For months, members of the White House press corps have played a guessing game called "How out of the loop is Ari Fleischer?" Some briefing-room scribes even keep a tally of White House decisions and events about which the president's press secretary was completely oblivious. There was last February's presidentially authorized strike on Iraq--a mission Fleischer learned about from the press. There was the stem-cell decision, Bush's most important pre-9/11 policy announcement, which occurred while Fleischer was on vacation and was handled by Karen Hughes. And now Fleischer has admitted that the president never told him about last Friday's procedure to remove four lesions from his face. After Fleischer failed to mention the procedure in either his morning or afternoon briefing on Monday, curious reporters who noticed marks on the president's face at a photo op started asking questions. The White House soon released a statement explaining that doctors had removed the lesions, two of which were precancerous, on Friday in the White House physician's office. Here's how Fleischer explained the time lag between the medical procedure and the White House's disclosure of it: "As soon as I saw the president, I talked to the president. The president agreed to put out a statement. I put out a statement. So it wasn't as if you were told because you saw it, you were told because I saw it. And that is why the press received the notification it received." In other words, not only did Bush's spokesman not know that his boss had had minor surgery, he apparently hadn't even seen the president since Friday--even though the president spent the weekend in Washington rather than at Camp David, and even though Bush's weekend was filled with furious negotiations over the stimulus package at home and the climactic battle at Tora Bora abroad. "From the beginning of the administration there have been two questions involving Ari--one revolving around his candor and credibility, and the other the degree of access he has," says a top White House reporter. "This latest episode provides a fairly clear answer to the second question."

The WP and NYT both report that Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, met recently in the White House with Intel executives seeking his help in obtaining government approval of a merger at a time when he owned more than $100,000 worth of Intel stock. Both papers have White House spokesfolks assuring that Rove did not give advice on the merger. Both stories report that the merger was approved a few weeks later and that Rove didn't sell his Intel stock until last Thursday. They also report that Rove had decided to sell all his stocks last December but was advised by the Bush transition counsel to wait until he could get a government certificate of divestiture so that he could defer paying capital gains taxes. The Times story says that during that time, Rove's stock portfolio fell 20 percent, but it doesn't answer the more immediately relevant question: What happened to his Intel stock between the day of that White House meeting and last Thursday? The Associated Press broke this story. (The NYT online story is the AP's.) Is that a good reason for other news organizations to downplay it? Does this really seem, as it did to the editors of the WP, like a Page 14 story? --Slate, 6/14/01

WASHINGTON -- "You'd like to think each new president encounters the same standards of press coverage. It just isn't so. One variable is expectations. I remember, during Bill Clinton's early days, hearing political reporters express outrage at his lack of forthrightness. "You mean he's less straightforward than George Bush?" I remember asking. Of course not, they said, but that's not the right standard. This guy is from our generation. He shouldn't be playing those old games. Coverage is also shaped by public response. I once heard Sam Donaldson talk about Ronald Reagan's early years, when reporters were quick to note fumbled facts. It was like telling family members a favorite uncle is a drunk, said the TV newsman. At first, folks react with concern. But the behavior continues, people feel they can't do anything about it, and they grow annoyed at the one who keeps harping on it. So the harping ends.

"There are factors such as, who's defending the president? And who is -- or isn't -- attacking him? These have been key in shaping the light touch of early George W. Bush coverage. A recent opinion piece by Washington Post reporter John Harris, who covered Clinton, notes: "The truth is, this new president has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton. Take it from someone who made a living writing about those uproars. ... There is no well-coordinated corps of aggrieved and methodical people who start each day looking for ways to expose and undermine a new president." When Clinton changed his mind, critics pounced, and news stories depicted each incident as evidence that "slick Willie" had no abiding convictions. When Bush has changed his mind -- on school vouchers, the size of the tax cut, carbon-dioxide pollution -- he's seen as "shrewd rather than servile," Harris noted.

"Conservatives have built up a well-funded, well-targeted set of organizations aimed at shaping public opinion. And the press obliges. The left has nothing comparable. One result is that, with a conservative now in office, there's simply less coverage. The Project for Excellence in Journalism here examined the networks, Newsweek and a couple of leading newspapers, and found 41 percent fewer stories on the president in Bush's first two months, compared with Clinton's. And early Bush coverage "focused on quick judgments about whether Mr. Bush was up to the job -- and declared that the answer, after low expectations, was yes." "As a whole, the press has depicted Bush as a skillful manager, more comfortable as an insider than a man of the people, who is stubbornly pursuing a sincere, conservative ideological agenda even if it is controversial." Clinton was depicted "as a politician of the people whose actions and policies were often highly calculated but also more popular." Writing in 1994, Thomas Patterson, a political scientist now at Harvard, said: "Press accounts of Clinton's first year in office made it appear as if negotiation is a crime against the body politic. Each compromise was reported as a headlong retreat from principle."

"Of course, Bush's early good press isn't just about low expectations or absence of outside agitation. It reflects a well-managed appointments process and a well-ordered White House. But discipline is tight partly to cover Bush's lack of surefootedness, a fact reporters seem uncertain how to deal with. As Clinton's loudest defender, James Carville, puts it: "In the Clinton administration we worried the president would open his zipper, and in the Bush administration, they worry the president will open his mouth. The press finds it easier to cover sex than stupidity." Meanwhile, the well-oiled machinery of conservative opinion-making rolls on. I happened upon a Fox News program featuring a spokesperson for the Media Research Center here, discussing a report card on Bush coverage. All three big networks were hopelessly unfair, he reported. "They've been against him on the tax cut, they've been against his environmental policies. They've tried to blame him for floods and glaciers and things like that." The Fox News people chuckled, and a big red "F" appeared over the logo of CBS, cited as the worst offender. These tactics may not be adroit nor subtle, but they work. They rouse the ire of partisans, who complain to the press -- some of whose members then feel motivated to do what they can to prove the expectations wrong...." --Geneva Overholser, 5/14/01

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