Marcy Wheeler of FireDogLakeMilbank incensed by "planted question" -- but not enough to tell readers what it was
SUMMARY: Dana Milbank ridiculed President Obama for taking "a preplanned question" by "a planted questioner," referring to Nico Pitney. But Milbank omitted the substance of Pitney's question, which Michael Tomasky and Glenn Greenwald described as "tough."
Asserting that President Obama's June 23 press conference included "prepackaged entertainment," Dana Milbank wrote in his June 24 Washington Post column that Huffington Post national editor Nico Pitney was "a planted questioner" who asked "a preplanned question." Milbank further wrote: "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 while Milbank noted that "Pitney said the White House" was "not aware of the question's wording," he did not quote or paraphrase the question itself, which Guardian America editor Michael Tomasky described as "an important and tough question that got right to the heart of the matter." The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen called it "a terrific question that the president wasn't anxious to answer," while Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald referred to it as "one of the toughest questions at the Press Conference."
During the pressconference, Obama said to Pitney, "Nico, I know that you, and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. ... Do you have a question?" Pitney replied:From Milbank's June 24 Washington Post column:PITNEY: Yeah, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions last night from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the -- of what the demonstrators there are working towards?After the obligatory first question from the Associated Press, Obama treated the overflowing White House briefing room to a surprise. "I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post," he announced.
Obama knew this because White House aides had called Pitney the day before to invite him, and they had escorted him into the room. They told him the president was likely to call on him, with the understanding that he would ask a question about Iran that had been submitted online by an Iranian. "I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet," Obama went on. "Do you have a question?"
Pitney recognized his prompt. "That's right," he said, standing in the aisle and wearing a temporary White House press pass. "I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian."
Pitney asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.
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."
[...]
But yesterday's daytime drama belonged primarily to Pitney, of the Huffington Post Web site. During the eight years of the Bush administration, liberal outlets such as the Huffington Post often accused the White House of planting questioners in news conferences to ask preplanned questions. But here was Obama fielding a preplanned question asked by a planted questioner -- from the Huffington Post.
Pitney said the White House, though not aware of the question's wording, asked him to come up with a question about Iran proposed by an Iranian.
Youtube clip of Meet the Press:They Planted a Gay Whore in His News Conferences!!!
I'm going to get to what it means that the AP--purportedly the most neutral source of "news" out there--is harping on the Nico Pitney question. But first, check out what this "news" entity claims in paragraph nine of their story--presumably to meet the AP's requirement for false equivalency.
Never proved?!?!
Grumblings about favored reporters are not unique to the Obama White House. There were suspicions — never proved — that President George W. Bush's press operations often planted friendly questions in his news conferences.
They not only planted friendly questions in their news conferences, they brought in their very own gay prostitute to ask those questions. Not to mention paying people like Armstrong Williams to push their policies and flying their favorite Generals around so they'd pitch the Administration line on teevee.
But in the false equivalency moral universe of the AP, allowing a reporter who has announced he's going to solicit questions from Iranians directly to pose one of those questions is the big scandal.It's bad enough that Fox and Politico are--predictably--bitching about this. For the AP to consider this "news" at all just shows how far gone the press is in protecting their privilege over embracing the spirit of journalism. Once again, the White House took this question because:
White House officials phoned a blogger from a popular left-leaning Web site on Monday evening to tell him that President Barack Obama had been impressed with his online reporting about Iran. Could the writer pass along a question from an Iranian during the president's news conference on Tuesday?
Of course. The next day, The Huffington Post's Nico Pitney got a prime location in the White House Briefing Room and was the second reporter Obama picked for a question.And so the supposedly hyper-neutral arbiter of what is news joins the pout-rage that the journalist doing the best work on a story gets to pose a question on that topic.And you know what? Those average people actually engaged in history asked one of the toughest questions of the press conference!
- Nico's reporting and the role of Twitter in the Iranian crisis are signature moments showing how technology can foster democracy (which is pretty much Obama's schtick, anyway)
- That same technology offered average people on the other side of the world--the people actually involved in this historic event--a way to pose the President of the United States a question about their actions
If the AP cared any more about democracy and reporting and free speech, the lede of the story would be: "President Obama answers historic question from democracy activists in Iran and in doing so embodies the principles of democracy."
But instead, we get still more pout-rage from a dying press.
Transcript from Crooks and Liars:
Youtube clip of Nico Pitney Confronting Dana Milbank Over Obama Question:Dana Milbank wasn't the only Beltway Villager all wanked out about President Obama prearranging a question with HuffPo's Nico Pitney yesterday. On Meet the Press, David Gregory pressed David Axelrod about it, suggesting that somehow this sort of thing is anti-democratic:
Gregory is a Beltway Villager, and like all such folk, he wants to cling to the well-honed myths that preserve their favorite fictions about themselves. One of these is that White House press conferences are actually exercises in democratic, even egalitarian questioning of government officials by the people's representatives in the press corps.MR. GREGORY: I just want to be clear. Did the White House coordinate with a reporter about a question to be asked at a press conference?
MR. AXELROD: The White House didn't coordinate with the reporter about a question, we were looking for a way to get questions from within Iran. We could--we did not have access to Iranian journalists.
MR. GREGORY: So you talked to a reporter beforehand and said, "Could you ask a question about--from--directly from Iran at a press conference?"
MR. AXELROD: We said if you--we, we, we, we, we knew that he had been and he was very publicly involved in getting--in trafficking and communications in and out of Iran, and we felt it was important...
MR. GREGORY: Well, why is it appropriate to coordinate with a reporter about what's asked at a time when we're championing democracy around the world?
MR. AXELROD: No, no, David, you miss...
MR. GREGORY: Is that, is that what you should do at a press conference?
MR. AXELROD: You're not, you're not listening to what I said. We didn't coordinate with, with him about what was asked.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. AXELROD: In fact, he asked probably one of the most--the toughest and most probing questions at that press conference. We had no idea what he was going to ask.
MR. GREGORY: But you coordinated with him about, about that subject of a question beforehand.
MR. AXELROD: He was a, he was a, he was a, he was a vehicle to get questions from Iran asked at this press conference, and that we thought was not only appropriate but, but necessary.
MR. GREGORY: If President Bush had done that, don't you think Democrats would have said that's outrageous?
So they are loathe to admit a simple reality: White House press conferences are in cold reality carefully stage-managed affairs, and the main beneficiaries of this arrangement have been the handful of "elite" reporters from big-name media outlets who traditionally have dominated them.
We're perfectly aware that presidents have for some long time gone into these conferences with a prearranged list of reporters upon whom they are going to call. The result has been an immense trivialization of press conferences, because those "elite" reporters have demonstrated over the years their eagerness to indulge trivial, celebrity-media-driven questions at the expense of serious policy matters. In the process, they've become increasingly manipulable.
This trend reached its apotheosis back when Jeff Gannon was lobbing softball questions to President Bush and White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Not only was Gannon a phony journalist, he was being regularly selected to be among the main questioners at the daily briefings.
Considering that this same White House never came clean on exactly why it issued credentials to this fraud -- and especially considering that David Gregory never once objected to it -- his outrage over the Obama White House's calling on Pitney for the toughest question any reporter at that conference asked seems strangely misplaced.
On the other hand, considering that this White House's admission of people like Pitney into the circle of people who get to ask questions at these conferences represents a direct erosion of the "elite" status of people like David Gregory -- and in fact an opening of these questions to many more "representatives of the people" -- it's really not too surprising.
Marcy Wheeler of FireDogLake's take on the above clip:
Digby's Hullabaloo:Dana Milbank’s Very Thin Folder
It was a very thin folder Dana Milbank held in his hand--his shield against the DFH blogger who got to ask a question. "A full list of documentation of me holding the Bush White House to account," he explained it as, in addition to a copy of an email Nico Pitney wrote the night before Obama asked him a question at a press conference.
Milbank's folder might be so thin because he apparently finds his three to four, 750 to 800 word columns a week a taxing burden. Funny ... that sounds like Monday lunchtime to me.
But forget, for a moment, the embarrassing thinness of Milbank's folder--the columns where, he says, he held Bush accountable. I'm more curious why he brought his thin folder to confront Nico Pitney, whose sin (after all) is that he got to ask the President a question on behalf of Iranians. Nico wasn't the one criticizing Milbank for not holding Bush accountable (though he did remind viewers that Milbank was rather interested in how Obama looked in a swimsuit).
Dan Froomkin was.Now, Froomkin did not name Milbank personally. But I can't help but observe that a very testy Milbank whipped out his thin folder this week--the week when Dan Froomkin was fired because he refused to stop criticizing the crappy coverage of both Bush and Obama. I can't help but notice that Milbank came prepared to defend himself aganist precisely the charges that Froomkin has leveled--that those covering Bush on a day to day basis "missed the real Bush story for way too long."
Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long.(To be fair, Milbank explained his thin folder as a response to others at HuffPo--not Nico--who had accused Milbank of not holding Bush accountable.)
This entire exchange, it seems to me, has more to do with the WaPo's thin skin about Froomkin's charges than it has to do with Nico's question.
Which sort of makes you wonder whether Milbank didn't "collude" with fellow WaPo columnist Howie Kurtz, who apparently had no thin folder of his own even to show.
So to sum up: Nico Pitney is a reporter for the Huffington Post who has been doing some really excellent reporting on the Iranian uprisings, much better then anything the print or TV media has been doing. He had said in one of his articles that he wanted to get questions from Iranians to ask Obama at a press conference. The Obama administration heard about that, and told him they would definitely call on him so he could ask one of those questions. When that happened, the traditional media flipped the fuck out!No Compete Claws
I've been busy this week and so wasn't able to follow the little press corps hissy fit over Nico Pitney as closely as I would have liked. But I was wondering if the people who were so terribly upset that a member of the "low press"* was allowed into the inner sanctum to ask a question at a press conference had been equally upset when a former male escort working for a partisan Republican front group had been called upon repeatedly at white house press conferences.
Eric Boehlert checked and found out that the most vociferous critic of the alleged "manipulation" had never written a word about Jeff Gannon:
As I said, I haven't had the time to follow this little brouhaha in detail, so maybe I've missed something. But from what I understand, the white house knew that Pitney had been soliciting questions from Iranians to ask the president at his press conference. There wasn't anything secret about that. Pitney had built a huge audience on this story gathering all kinds of stories on twitter, youtube and in the foreign press and had developed a bunch of sources. So, being that he was a member of the low press, in order to allow him to ask the question from an Iranian, they had to give him a special pass to mingle with the blow dried fops and spokesmodels of the high press who are allowed to question the president. According to all parties, the question wasn't known in advance. Indeed, Pitney could have asked about energy policy if he'd wanted to. But I would guess that everyone knew that he would likely ask a question from an Iranian because he'd said on his blog that's what he was going to do!But please note that in 2005 when it was revealed that right-wing partisan James Guckert had been waved into the WH press room nearly 200 times without proper credentials, wrote under an alias (Jeff Gannon), and asked Bush officials softball questions, Milbank remained mum. (He wasn't alone.)
According to Nexis, Milbank never wrote about the Gannon story.
Is the DC press corps really this thick? If the president and favored reporters are cooking up questions in secret then it's a problem. A writer publicly soliciting questions from readers and saying he will use one of them if the president calls on him is not the same thing, particularly when the exact question wasn't known. It seems to me that this is a pretty obvious distinction.
The mainstream press in in a panic right now over their competition from online publications. It's perfectly understandable. In that respect they are a lot like the insurance companies desperately clinging to their failing model because competition from outside of it will likely kill off those who can't adapt. I can understand why they are feeling anxious. But Milbank seems to me to be an odd choice to be making this stink. He's always been a sort of "new media" kind of guy with lots of attitude and an irreverent style. He could survive in the new environment just fine.
Of course, just like those insurance company CEOs, he won't make as much money or have as much security. But hey, that's what's been happening to people all over this country for a few decades now --- competition tends to do that. Ask all those Americans who used to work in factories or for companies that are no longer in business. Nobody's immune from competition, not even political establishment celebrities.
Maybe these people need to reevaluate their blind faith in the market if they don't like this outcome. It's as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning.
They started saying that the entire question had been given to Pitney by the Obama administration, and calling it a plant. When several people pointed out that Obama had no knowledge of what the question was going to be, just that it was going to be from an Iranian, traditional media started scrambling to make up stuff to criticize about the action. The best they could come up with is some bullshit about how it's "improper" to know the subject of a question you're about to be asked. They started running with that narrative, and have been all weekend.
Of course most people suspect the real reason they're flipping out so much is because nearly all the so called "Beltway Villagers" have a very inflated opinion of themselves, and they're pissed off that a blogger (blogger!) was allowed to ask a question at a Very Serious™ white house press conference. Most of them think bloggers aren't sufficiently Serious to ask questions of the president, and think that should be reserved for Very Serious™ journalists such as themselves.
