News Media vs The Congress

It hasn't been a good week at all in the history of relations between the news media covering the Congress and officials of the House and Senate.

On Monday, it was an absolute zoo as Barack Obama zipped up and down the halls of the Capitol for meetings with leaders of the House and Senate.

Reporters got hot under the collar at restrictions placed on them for various photo opportunities involving the President Elect, but that's sort of normal.

But then we really got aggravated when Mr. Obama walked through the Rotunda to the cheers of dozens of tourists and staffers waiting to see him.

The problem was that none of the major TV networks were allowed to videotape Obama in the Rotunda, because those are the rules.  Credentialed journalists cannot shoot video in the Rotunda.

But those rules don't apply to visitors to the Capitol.

So, tourists could use their cameras to shoot video of Obama.  And still photographers who were allowed to shoot pictures of Obama also used newfangled cameras that took video of the cheering crowd.

Meanwhile, cameras from Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and more were all shut out.   We were basically told by officials to go suck an egg and get over it.

On Tuesday, the Capitol Hill press corps battled with officials of the U.S. Senate as Illinois Democrat Roland Burris came to present his credentials.

It was a mob scene as Burris made his way up to the Capitol building and then went inside.

What was different was that CNN had deployed several small video cameras, which could feed their video to cellphones, that could then send live pictures on to your TV screens.

The video was grainy, the quality wasn't good, but it was something new.

And it was also completely against the coverage rules, which don't allow for live streaming video out of the Capitol or video to be shot in most areas of the Senate wing.

Senate officials and Capitol Police heard about the live streaming video and started scouring the hallways for the CNN contraband cameras.  (Fox News producers were also trying to do the same thing, but their video link failed because of cell phone problems.)

At one point, police cleared an entire hallway filled with members of the media to prevent anyone with a camera from taking pictures they weren't allowed to take.

So while my friends at CNN got their kamikaze pictures on their network, it resulted in my colleagues being booted out of the hallway where Burris was having a meeting.  I personally expressed my strong displeasure to one of CNN's producers.

During the last two years, I served (again) on the Radio TV Executive Committee, a seven member board of journalists who deal with coverage questions like these on Capitol Hill.