Take a look at the photo accompanying the SFGate article below, which is about the all-hands meeting being called at Facebook over complaints about their approach to privacy:
Click the image to see the original article.
While the photo is probably not the one they wanted to use for the article, it’s a pretty good metaphor for the scene at a company when they call emergency all-hands meetings of this sort.
The founding editor of the what’s-up-inside-the-Beltway blog Wonkette makes the suggestion in The Washington Post:
Name a major political story broken by a White House correspondent. A thorough debunking of the Bush case for Iraqi WMD? McClatchy Newspapers’ State Department and national security correspondents. Bush’s abuse of signing statements? The Boston Globe’s legal affairs correspondent. Even Watergate came off The Washington Post’s Metro desk.
Here are some stories that reporters working the White House beat have produced in the past few months: Pocket squares are back! The president is popular in Europe. Vegetable garden! Joe Biden occasionally says things he probably regrets. Puppy!
It’s not that the reporters covering the president are bad at their jobs. Most are experienced journalists at the top of their game — and they’re wasted at the White House, where scoops are doled out, not uncovered. The day of a typical White House correspondent consists, literally, of waiting to be told things. Legitimate security concerns and a tightly scripted political world keep the presidential press corps physically corralled and informationally hostage.