Obama Shows Dictators How to Dodge a Free Press

Foreign reporters arriving for President Obama's nuclear summit must have been sorely disappointed if they expected a glimpse of the "vaunted American" freedom of press, Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post. What they found—a heavily militarized capitol and a president who shut the press out of almost the entire summit—looked more like "Soviet-era Moscow," Milbank writes.

Reporters had access only to Obama's eight-minute opening statement and a 20-minute Q&A session; with all working sessions closed to the press, the president's schedule "would have pleased China's Central Committee." Veteran White House reporters complained of "the most restricted such meetings they had ever seen," Milbank writes. But such press restrictions, Milbank says, "have become a common practice for the Obama White House."