WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s disclosure Wednesday that he supported same-sex marriage came not in a news conference, policy address or campaign event — but in an interview with Robin Roberts, the co-host of the talk show “Good Morning America.”
ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said the White House knew Roberts from a series of interviews with the president that began when she was the first journalist to interview him on the night of his inauguration.
“She’s been direct but fair,” he said. “That’s a very large part of it.”
But another part may have been that, unlike her co-host, George Stephanopoulos — an inside-the-Beltway figure — Roberts offered a “warmer, gauzier” and less combative presence, said Frank Sesno, a former CNN White House correspondent who is now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.
Roberts is amiable on TV, and having her across from Obama suggested a soft and easy conversation, said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign.
“I thought the selection of Roberts was genius,” he said. “She comes across as the neighbor you’d be happy to have a cup of coffee with. That’s the way to frame this issue, as an ongoing conversation with the American public.”
