Transparency? Not So Much, Say Reporters Left Out of Obama's Second Oath

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs held his first press briefing Thursday afternoon and got the bitter taste of a press corps displeased with their exclusion from President Obama's second oath of office.

"Transparency" has been the buzzword of the new administration, and many reporters grilled Gibbs over why the sparsely attended second swearing-in -- administered by Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday evening in the Map Room of the White House --  had no television cameras or news photographers.

The White House allowed only four print reporters to cover the informal ceremony and released a picture by the official White House photographer.

Amid a packed room of reporters, Gibbs defended the decision to limit their numbers by arguing that there was no need for a big formal event, since the second oath was done out of an "abundance of caution" and nothing more.

The administration has continuously said it believed the original swearing-in at Tuesday's inauguration ceremony was done appropriately, despite the flubbed lines by Roberts and Obama, and that the White House counsel's decision to have the oath re-administered was mainly a protective measure.

Gibbs said the absence of a large group of reporters at the second swearing-in should not be seen as an indication of secrecy.

"There's audio. I've heard that audio. I was there. Far easier to get tickets for this one," he said. "We took a print pool in there. We released a photograph from the White House. And as I think the pool reported, as soon as it happened, we reported it out. ... We think it was done in a way that was up front and transparent. We think that it also did it in a way that demonstrated again that this was done out of an abundance of caution and only that."

Still, many in the press corps dispute that the audio and visual records of the incident are sufficient -- namely a scratchy audio recording from the Bloomberg News reporter's personal tape recorder and a photo release from an administration photographer.

FOX News' Anita Siegfriedt contributed to this report.