The White House press office is behaving more and more like an independent media outlet, bypassing traditional news avenues in favor of releasing its own "exclusive" video, voicing administration opinions on its official blog and blasting out updates via Twitter.

The trend has raised questions among the press corps about whether the administration is looking to just tap its own resources to make major announcements. President Obama leans more on internal media as he continues to criticize the "24/7" media environment -- singling out cable news, radio and blogs for occasional lectures -- and appears to be abandoning the prime-time press conference forum he used to discuss major developments during his first few months in office....