Obama Ignorers Tradional Press

Professors have ingrained the traditional communications model into our heads throughout all of college telling us that the sender sends the message through a channel---where it hits heavy turbulence due to noise—then it is decoded for the audience.

For President Obama and his communication team, the noise and decoding is critically damaging their message. The Washington news corps and news commentators everywhere deconstruct and put their own perspective on the message before it even gets to the target audience. By this time, the audience forms an opinion based on what the decoders say, rather than forming their own opinions based on the original message.

For President Obama, the traditional model is not working. Politico signals the end of the honeymoon phase between the press and White House and the beginning of “hazing.”

To fight against the press, Obama and his team have a new strategy: to go beyond traditional news sources and address more liberal and local news sources. This will hopefully ease the commentary and allow an environment where audiences are directly listening to the White House message before hearing the analyzed and sometimes interrupted version of a message.

Through addressing sources like the Huffington Post, Obama hopes to avoid skeptic journalists putting their own spin on the White House Message.