It may seem unseemly, given the apparent bloodshed in Iran today, to dwell on fallout among the media and bloggers about the Obama administration’s selective process for taking questions at a presidential news conference.
But within the bubble of the Beltway, and along the sprawling information dashboards on the Web, a tangential issue to news coverage of the Iranian situation has been stirring a lot of discussion, stemming from the circumstances surrounding President Obama’s decision at yesterday’s news conference to call on Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post.
As background for those not following this media-centric debate, Mr. Pitney has been live-blogging the fallout from the Iranian elections, sifting through Twitter feeds and other available observations and reports for news about the situation for several days. As our own staff knows at The Times, this has been an arduous task, partly because some reality is ungettable, some reports are questionable and others are downright fictitious. But in a censored-world like that in Iran, the Internet, with all its access through sometimes circuitous routes, has empowered citizens on the ground and offered new, inventive avenues for getting information out to the world.
The latter touch-base seems to have been the motivation for the Obama communications staff to select Mr. Pitney as someone who could offer up a question solicited from Iranians to pose to President Obama on Tuesday. As reporter heads swiveled in the Brady briefing room, Mr. Obama called out to Mr. Pitney and asked: “I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet,” the president said. “Do you have a question?”
“That’s right,” Mr. Pitney answered, standing along the sidelines, with access through a temporary White House pass. “I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.”
But this was not a spontaneous exchange. Although Mr. Pitney and the administration have asserted in the intervening hours that neither knew the question to be posed — which means, in effect, the president’s response couldn’t have been rehearsed — Mr. Pitney was alerted by the administration that he might be called upon the night before.
So the perhaps noble mission of the Obama administration to address a genuine Iranian has gone awry — for reasons we’ll now explore through several accounts and assessments by White House correspondents and netroots activists who are feuding online over the news conference Q&A process and this particular example of an extremely selective — and calculated — decision. (And by the way, Mr. Obama really didn’t answer the posed question.)
How does the Obama administration choose which reporters to call on during a live presidential news conference? And are the rules — or at least the traditions — changing? It’s quite fascinating, actually, and even a bit amusing at this juncture, given the takes of various high-profile players, who have been engaged in a schoolyard game of nyah-nyah. We’ll get to that soon.
At today’s White House briefing, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, was hammered by the White House press corps in the aftermath. He insisted that Mr. Pitney wasn’t a “planted questioner”, despite the fact that the HuffPo blogger had gotten a rare heads-up the night before that he might be called upon.
That’s the core issue, which has gotten lost in the gaming and bashing of an elite White House press corps, and criticism of Mr. Pitney’s role, although we wouldn’t go so far as Matt Cooper has done at The Atlantic.com to call it the “crucifixion” of Nico Pitney.
My colleague, Jeff Zeleny, who was at the briefing today as well as at yesterday’s news conference, told me when I asked about the kind of night-before heads-up from the administration like that afforded Mr.
Pitney: “That never happens. I’ve never been notified in advance of a question. In some cases – like when the Detroit News was asked at the prime-time one – she got like 10 minutes heads
up.”
Early on, Mark Knoller of CBS News, who chronicles all big and small data about White House happenings, sent out his own alarm at the departure from routine through his Twitter feed, and then a post at his employer’s site, titled: “Obama to HuffPo Blogger: Tee One Up for Me.”
At the briefing today, from the transcript:
Q: Is this going to become a regular feature of President Obama’s news conferences, that you all are going to bring people in here that you select to ask questions?
Mr. Gibbs: Well, let’s understand. Let’s be clear, Peter. I think you understand this. So, but I’ll repeat it for your benefit.
There was no guarantee that a question — the questioner would be picked. There was no idea of what the exact question would be. I’ll let you down easily. A number of questions that we went through in prep you all asked. Iran dominated the news conference not surprisingly.
But Peter, I think it was important, and the president thought it was important, to take a question using the very same methods again that many of you all are using, to report information on the ground. I don’t have — I won’t make any apologies for that.
The “Peter” asking the questions was Peter Maer from CBS radio. Through persistent questioning at the briefing, Mr. Gibbs insisted the question wasn’t planted. And when someone posited that this picking and planting was akin to what occurred during the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 primary cycle, with planted questioners at her town-hall sessions, Mr. Gibbs went into a “no, no, no, no” rebuttal.
For his part, Mr. Pitney has taken to the airwaves all over the place today. From a C-Span interview to CNN this afternoon, he has asserted that the administration had no clue what question he would ask.
His ultimate employer, Arianna Huffington, posted a bit of a defensive defense about coverage of Mr. Pitney’s cameo at the news conference. Her headline kind of captures a bit of the angst and the back-and-forth: “Media Playground: Obama Calls on HuffPost, Michael Calderone Pouts, Ben Smith Calls Us Names, Dana Milbank Gets His Facts All Wrong.”
Mr. Milbank offered a sendup in his sketch at The Washington Post: “The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world — Iran included — that the American press isn’t as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn’t so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, “The Obama Show.” Missed yesterday’s show? Don’t worry: On Wednesday, ABC News will be broadcasting “Good Morning America” from the South Lawn (guest stars: the president and first lady), “World News Tonight” from the Blue Room, and a prime-time feature with Obama from the East Room. ”
Along the Interwebs, netroots activists are heralding Mr. Pitney’s role as yet another example of breaking through that tired old MSM elitist routine. They constantly deride what they consider the clubby atmosphere inside the briefing rooms at a presidential news conference, where citizens’ questions seem to them to be excluded. (Never mind that many of the questions asked reflect the public’s pressing issues of the day, like health care reform that did indeed command serious attention from the president yesterday.)
At The Nation, Ari Melber, tried to make the Pitney issue a milestone for citizen-journalists given access to that sacrosanct place amid the White House press corps.
The problem is not just that Mr. Pitney, for just one day, was afforded a cherished seat in the room or given an airing for his question. And no one is diminishing his work that has drawn accolades for his devoted attention to an issue. Rather, the criticism is that he was cherry-picked, with a call-upon hours and hours beforehand, and handed a status that no one among the so-called elite of the press corps receives on any given day.
While that may indeed be a thorn in the feet of the corps who toil daily, the perception of a favored one who got exceptionally advance notice may send signals — far and wide — as to what lengths the administration will go to stage and control the message the president wants to send.
That is what has gotten lost in all the old vs. new media antagonisms. It’s not about Mr. Pitney’s work or for that matter, the question he asked. It’s about how the administration finagled the position in which he became an actor for the president’s agenda.
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