Via Think Progress, “FULL TEXT: July 12 White House Press Briefing”
MCCLELLAN: You can keep jumping in, but I’m going to try to keep going to other people in this room as well. And we can have a constructive dialogue here I think, but that’s not the way to do it.
QUESTION: It’s not my job to have a constructive dialogue, Scott. Sorry.
Yes. The relationship of the press towards authority is an adversarial relationship, and is design such that it fails unless it is so. Much like the legal system, the relationship is disabled when it fails to function. Whether that is when one side fails to take up arms, or if a side resorts to gamesmanship, or another failing – the adversarial system requires a dynamic power balancing in order to function. The inherent design need is for a power balance. This is not dialogue, and shound’t be mistaken for dialogue.