Nico Pitney

As NewsBusters' Tim Graham reported, the Obama administration planted Huffington Post blogger Nico Pitney to ask a question at Tuesday's press conference.

The following day, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank also took the White House to task for this shameful episode. 

On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," Milbank and Pitney had a rather heated debate about what transpired that included, according to Pitney, the WaPoer calling him a "d**k" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

In 2005, NBC and MSNBC and CNN strongly attacked the Bush White House for allowing reporter "Jeff Gannon" of Talon News and GOPUSA.com (real name: James Guckert) to enter the White House on a day pass and ask questions to spokesman Scott McClellan and President Bush. Will these networks find it even more scandalous that the Obama White House much more explicitly pre-arranged a question from the left-wing website The Huffington Post, and allowed their reporter Nico Pitney to have the second question of the entire event, like they were the second most important "news" outlet in America? Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank explained the special treatment on Wednesday:

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.