Obama protects his girls from prying press

NEW YORK - A free press is all well and good, but not when it comes to the children of President Barack Obama, who has introduced unprecedented rules about which pictures we see of Sasha, 8, and Malia, 10, and which ones we don't.

All credentialled photographers have been told that the girls are fair game only when they are at formal events.

Otherwise, prying lenses should stay away.

To reduce the market for paparazzi shots, the White House puts out photos taken by its own photographer.

But these are posted only in low resolution.

Editors who want to use them have to ask for a high resolution version and it is up to spokesman Robert Gibbs to grant or deny those requests.

If Obama wants to protect the children from being exploited by a voracious modern-day media, he may find himself treading close to being accused of exploiting them himself, with such a controlled drip-drip of images designed to extract maximum political advantage at the lowest parental cost.

"He's going to try to have it both ways until and unless people start to question his value system and his sincerity in playing that role," notes Gerald Shuster, a political communications expert at the University of Pittsburgh.

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