From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Leaders of 47 nations gathered in Washington this week for the Nuclear Security Summit,

along with press corps from around the world.

In his opening remarks, President Barack Obama called the summit a historic occasion.

He said that nuclear security is one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

It's a matter of humankind's very survival, and that's about when he kicked the media out of the room.

And with that, I'm going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank served up a scathing summary of the White House's treatment of the press during the summit.

He wrote that reporters were shut out of most proceedings and had virtually no chance for questions.

Milbank admits this isn't a new problem. The media always want more access, but the Obama

administration's behavior was a bit much. There's no shortage of press whining, but people have

been covering these summits since I was a kid said they've never

seen anything quite like it. Now, what was different here is you did have 50 world leaders there,

you know, from places like China and Russia, where they don't have the same press freedoms.

It seemed to me the president had a chance to show what it's like to have a free society and a free

press. Instead, we had the people from the Saudi press agency coming into these meetings and being

ushered out after 15 seconds and not being allowed to hear what we once called the leader of the

free world was saying. If we're going to talk the talk, we've got to walk the walk, eh?

Look, the president is free to stiff the press as much as he wants.

He's been doing that a lot lately, everything from going to his kid's soccer game without

alerting the protective White House press bowl that usually follows the president around just

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