Patty Culhane

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Patty Culhane
Correspondent | United States
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By Patty Culhane in Americas on May 23rd, 2012
Photo by Reuters

I've just returned home from the NATO summit and I can't stop focusing on all that we don't know after dozens of world leaders met for two days.
           
I have to wonder if the Obama Administration is disappointed in the results. At the end of all of those hours of talking, the leaders recommitted themselves to the overall timeline for Afghanistan. They said again, by the summer of next year Afghan Security Forces will take the lead and the entire international fighting force will be out by the end of 2014.

In diplomatic terms the leaders used pretty strong language in the final statement, calling the timeline for withdrawal "irreversible". Translation - "we are done".

The minute I heard that I realized that is what the majority of domestic media would focus on much to the glee of the Obama Campaign.

By Patty Culhane in Americas on May 20th, 2012
Leaders attend the photo session at the G8 summit at Camp David in the US hosted by President Barack Obama [Reuters]

I've had another one of those days where more than once I've asked myself why on Earth anyone would want to be the President of the United States, or the Chancellor of Germany, or any of the leaders traveling to Camp David for the G8 meetings this weekend.

I say this, while sitting in a coach-class seat on one of those tiny commercial planes en route to Chicago for the NATO summit.

I hate tiny planes so of course that makes me realize that Air Force One would be a fun plane to be able to borrow four years at a time. 

I've been aboard – but only in the press area.

Not that comfortable

It's about as far back as you're allowed to go, the seats aren't all that comfortable, and no, it doesn't look anything like it did in the movie with Harrison Ford.

By Patty Culhane in Americas on May 11th, 2012
The closest the press gets to Obama's ritziest fundraisers is usually the security team outside. [AFP]

I could have been writing this from balmy, beautiful California, but I'm not.

As many of my colleagues jet to Seattle and stop in Los Angeles for a series of fundraisers, I'm still in Washington D.C.

We decided not to go, and there's a good reason why. We wanted to tell you about who's paying for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, and the campaign happens to be the worst place to do that.

At Obama's kick-off in Richmond, Virginia, I watched as he made repeated references to "ordinary people" and "middle-class Americans".

Conventional wisdom holds that Obama's presidency was made in 2008 by a horde of "ordinary people" donating small amounts.

He did have more small donors then the other candidates, but studies have since said the phenomenon was exaggerated, and this time around, small donors make up only 45 per cent of his donations.

By Patty Culhane in Americas on May 9th, 2012
Photo: Reuters

I don’t like covering intelligence stories. It’s not that I don’t find them intriguing; I like James Bond movies as much as the next person. I do think the work of intelligence agencies affects most of us more than we know. 

The problem is it is often impossible to get independent confirmation. Reporters are basically told to trust their sources and in America, often one reporter's scoop gets repeated as fact by their colleagues.  

Each line begins to form an overall narrative, which becomes conventional wisdom and it is eventually considered the truth. We often later hear that someone got something wrong; still that almost never changes what people already believe.  

The facts are set, even though most people have no way of knowing if they are facts at all. It used to be that reporters in the United States wouldn’t and couldn’t go on air or to print with a story unless they had information they could attribute to someone.  

Tags: al-Qaeda
By Patty Culhane in Americas on November 16th, 2011
[GALLO/GETTY]

I know why economic summits are always held in beautiful tourist towns. If not, no one from the media would want to go.

When I was told about the assignment to Honolulu, Hawaii to cover the Asian Pacific Economic Conference (APEC), my colleagues immediately expressed jealousy, even mild disdain for my good fortune. Here is the secret though; no one likes to cover these things. Very little news is made, the limited availability you're given to talk to leaders usually results in the same scripted sound bites. But the biggest reason by far is that Free Trade Agreements are incredibly hard to understand and even tougher to explain on television.

By Patty Culhane in Americas on May 25th, 2011

It always amazes me how much life is disrupted for any city that hosts a sitting US president. In the times I have been part of the TV pool - the press that follows the president - I have to say you can’t really see the disruptions. The streets, people and signs pass in a hurried blur. From the outside it is painfully clear the effect it has.

In Dublin, Obama’s visit caused most bridges to be closed, the trams were running only occasionally and it seemed the whole of the city had set out on foot on a very blustery day.

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