White House Transparency on Health Care Executive Meetings As Promised

Peter Nicholas' peer from the LA Times was given the opportunity to ask President Obama about his promise of an open, transparent administration at his recent press conference on health care reform.

Obama pressed on transparency. Here's the question: "You promised that health care negotiations would take place on C-span and that hasn't happened, and your administration recently turned down a request from a watchdog group seeking a list of health care executives who visited the White House to talk about health care reform. Also, the TARP inspector general recently said your White House is withholding too much information on the bank bailout. My question for you is, are you fulfilling your promise of transparency in the White House?"

Obama's answer:

Well, on the list of health care executives who visited us, most of the time you guys have been in there taking pictures. So it hasn't been a secret. My understanding is we just sent a letter out providing a full list of all the executives, but frankly these have mostly been at least photo sprays where you could see who was participating.

She did not dispute that at the press conference, and so far I have seen no screaming headlines about such a dispute, either. I infer from the LA Times' subsequent silence on the matter that reporters were indeed present, and pressing the issue would reveal that they are incompetent and lost their notes of the executives' names or neglected to take adequate notes.