It appears to be basically a tu quoque, that is, an attempt to deflect criticism that the ABC show is going to inappropriately assist the President in pushing his agenda by claiming that another network did something similar for a different President.
Which does not address the question. If it was inappropriate for Fox to do it for Bush, is it not also inappropriate for ABC to do it for Obama?
I heard nothing but complaints from the SDMB that the press did not do its job in the run up to the Iraq war, and now we have a hugely expensive budget-buster that is based on unexamined premises. Why is this now a good thing that Obama wants to implement an even more expensive budget-buster with even less of an exit strategy?
If the argument is merely that ABC will be asking the tough questions, I decline to believe that. The press is curling up in Obama’s lap and going to sleep, and has been since he emerged as the front-runner. They are going to softball the whole health care notion.
They are helping Obama as much as they can. They will stack the polls. ABC in particular has a history of using its “news” coverage to help push the Democratic agenda (cite).
Son of a gun! That’s the second cite I’ve seen today from CNSNews. Starving used them to prove that Khalid S. was tortured to save countless lives, and now Shodan. Never heard of them before.
Who are these people, anyway? Oh, wait, Michelle Malkin. OK, heard of her. Yeppers.
Whaddaya think? “The Right News, Right Now” better than “Fair and Balanced”?
If they muffle all counterpoint opinions, provide an unapologetically one-sided approach to the issue, and throw the president nothing but softball questions, then yes–it’s equally inappropriate.
But since none of that has been demonstrated yet, I’m going to reserve judgment. Simply because Fox has a single-minded and transparent bias doesn’t mean other networks can’t take such an opportunity of increased access more seriously and objectively. Here’s hoping…
You’re lucky you didn’t gripe and moan, since not surprisingly you are completely and utterly wrong. That first link is to Obama calling on Fox News at his first ever White House press conference. :smack:
(Full transcripts of those press conferences are available hereand here).
Right. But since this was a press conference right before the Iraq War - which started two weeks later, it seems to me that the notion that knowing what the questions are comes less from scripting and more from the fact that nobody would waste a question on anything other than the war.
Right?
Especially given the strident denials from the press that they didn’t participate in scripting? It seems the more likely explanation to me.
Obviously you didn’t look very closely. Those pictures are of Fox identifying people like Mark Sanford and Mark Foley as Democrats in the chyron. This isn’t just someone at Fox mistyping.
It’s so weird that I almost wonder if it is mistyping–has anyone checked to see if they misidentify Democrats as Republicans as often as they do the opposite? This is one of those things where the apparent conclusion (they’re trying to trick people into thinking it’s only Democrats who have scandal) is so ridiculously stupid that I’d prefer to see better evidence of it. Still, it’s remarkable how often they misidentify Republican scandals as D.
Especially because in 2 of those cases, there doesn’t seem to be a scandal attached (Toomey and Alexander), and in one, it seems like a conflation (Michael Brown, who really is a Democratic strategist and frequent Fox News talking head, but is a different Michael Brown from the former FEMA head).
So I don’t know if it is intentional, but it’s certainly strange.
Well, here’s one instance of them labeling a Dem as R; however, it’s part of a swap while reporting on an election, so the winning Democrat was labeled R and the losing Republican was labeled D. So it’s still not an entirely innocent context.
Its quite funny. Mark Sanford has been on Fox News dozens of times talking out his ass about how he was going to refuse the stimulus money, and guess what? Fox always correctly labeled him as a Republican. But when he gets nailed boning some South American tail, guess what? Now he is a Democrat. Coincidence? If you say so.
Network news journalism had been on life support since Cronkite and officially died with Tim Russert.
In this instance, the President was getting pinged on Iran and needed a question on the current situation to launch into a prepared speech.
When a President lines up a topic to discuss in advance then the event becomes more political rally and less press conference. I don’t blame Presidents for doing this but I blame news outlets for passing it off as news. This may explain why the major news outlets are losing audience share.
Perhaps you would have a point if there was any chance whatsoever that BHO might not have been obliged to take a question on the most urgent topic of the day. Even if he didn’t want to talk about Iran, it was a lead-pipe cinch he was going to.
And if by some miracle it didn’t come up (!)…
“Well, Sean, did you see today where that craven, spinelss wussy ducked questions about Iran?”
“Well, nobody asked one, just a coincidence they say, sure, uh huh…”
IF the President simply used the situation to ensure that some unknown (to him) person in Iran got to ask an unknown (to him) question, which he then answered to the best of his ability without some pre-arranged speech, then it’s of minor consequence. A shrug moment.
IF the President used the situation to try and show that he’s going to provide non-mainstream press with access, while at the same time taking some question on a topic that he’s already got a prepared statement for, and will give with little variation regardless of the actual question asked, then that’s a wrong thing to do. If the President wants to start off a press conference with a statement on a subject, he is free to do so. Making it look like it’s the response to some random question on the subject while manipulating the conference so that you get to make the point first, and at the same time appear to be sensitive to the need for non-traditional press to have access to you is turning the conference into a staged event.
