Did President Barack Obama play a rigged game at a press conference Tuesday on the issue of Iran, which he has struggled with in recent days?
White House aides apparently invited a senior news editor from the left-leaning Huffington Post website to come to the Tuesday news conference with a question that had been submitted online from an Iranian. Aides gave the blogger, Nico Pitney, a guest pass and escorted him into the briefing room.
After taking a single question from The Associated Press, Obama announced, “I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post.”
“I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet,” Obama said, according to The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. “Do you have a question?”
“That’s right,” Pitney said, “I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.” He then went on to ask what Milbank called an “arranged question.”
Pitney contends the question was not staged.
Traditional media journalists need to realize their turf is changing as the media changes and that bloggers are being given, and should be given, more access.
But there is no excuse for planted or pre-arranged questions.
As Milbank noted, “The use of planted questions 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.”
The longtime Washington journalist rightly noted that Huffington Post bloggers and other liberal outlets accused President Bush of planting questioners at news conferences with pre-planned questions.
At a time when Iranians are being killed and beaten for demanding democracy, we ought to be extra careful to demonstrate our commitment to our founding principles.
We hope President Obama regrets what appeared to be a stunt, and rejects any future temptation to plant questions.
