How and why we covered the Bush visit the way that we did

By Anne Harpham

President Bush's visit to Hawai'i on Thursday was short — just 12 hours — and fairly hectic. The visit was mostly ceremonial and didn't generate headlines beyond Hawai'i.

But presidents don't come through Hawai'i very often (it's been nearly three years since a presidential visit), and so even if the president doesn't make any major policy speeches or pronouncements, the mere fact of his presence is a major local news event that takes major planning by news organizations.

At The Advertiser, city editor Marsha McFadden mobilized a team of 10 reporters to cover a visit that included arrival and departure at Hickam Air Force Base, visits to the Arizona Memorial, USS Missouri Memorial and Pearl Harbor Elementary School, and fund-raisers at two hotels. Photo editor Seth Jones assigned five photographers to the event. And various staff members in the newsroom were on standby in case there was a sudden change in the schedule — Laura Bush deciding to go shopping at Daiei, for example.

Security has always been tight for presidential visits, even in laid-back Hawai'i. But because of heightened fears of terrorism, restrictions were tighter than ever during this trip.

For both McFadden and Jones and their staffs, there were other logistical hurdles. These types of visits are always carefully scripted and controlled, but many details of this trip were kept secret until just before the president's arrival. That meant staff schedules and assignments were being juggled even after the president's plane touched down.

Reporters and photographers, accustomed to having to get security clearances by sending in their names and Social Security numbers to the White House press office in advance, found themselves much more carefully scrutinized than during previous presidential visits.

Reporter Dan Nakaso was confronted by a Secret Service agent when Nakaso was making a routine call to the newsroom. Nakaso was part of the official press pool for the visit, but was questioned on why he had been heard giving out information on what the president was doing.

While being part of the pool is coveted by news organizations because it gives them better and closer access to the president, for this trip it meant Nakaso and photographer Greg Yamamoto had to stay with Bush's entourage the entire 12 hours of the visit. Along with other journalists, they were taken in a van along with the president's party, and they could not come and go.

A presidential visit affects not only those involved in the ceremonial functions and those invited to the fund-raisers, but also residents going about their daily lives. It's our job to report not only on the scripted events, but also the impact on the community.

We were there when the president and Mrs. Bush read to school children, visited with veterans at Pearl Harbor and mingled with supporters at a fund-raiser. We also wrote about protesters and the tight security surrounding the visit.

We received only a few comments from readers about our coverage, both before and after the visit.

Several readers objected to our headline Wednesday morning, "Bush visit will affect traffic." One said the choice of the story and the headline reflected what she believed was an Advertiser agenda of criticizing Bush. The others thought we were just stating the obvious, and that it was a poor choice for a main story, focusing on a trivial aspect of the visit.

Editors did not choose the story, which also reported on a planned ban on commuter flights during the visit, to suggest that the Bush visit was a bad thing. Rather, it was chosen because the potential traffic and flight restrictions could affect hundreds of thousands of people. As it turned out, by Wednesday morning the restrictions on flights had been lifted, and on Thursday, the traffic disruptions were relatively minor.

A reader objected to a sentence in our Friday story that said Bush was heckled by protesters. The reader was correct. Bush's motorcade never went past the largest group of protesters, and so he could not have heard them. They did shout and chant, but we should have been more precise.

Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at 525-8033 or aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com.