VITAMEDIAS
Sarah McClendon, Veteran Washington Reporter, Dies at 92: She also believed her pointed approach served a broader, practical journalistic purpose. In her 1996 memoirs, "Mr. President! Mr. President! My Fifty Years of Covering the White House," she wrote that she saw the press' role not strictly as objective transmitters of information.
She wrote it was the media's mandate "to maintain surveillance of and, if necessary, offer guidance to the person we have temporarily hired to fill this high office. A President who is secretive, less than honest, or nonresponsive to the American for whom he works has forgotten the essential nature of his job." [...]
When Eisenhower took office, Ms. McClendon said in her memoirs, a crush of reporters showed up at press briefings in the Indian Treaty Room of the Old Executive Office Building. Ms. McClendon was told to go to the balcony of the room, where she was informed that asking questions was not prohibited, but not encouraged either.
She felt that gentlemen's agreement disabled her readers from access to the leader of the free world, rendering him unaccountable to her, and thus them.
"I shouted down from upstairs, 'Mr. President, are the press conferences in the future going to follow along this form, or will reporters be able to ask questions on matters of public interest?' "
Eisenhower decided to change the format.
Sarah McClendon Didn't Let Go of a Question Until It Was Good and Answered: "She never held back," [Bill] Clinton recalled. "She didn't just ask questions. She demanded answers."