Blue House: “The goal on this trip was to lay a foundation for economic progress, to open up markets for American goods, to lay a foundation for progress on mutual security issues, … to lay groundwork on climate change. … Though the president is demonstrably popular in all these countries and polling reflects that, we didn’t come halfway across the world for ticker-tape parades. … So we believe it was a successful trip. … We didn’t have expectations that Barack Obama arrives in China or anywhere else and things change overnight.”

It’s not clear which coverage in particular the White House is upset with — Fox is not singled out — though, there does seem to be a bit of a ‘walk on water’ expectation that follows Obama wherever he goes. Perhaps instead it is just the pervading tone that Obama was too deferential to his hosts on this Asian trip as opposed to, say, merely trying to find some common ground. Considering the week we’ve had in the media, I think it’s safe to say Obama coverage hasn’t really made it ‘asinine’ quite yet.

Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.

Really? Isn’t this the President who refused to turn over his Blackberry? Hmm. At any rate, the ban on Twitter is providing something of a challenge to the Twitter happy press corp, who over the past 24 hrs have been attempting to access the site through various means. This from today’s Playbook:

DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES – With Twitter blocked from our laptops here at the Shanghai filing center (Burton, don’t be getting any ideas), @JakeTapper is tweeting from his ‘Berry. @EdHenry found a workaround with TwitPic: ‘We’re fighting the power.’ @ChuckTodd figured out how to update through his PING.FM account. Chuck e-mails from the transmission pool next door: ‘i posted a ‘if you can see this update on twitter/facebook’ let me know… and got deluged with friendly acknowledgments. The revolution can still be twittered thanks to the ping dynasty!’ (Also blocked: bit.ly, which is why we’re using tinyurl as our URL shortener today.)

A number of member’s of the press corp have twittered out that they aren’t sure whether their tweets are getting through because they can’t access the site, says Time‘s Michael Scherer: “Twitter is blocked in China. I won’t know if anyone sees this message (sent from cell phone) until we get to South Korea.” However, it seems so far, so good. Below is a look at the tweets coming from the top Twitterers currently traveling with the President. (It updates every time the screen is refreshed.)

Do you have a question, comment or complaint about anything concerning Mediaite? Well if you do, today is a real chance to make your voice heard. We will be holding our Mediaite Office Hours at 3pmET.

Daulerio was a big part of the Steve Phillips sex scandal story yesterday, as Deadspin.com, who felt they were victims of ESPN spin when they had a similar tip last month. The response: unleashing some past sex scandal tips, unconfirmed, about ESPN staffers. We’ll talk about this story…and yes, his Phillies making the World Series last night. Follow him on Twitter here. Scherer writes for the Swampland blog on Time.com – we’ll talk to him about the White House/Fox News battle, health care and more. Follow him on Twitter. And Gavin works for the new Politico blog “Click”, highlighting the intersection of politics and entertainment in D.C. He’s on Twitter as well.

Glynnis MacNicol, Steve Krakauer and Rachel Sklar host the live-streamed call-in show, and others in the Mediaite team, like, Colby Hall and our fantastic interns, will appear periodically, as well as special guests.

Our call-in number is (347) 632-8956. Also, we’re using Skype now, so you can video chat in to our username – Mediaite. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Watch us live here on this page at 3pmET, or check it out at www.livestream.com/mediaite.

As for the schedule, we’ll talk to Scherer, then Daulerio and then Gavin.

See you at 3pm!

The White House was annoyed by the way that FNC has been covering the current administration, and also upset that other mainstream outlets have not been especially diligent when fact-checking Fox.

Time‘s Michael Scherer has been following the White House’s attempts to manage the cable news network and others in the mainstream media. In this week’s magazine, he writes about how the Obama administration has gradually grown tired of slanted coverage and criticism. The plan is to “call ‘em out.”

White House officials offer no apologies. “The best analogy is probably baseball,” says [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs. “The only way to get somebody to stop crowding the plate is to throw a fastball at them. They move.”

But in his reporting, Scherer found out that the White House doesn’t think that Fox is all bad. Actually, Anita Dunn, the field marshall of the Call ‘Em Out Patrol, thinks Fox’s Major Garrett is pretty legit. Major Garrett, eh? Well at least somebody can be considered a real journalist, because this was pretty harsh:

“They are the paid political programming for a party, and occasionally a couple of news stories break out in the midst of 23 hours and 45 minutes of political rantings and opinion,” said one senior administration official. “Everything about it is one-sided political opinion directed at a base. Period.”

Ouch.

Related:
The White House And Glenn Beck Agree! Mainstream Media Is Failing At Its Job [Mediaite]
Ailes Meets Axelrod: What’s A Cup Of Coffee Between Friends [Mediaite]
Roger Ailes Is The Most Powerful Political Figure In America [Mediaite]
FNC’s Major Garrett Reflects On Pissing Off Robert Gibbs Today [Mediaite]
Major Garrett’s Power Grid Profile [Mediate]

Read What Even The White House Respects About Fox News [Time]

All the criticism, both fair and misleading, took a toll, regularly knocking the White House off message. So a new White House strategy has emerged: rather than just giving reporters ammunition to “fact-check” Obama’s many critics, the White House decided it would become a player, issuing biting attacks on those pundits, politicians and outlets that make what the White House believes to be misleading or simply false claims, like the assertion that health-care reform would establish new “sex clinics” in schools. Obama, fresh from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, cheered on the effort, telling his aides he wanted to “call ‘em out.”

How does the White House manage to become a player? Looks like they may have finally got their own Glenn Beck (sans the chalk board) in the form of a veteran campaign strategist Anita Dunn who is a “devoted consumer of conservative-media reports and a fierce critic of Fox News, leading the Administration’s effort to block officials, including Obama, from appearing on the network.” She is also the person behind the White House blog “denunciations.”

So basically the White House is attempting to step into the deep-end of the blogosphere. Perhaps it’s inevitable — this is the Internet Presidency after all, and Obama does carry a Blackberry. But still. Is it really a good thing? Doesn’t deciding to respond to Glenn Beck et al. in kind merely elevate much of the nonsense Beck spews and simultaneously lower the White House a few rungs down the credibility ladder? Wouldn’t the more prudent approach be to figure out how Glenn Beck has out-Obama’d Obama, pinpoint what it is exactly that is so appealing about Beck and than address that fear instead (preferably with a chalk board!)? One more voice in the politico online din, even if it’s the White House’s, is going to end up being just that: one more voice.

“I’ve known Roger for a long time,” Axelrod told Time in an email on Monday. “We chatted from time to time during the campaign. I was going to be in NY, so we got together for a cup of coffee.”

The details of the conversation that accompanied that cup of coffee, and who instigated it, are sketchy. But the timing is certainly notable. Obama’s trip to the UN on Wednesday Sept. 23 followed his Sunday morning talk show blitz where the only network he didn’t stop by at was Fox, begging the question: was this meeting the first step in negotiating a detente of sorts after a summer during which Obama’s health care plan was practically derailed by mainly Fox coverage of the town halls? Or perhaps an attempt to make nice in the aftermath of Van Jones’ resignation at the hands of Glenn Beck? Or was Fox attempting to mend fences in the hopes of not being skipped over during the next Obama blitz?

Be it any or all, you’d never know it by watching Fox! Glenn Beck in particular has only ramped up his criticism of all things Obama, so much so the White House took the unusual step of responding on its blog the other week. Per Swampland: “[Fox's senior vice president for news] “Michael Clemente said that White House aides, in their increasingly vocal criticism, were failing to distinguish between Fox News’s journalism, and its pundits and opinion voices, like Beck, who he likened to the op-ed page of the New York Times.” (White House aides and a lot of American viewers one might argue!) Meanwhile a White House official tells Scherer: “[Fox] are the paid political programming for a party, and occasionally a couple of news stories break out in the midst of 23 hours and 45 minutes of political rantings and opinion.”

Snap. Doesn’t sound like either side is willing to make nice any time soon! Perhaps Ailes and Axelrod would have managed better if that cup of coffee had been, say, a double whiskey.

For more on the burgeoning relationship between the Obama Administration and Fox News, please see: Roger Ailes Is The Most Powerful Political Figure In America, or Why the Smartest Thing President Obama Can Do is Go on “The Factor”.

Well, mystery solved — thanks to White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, who very kindly responded to our barrage of questions on this important matter of national security yesterday.  In so doing, he laid to rest some of the extrapolated conclusions drawn from the 22-second clip of Gibbs on C-SPAN, notably that White House staffers were banned from Twitter (they’re not), that the same people are responsible for both @WhiteHouse and @BarackObama (they’re not) and that nobody tweets from the White House (they do!). It’s true, children: It’s coming from inside the house. Behold Bill Burton’s answers below:

Who updates the White House Twitter feed? Is it one person or a few people? (updating from HootSuite suggests multiple editors)

The new media team (basically [Director of New Media] Macon Phillips and [Online Programs Director] Jesse Lee)

Does/do the same person/people update the Barack Obama Twitter feed?

No, that’s DNC.

Where are the offices of that person/those people located?

New media [NB: Those offices are in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.]

If in the White House, is HootSuite enabled on the White House computers?

Yes, for new media.

Are people allowed to bring their own laptops into the White House and work off those? Would that allow them to get on Twitter.com from inside the White House?

We use official government computers and archive records.

Why is Twitter blocked on the White House computers? Archaic technology, archaic 1978 Presidential Records Act , or official policy?

A little bit of recordkeeping a little bit of security but we are working with WH counsel and the Office of Administration CIO [Chief Information Officer] to review and relax these restrictions.

Is there any rule banning White House staffers from having their own personal Twitter account?

Not to my knowledge.

If not, could you point me to a few?

I have an account that I follow on my personal blackberry but I don’t actually twitter myself. It’s more to keep track of what Diddy and Perez Hilton are up to all day.

Would it be fair to call Robert Gibbs “internet-savvy?” Or would it be hideously inaccurate?

I’ve never known him to exactly break new ground as it relates to technology – but he’s a real whiz on his blackberry.

****

So there you have it. It should be noted that, a month and a half before Gibbs’ off-the-cuff response on C-SPAN sent the blogosphere into a min-tizzy,  Mother Jones‘ David Corn quietly determined that the new media team had exclusive White House Twitter privileges, and a month before that, Time‘s Michael Scherer described the travails of bringing the White House into the world of social media, including the new media team’s exemption from the standard White House computer blockage (Scherer’s also the one who noted that, technically, the new media team is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, but “It’s coming from inside the Eisenhhower Executive Office Building!” is so much less scary. Then again, Cheney used to spend a lot of time there). Even so, the one or two tweets from Tweetie demonstrate that one could update Twitter from the White House; the point is, Twitter isn’t verboten, which means the geekosphere can relax and know that all their @replies to the White House are totally being read.