When I wrote in my recent POLITICO column that it’s a myth that Obama has a good relationship with the media, part of the reason was because of his team’s obsessive over-management of news stories. Today’s leak of the new First Dog’s identity is exactly such a case.

The Washington Post published an exhaustive chronicle of the new dog today, after being promised the exclusive several weeks ago. Why was the Post promised the exclusive? According to the Post:

A Washington Post food reporter was making calls, probing, pushing [about the White House’s planned vegetable garden]. But the White House was mum. Word filtered out that the exclusive had been promised to the New York Times. But the White House offered The Post, the newspaper that cracked Watergate, a mollifier: A puppy exclusive.

This explains why the New York Times had such exhaustive and exclusive coverage of the White House’s vegetable garden last month. (As Mike Allen writes in Playbook today, “We’re not making this up”.)

In my experience, playing favorites amongst the media like this is a risky strategy. The short-term dividends are obvious (like glowing, front-page stories that pre-set the story’s narrative), but it’s part of the reason some White House reporters whom I talk to sound frustrated with the beat. (And frustrated reporters can turn into critical reporters.)

Similarly, at the risk of repeating myself, the over-management of news stories like the First Dog and White House vegetable garden should raise more questions about the White House’s press strategy surrounding Afghanistan. Obviously, Afghanistan is more important than the East Wing’s pet projects (no pun intended), but the latter’s press strategy was meant to maximize public interest and support, while the former’s strategy is meant to be as under-the-radar as possible. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

UPDATE: Apparently, I’m not the only one who things the WH’s management of the First Dog story was a bit over-the-top. POLITICO reports “Reporters on a media panel took some hard shots at The Washington Post’s front-page White House-fed scoop on the first dog today, accusing the White House, with WaPo a willing participant, of ‘manipulating’ the relationship between the press and the White House for ‘a trivial story’….”