Bush Press Conference Snubs Helen Thomas

Great Debates
101

Hi, mhendo -

This is as close as I could find to a quote from you regarding freedom of the press:

To give you credit, it seems mostly to have been Diogenes the Cynic who comes closest to making the argument as I framed it.

As regards the rest of the post I (partially) quoted above, the rest of the examples of exchanges between Fleischer and Thomas do not strike me as unresponsive on the part of Fleischer, but attempts by Thomas to spin her question so as to try, not to elicit information, but to attack the position of the administration. Fleischer in return rejects her entirely partisan spin, but still is at least partially responsive.

For example:

which you characterize as unresponsive. Thomas asks if the President was talking about all innocent lives, Fleischer responds that he meant specifically the attack on Tel Aviv. Having received this clarification, Thomas ignores it, and continues with her attempts to characterize any war on Iraq as consisting only of attacks on the innocent.

This is not a question designed to gain information or insight. It is a partisan speech. Which is demonstrated by her complete disregard of the answer. She is not prepared to listen to anything short of a response along the lines of “Fuck the Iraqi children - Bush feels like bombing someone, and it’s tough noogies about the little brats so long as we can grab the oil.”

In my view, this is what is being characterized as “asking the tough questions” or “taking an adversarial stance” - pushing your own agenda. Thomas’ goal is not to explore the President’s position - it is proactively to refute it.

She is, in other words, no more objective and no more a reporter than someone who sneaks into a press conference to hit a politician in the face with a pie - or like Fred Phelps showing up at the funeral of a gay man. They are where they are because that is where they can get attention for their own ideas, and attempts to fulfill the stated purpose of the event are regarded as unwonted interference.

If she had a question for the President, she should have been allowed to ask it. Her entire history seems to be proof that she had none - a lot of attacks, a lot of speechifying, but no real uestions.

So as far as I am concerned, she can shut her yap.

Regards,
Shodan

102

Fleischer didn’t “clarify” jack shit. He gave a weasely, evasive, chickenshit answer to a legitimate question. The WH Press Secretary is not supposed to be an advocate for the president. His salary is payed by the taxpayers. He works for us. We pay him to answer our motherf*cking questions, not to give stump speeches for presidential policies. A Press Secretary who evades questions is failing in his duty and is stealing money from tax payers.

103

ElJeffe, I’l concede that we may have a difference of semantics here. Obviously, I would never ask the questions you characterized as “loaded.”

When I say “reporters have to ask loaded questions” I mean that we do have to phrase things in such a way that will get the person being interviewed a little riled up, maybe even a little angry. (Hopefully not at us… don’t want to burn bridges after all). It’s very easy to ask a supposedly “tough” question that will not accomplish this result and give you only a very bland answer. When it comes to sources, those in Washington are the smoothest of the smooth. They already know most of the “tough” questions that are going to come their way. It takes a LOT to get something meaningful out of them sometimes.

Interviewing is all a cat-and-mouse game. I rather enjoy playing it. :slight_smile:

But as other posters have said, Helen’s questions were nothing like the ones you characterized as “loaded.” I do not deny that she is as liberal as all get-out, but as a columnist, she has every right to be.

104

“Helen’s questions weren’t loaded”?!? Hell, they were so loaded, they weren’t even questions at all. I mean, I know some here are anti-war, and anti-GWB (and generally I am in that group), but come on, let’s get real. The woman has gone a bit senile, and is simply using her position to harrague the administration. She as much admitted it. She basicly asked “have you stopped beating your wife”, and added “you murdering imperialist pig dog”. Ok, I exaggerate- but not by a lot. Her questions posted here are very close to “Have you stopped beating your wife”. Theyaren’t even “questions”, they are her opinions, stated during a period where she is supposed to be asking questions.

Besides- as has been said before- she didn’t get to sit in the #1 sop because she was “Helen Thomas”. She got that spot because of whom she represented, and her seniority. She no longer represents them, in fact, based upon her current position, she really doesn’t deserve a spot in the Press room at all. She hasn’t even been stopped from her “questions”- she just lost the spot she is no longer entitled to. Or do you think Bill Clinton should still get to live in the East Wing and conduct business out of the Oval Office? He isn’t the President any longer- nor does Thomas hold the position she used to. Things change.

105

Sorry, to me the distinction seemed clear. The one about “Why do you want to kill innocent Iraqis” - a paraphrase of an actual question offered up by the “cantankerous” Ms. Thomas, BTW - is clearly designed to make the recipient look bad. Obviously, the president doesn’t WANT to kill innocents, but the question is phrased in such a way that his desire to kill innocents is a matter of fact. It’s the same as going up to someone who’s pro-choice and asking, “Why do you enjoy killing babies?”

The second question is different - it recognizes collateral damage as an inevitable factor, and asks what an acceptable level would be. It’s a tough question, in the it forces the recipient to quantify life - something that certainyl goes on behind the scenes, but not something politicians like to admit to. Nevertheless, it’s a valid and important question, I would consider it fair.

Hopefully, you can see the difference there.
Jeff

106

Shodan,

It looks like we’re going to have to agree to disagree on the issue of the particular question/s to which you referred, because i, like Diogenes, really think that Fleischer did little but duck and weave during the whole exchange.

While his initial answer may have clarified which particular incident he had been referrring to in the earlier comments, Thomas’s question raised an important point regarding the broader application of this attitude to the taking of innocent lives.

The statement “the President deplores the taking of innocent lives” can, i think, be interpreted to mean:

a) he deplores it all the time

or

b) he deplores it in the particular case mentioned earlier

or

c) he deplores it at some times, but not at others

Now, Fleischer’s response indicates that he was thinking in terms of answer (b), but it seems to me that any of these answers, (a), (b) or ©, still demand a further clarification in order to answer Thomas’s question.

If the general answer is (a), then Thomas was surely within the realms of reasonable journalistic practice to ask why “all the time” apparently does not include Iraqi civilians. And if the general answer is (b), then surely it’s within the realms of reasonable journalistic practice to ask why he is so selective. And if ©, then it’s within the realms of reasonable journalistic practice to ask how he makes his selections. I think that, when confronted with a line about the President’s attiutude to the taking of innocent life, journalists have a duty to examine the full extent of his feelings on the matter, especially when he seems on the verge of fighting a war that will do just that.

Look, personally i think that a smart woman and experienced journalist like Thomas could probably have phrased the questions in such a way as to garner a more useful response. I gave an example in one of my earlier posts.

But i’m not going to spend any time feeling sorry for highly paid spin-masters (President and Press Secretary) who deliberately and systematically fail to answer questions with anything but self-serving rationalisations and canned cliches. And this attiutde, in case anyone was wondering, applied to the Clinton White House as well. Diogenes expressed the idea that the occupants of the White House are there to serve the American people and not to mislead or lie to them, and while such sentiments may sometimes seem naive in the modern political world, they are still ones to which i adhere.

And finally, by looking at single press conference and a few particular questions, i think i have actually served to undermine my own argument a bit. Because, even if i conceded that ALL of the questions asked by Thomas in that conference were loaded (which i don’t), you have to place them in the context of a long history of White House spokespersons’ less-than-forthcoming attitude. I read many of the transcripts of White House press conferences, by people like Fleischer, Rumsfeld, Powell, etc., and by Democrats before them, and the ability of these people to spend an hour taking questions without actually giving any real answers is astounding. If it takes some “loaded” questions to shake the American political system up a bit, then i’m all for it.

107

I can see what you think the difference is.

The problem i have is the idea apparently held by many in this thread that the most powerful man in the world, and his spokepeople, should be treated with kid gloves by the press. You would think that, if the questions are as loaded as you seem to think, men as smart and powerful as these would be able to formulate a response that not only presented their view of the issue, but that made the questioner look like a naive partisan.

I think that Fleischer’s failure to address the questions (loaded or not) in any meaningful way actually made him look worse than if he had answered them fully and with a complete explanation of the President’s attitude. Instead, all we got was a bunch of cliches about protecting America, etc., etc.; this smokescreen served to emphasize even more clearly how unwilling the White House can be to provide substantive information or to explain its occupant’s positions.

And i continue to insist that the term “collateral damage” is no less loaded than the questions for which you chastise Thomas. Keep using it all you want, but by doing so you continue to demonstrate that one person’s “tough” question is another person’s “loaded” one.

108

Point taken, SNenc. If I misinterpreted what you meant by “loaded”, I apologize. However, I still think a lot of questions at these events are loaded, by my definition, and I think those questions are simply a waste of time.

Jeff

109

Here’s a segment of the Q&A between Fleischer and Thomas:

Thomas asks a blatantly loaded question. Fleischer starts to respond, and is interrupted by Thomas with another question. The only question Thomas asks that doesn’t Fleischer doesn’t attempt to answer directly is “Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?”, which is, IMO, a stupid question. Obviously, nobody wants to attack civilians for the sake of attacking civilians, but just as obviously, they may be inadvertantly killed. The way I interpret that response is “We don’t want to kill Iraqi civilians, but our priority is the lives of our own citizens.” I don’t think that’s an unreasonable interpretation.
Jeff

110

That could be the case if the question was “Why do you want collateral damage inflicted on the Iraqi people?”. That would be pretty much the same as “Why do you want to kill innocent Iraqis?”.

Do you see that, perhaps, in suggesting that the President wants to kill innocent Iraqis, that Helen Thomas might have been asking a loaded question? There is a big difference between accepting that innocent Iraqis may die and wanting them do die, right?

111

Here’s another gem from Helen Thomas

Ari Fleischer had just answered a question about whether he thought the Iraqi people could be governed democratically.

You’ll notice that she didn’t actually ask any questions, and when Ari tried to clarify things she kept interrupting him. This is not professional behaviour from a reporter at a press conference.

112

Sam Stone did a good job of reducing this argument to its logical extreme. I just want to add:
If Helen Thomas is one of the capital-P People, then when did we get to vote to send her to Washington? If she is one of the People, why are her views so different from those of large segments of the People? If she is one of the People, why doesn’t she ask the questions I’d like to hear asked?

And if she is one of the People, why does she say things like: “Now I wake up and ask myself, ‘Who do I hate today?’” Her short list of answers seems not to vary from war, President Bush, timid office-holders, a muffled press and cowed citizens, pretty much in that order.

Her illusion that anyone who doesn’t think like her is “cowed” is not of the people – it’s elitist.

To put it plainly, Helen Thomas is not of the People unless she goes to work for the celebrity magazine of that name. She is “of” whatever organization is paying her salary. If she didn’t fit into that corporate culture, it would no longer pay her salary. She’s not representing the people – she’s representing her bosses. A conservative at the Washington Post and a liberal at the Washington Times would both find their career paths truncated. Refresh my memory, someone. Didn’t Thomas make her previous job switch because a conservative group bought a stake in the group she worked for – and she bailed out?

Lastly, the tradition of starting with Helen Thomas began when she was the only woman in the White House press corps, and it was a blatant example of “ladies first.” So those who advocate honoring that tradition are advocating something they might otherwise fume over.

Or is it a case that she wants to celebrate smashing barriers and all the while have us hold the door open for her as she does so?

113

You’re kidding, right? This must be some sort of heavy irony.

Have you actually opened the Washington Post is the past few years?

114

Yes, as a matter of fact. If you’re attempting to claim it’s been taken over by the right, or even moderates – well, I must have missed that drift.