Your business makeover. Until then im j. J. Ramberg, and remember, we make your business our business. Weve all had those moments. When you lost the thing you cant believe you lost. When what you just bought, just broke. Or when you have a little trouble a long way from home. As an American Express cardmember you can expect some help. But what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card. Spends like cash. Feels like membership. Good morning from new york. Im chris hayes. Pope benedict xvi gave his final public blessing this morning to thousands of people in st. Peters square in rome. Benedict will step down on thursday. Italians began voting today to elect a new prime minister. With polls closing tomorrow they view it as a twoway race between bersoni and silvio berlusconi. Right now im joined by neera tanden and Michael Hastings, also a buzz feed correspondent. Ana marie cox, former washington editor for time. Com and gq magazine and oscar joiner. Great to have you all here. There was a big stink made about the White House Press corps story or nonstory. President obama played golf with tiger woods in florida last weekend. The White House Press corps was denied access to this moment in the president s second term. Fox news chief White House Correspondent ed henry, whos the president of the White House Correspondents association released a statement to politico that underscored the press corpss complaint. I can say a broad Cross Section of our members from print, radio, online and tv have expressed extreme frustration to me about having no access to the president of the United States this entire weekend. There is a very simple but important principle we will continue to fight for today, transparency. They complained about the president being a manipulator of the press and guilty of shutting them out. With more technology and fewer resources the many media companies, the balance of power between the white house and the press has tipds unmistakably toward the government. Its a Dangerous Development that they have exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. It seems to me this discussion is confusing. Two Different Things ed henry mentioned. Access on the one hand and transparency on the other. President obama has granted 674 interviews in his first term compared to just 217 interviews by george w. Bush. So its not like the president hasnt been accessible. Its just that hes granted that access to lots of outlets, like ebony magazine, the daily show and the view. The public, though, has a stake in transparency and on this front the white houses record has been far more troubling. I want to ask you guys what you made of this little brouhaha. I found it sort of funny. Because it was kind of like it seemed like they did not realize the White House Correspondents association did not realize the optics are going to war over photos of towards and so they themselves ironically found themselves trapped in the 24hour news cycle in which they come off looking bad. I dont know if its coincidence than ed henry is with fox and fox really loves this story. Theyre hypocrites because they claimed this under bush and they try to do it and they missed the opportunity to sort of side with progressives sometimes. And on the issue of transparency, a lot of progressives are unhappy with obama. Its not about whether or not he plays golf with tiger woods, its how transparent is this white house and they do have a problem. Youre right, like this is the nickel and diming of this kinds of access. This is fighting over the pennies on the table when youve ceded all the other things the white house can control so youre letting them have it and fighting over this. From your perch in dallas, texas, not washington, d. C. , as the head of a Media Company that has syndicated black radio stations and shows, and tom joiner has interviewed the president i think about eight times. Thats a lot of access. Thats a lot of access, but its justified. I mean we are a radio show where one man reaches almost eight Million People a week. So this is one black man that reaches almost one in four black people. Theres no woman that reaches one in four women or no one latino that reaches one in four latino. It reaches 70 of the africanamerican audience so you cant blame the man for coming on and talking directly to voters. This is back when fdr was doing his fire side chat via what medium . Radio. He no longer needs to talk to the White House Press corps to talk to a reporter whos going to talk to somebody else about what he said. He can go on the view and talk directly to women. He can go on the al sharpton show and talk directly to voters. Okay. But devils advocate in me says this, right. Even if access is born of competitive envy. People complain about look, who are we kidding . Chris hughes, who worked for the president , right . Bought the new republic just astonishingly, scored an interview for the first issue of his magazine. It would be a great thing to launch a magazine with an interview of the president. I would happen to love it if the First Episode of up with chris hayes happened to be an interview with the president. When he comes on the other argument is the reason youre getting the access is because tom joiner is a huge supportert of the president of the United States, hes not going to face hard questions or be subjected to any sort of critical days with tom joiner. Im not saying this as a criticism, tom joiner is explicitly in support of the president. Were not here to talk to africanamerican mothers with children about a 1. 2 trillion debt. Were not here to talk about what were in to china or what were going to do about the world economy. Our listeners, the africanamerican female that listens to us, wants to know about kin about kindergarten, jobs, gas prices. The trillions of dollars that are numbers that our average listener doesnt know about, the 18 to 34 demo isnt going to vote an a trillion dollar debt. No one understands a trillion dollars and no one actually cares about a trillion dollars. So to me, the gulfgate revealed golfgate revealed one major thing with the press corps. What motivated ed henry to make this statement was not transparency. Thats not the actual principle, its embarrassment. They got scooped by a reporter from golf digest. And they were like, dude, wtf. Ed henry, whos a new character in my book, i have a scene where ed actually sits me down to complain about some of my reporting because i reported something that no one else in the White House Press corps did. What he said was, look, the reason you cant do this is because youre making us all look bad. This is the exact same principle at stake with this golf digest. You cant do this. Youll make us look bad. Over tiger woods, like planting your flag over tiger woods made him look ridiculous and not self aware. I think theres a broader issue here. If you think about what people are complaining about, i think theres two Different Things. If everyone in the white house thought what the White House Press corps was really interested in was a substantive analysis of the president s position on prek or a substantive analysis of the president s position on 50 Different Things in the budget, there there would be a lot more respect for the demand for information. But the demand for information is really all gotcha. Its all about what the president did, tiger woods, this kind of its the trivialization of news that gets people in the white house thinking, you know what, youre not interested in informing democracy. Its not like the white house has this grand like desire for a really for a press that, you know, influences democracy that has this high ideals. They actually just want these are two, you know, parties that have their own interests and either of those interests are especially noble. I dont think the white house has noble interests in wanting to elevate the press. Like they want to talk to friendly audiences. They want to win voters. I dont even begrudge them that. They want to manage their image in a way that political maximizes i guess im saying theyre aided in the argument that, you know what, you really dont need to have this picture because its a joke. By the end of it, the first question they get is who won, you or tiger . But what about your gaffes . This is the question. That being said, look, the white house also exploits the trivial nature and our obsession with trivi triviality. I want to respond too. One is for a moment to briefly defend the white house, a lot of White House Correspondents because i think a lot of them do good work. And i would actually say in some ways the problem is the beat. Actually its a very difficult beat because youre locked in that room. If you have the white house beat, and what being locked in the room means is your job is to do things like watch the president and let us know who hes playing golf with. Thats your job. If youre not allowed to do that, you cant do your job, right . The White House Correspondent beat is a very specific beat. Its about covering the day in, day out of what happens at the white house. But just to be fair, you can cover what the president is talking about and actually do a somewhat indepth analysis of the actual policy hes announcing. Many people do that. But also i think what drives a lot of the coverage is the personality. Its relatability. Like you said. When hes done with his round, the first thing you dont want to ask him is what hes going to do about the debt crisis, you want to know who on. Youre defending the trivial. Im not saying its trivial, im saying its relatability. These are things that the consumers and voters want to know about. They dont want to read a long article about his policies, it is how can he relate to me . Then you cant argue youre defending democracy, youre defending readings. Im defending democracy so you need to give me i want to bring we have robert gibbs, who knows something about this, former press secretary in the obama white house, now an msnbc contributor. Robert, i want to take a quick break and bring you back i was enjoying watching this. Let those guys go. Popcorn and everything. Right after this quick break. 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But, i didnt always watch out for myself. With so much noise about health care. I tuned it all out. With unitedhealthcare, i get information that matters. My individual health profile. Not random statistics. They even reward me for addressing my health risks. So im doing fine. But shes still going to give me a heart attack. Were more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. Thats health in numbers. Unitedhealthcare. [ male announcer ] we began with the rx. Then we turned the page, creating the rx hybrid. Now weve turned the page again with the rx f sport. This is the next chapter for the rx and the next chapter for lexus. This is the pursuit of perfection. All right, robert gibbs, robert gibbs, you are in to extend the puppet master metaphor, perhaps. My point being heres my question. You get 600 requests a day for interviews of the president lets say or a thousand or whatever, right . And i do think one of the points thats true in that politico piece is that there has been a change structurally, right . Theres still only one white house, right . Theres no competition for another president or another president adviser, but instead of ten outlets the white house is dealing with, theres 600, right . And so now you have to make these choices sitting in your role formerly as the head of the White House Press secretary of who gets that access. My first question to you is what is the thinking . Literally how do you go about making that decision . Theres not to be some spread sheet that here are the four million outlets that want to talk to us and what does that meeting look like where you say him, him and her. Chris, youre right. I used to keep and my assistant used to keep a spread sheet of pending requests but you also have spreadshe hets of viewersh, the reach of Different Things. Two things have changed this relationship a bit over the past few years, and that is that just really the viewership being so dispersed in this country. In 198050 Million People watched the evening news, the nightly newscast. My first year in the white house, that was a little bit more than 22 Million People. So the viewership is very dispersed. And the second thing is the advent of technology. Social media and the internet have not just for the white house but literally every brand in america produces now some of its own content to deliver directly to people. Now, that does that mean that that content is intended to supersede Everything Else people right see it just provides a different viewpoint or perspective, its not to supplant that. Youre saying part of it is the audience. Like oscar joyner is saying, we reach 70 of africanamericans, we want to talk to those voters. Very easy decision to do tom joyner. In it also an easy decision because tom joyner is not going to ask you very hard questions or be predisposed to be critical of you . No, i think in some i think as oscar said, tom isnt going to ask you the gotcha of the day or some crazy thing that washington is all in a tizzy about from 1 00 p. M. To 4 00 p. M. On a monday afternoon. But i will say this. If you watch president obama, right, he gives long, expansive answers. I tend to think an interviewer that gives the president the space to give an answer is going to be far more understanding about what the president is thinking than somebody who looks like theyre playing gotcha and interrupting him every seven or eight seconds and hes never going to be able to spit out what his answer is. We always looked for places that were longer for him and we had the ability to give those longer answers to. Do you in your role as press secretary, is your job to maximize the political appealingness political appeal, thats the word we use occasionally, thats why im not press secretary, maximize the political appeal of the president of the United States or do you view it as balancing two competing interests, which is maximizing the president s political appeal and dpa guaranteeing some Public Access which is to say sometimes doing things that might not make the president look good because you also have a role as being a defender of the publics right to have access to the president . Well, i think you have to do to be successful and to not cause this to be a story literally every day, you have to do obviously some of each. Obviously my job as press secretary was to maximize the president s viewpoint, to maximize his image. And look, because of the fact that you have to explain things that are going on in this country, there are definitely things that youre going to do that are going to not necessarily make you look good or paint you in a good light, so you have to do some of each. And, you know, there are things that each president has to do. You do take questions at these things. You do have a pool that you cart around with you. If the president goes to play basketball this morning or if the president goes to watch his daughter play basketball this morning, all these guys load up in a van and go with him just in case something happens. So you have that with you. But obviously, look, i was listening to that first discussion. The job of the white house is not to lift the press corps in some noble fashion. Thats not what theyre there had to. Thats not what the white house is there to do. There will always be some tension, obviously, in this relationship and in a democracy thats probably a good thing. Robert, how would you have handled the tiger woods situation . How would you have handled golfgate if you had been stuck down there . I would have i would have probably laughed and then thought not much more about it. There are times in which look, the story obviously the guy that was tweeting for the golf magazine is a member of the club. You know, so im sure he got he might have gotten some inside information about tiger woods or whatever. But everybody has got a everybody that has a twitter account is basically a political reporter these days. But, you know, there are times there are times in which the white house wants the president to be able to just go be a real person and play golf with somebody. So youre not going to provide a picture. I dont think quite frankly theres some duty for the white house to provide a picture every time the president does something. But heres my question about access. Youre saying that theres an inherent logic to some of the access thats granted but it also seems to me that access is an economy. You know very well that an interview granted to a magazine that they can put on their cover literally means money for that magazine and ratings for a network that can get it. Theres a pecuniary interest on the part of the outlet of scoring big interviews with the president or the first lady and thats something that you have the power to grant. What it looks like from someone who isnt getting those interviews is that theres essentially a kind of corrupt economy in which thats granted tacitly in exchange for friendly coverage. Yo