“This White House, like others, does its best to manipulate press coverage. Obama’s communications staff, according to Kumar, has swelled to sixty-nine people, from fifty-two under Bush and forty seven under Clinton.”

This passage comes from a section starting with “The transformation in media technology has also altered government communications strategy”, and the passage I chose is a result of that. With the rapid growth of news in technology, they must be ready to answer questions that the American people have in a much more timely fashion, or problems could arise. One of the examples they give is comparing when Obama was on vacation with when Kennedy was on vacation. Obama was in Hawaii, and failed to respond to a terrorist attempt to blow up an American airliner. With his absence and him not answering, Janet Napolitano had to take his place claiming that “the system worked”, Janet and Obama both were criticized. Back in 1961 Kennedy was on vacation during the Berlin wall going up and no one even pressed him for six days. This shows the gimme generation in full swing, we want answers and we want them quick. We like things to come fast, and get bored a lot faster then the generation before us. Even the most extreme tragedy in America will eventually just kind of vanish. With Obama having the largest communication staff, this could mean that the white house has the largest role in the media that it has ever had before.