Liberals were overjoyed that President Obama only called on females in his year-ending news conference on December 19. Vanity Fair headlined its story “Obama’s All-Women Press Conference Deals Glancing Blow to Patriarchy.”
Was this selectivity driven by animus at the TV networks, as the WashPost's Ed O'Keefe suggested?
Re: Obama not calling on TV reporters... remember how that they didn't air his #immigration speech? #TheyreOntheNaughtyList
— Ed O'Keefe (@edatpost) December 19, 2014
Was it an occasion for trash-talking females, like Buzzfeed "power smurf" Rosie Gray?
this press conference is sponsored by Male Tears
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) December 19, 2014
Simon Maloy at Salon turned into another opportunity for Fox-bashing and male-loathing:
That had never happened before at a presidential press conference, and the reaction from most corners was one of approval – political journalism has long had a backslappy aura of “boys club” bullshit attached to it, and anything that helps break down that nonsense can’t be anything but positive.
Not everyone was on board with the program, however. Howard Kurtz, opining from his perch of professional exile at Fox News, thought Obama got off too easy at the press conference, and wrote a fantastically dumb column laying out his objections.
Fantastically dumb?? Someone outside the allegedly male-chauvinist "boys club" is getting a little loopy over their chi-chi apple and fennel pizza. Kurtz began:
President Obama took a victory lap the other day, and nobody in the press tried to slow him down.
Obama skated in a year-end news conference, easily handling questions that were bland, tentative or rambling.
This is not unrelated to the fact that he skipped the front-row TV correspondents—Jonathan Karl, Ed Henry, Major Garrett—who tend to ask more confrontational and, yes, theatrical questions.
(These questions, we know, have limited value, as everyone else in network news likes skipping over Ed Henry's tough questions and ABC often can't seem to locate video of their own reporter Mr. Karl going on offense.)
Kurtz argued it had nothing to do with calling on females, but their questions were boring. The political standard for journalism says “Did reporters ‘knock him off his talking points’ or bloody him up?” That’s why Bush’s last pre-Iraq war newscast in 2003 was bizarrely panned as a "collective Jonestown-like suicide."
The journalistic standard is a little lower and calmer: Did the reporters cause the president to make news? The stories afterward focused mostly on Obama condemning Sony, so it didn’t meet that standard – by the rest of the media’s measurement. (Let's not count Chuck Todd's "the president's feeling swagger-tastic" announcement as it's an MSNBC ring-kissing outlier.)
Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown began the event with a softball by asking Obama his opinion of Sony, not asking if America looks weak when dictators censor Seth Rogen: “What does a proportional response look like to the Sony hack? And did Sony make the right decision in pulling the movie? Or does that set a dangerous precedent when faced with this kind of situation?”
But as Kurtz explained, many of the questions were rightly and soberly focused on policy.
The Wall Street Journal’s Colleen Nelson came the closest to taking on the president. “You didn’t make much progress this year on your legislative agenda,” she said. “Lawmakers say they’re less inclined to work with you if you pursue executive actions so aggressively.” But then she trailed off by asking whether he would continue to pursue executive orders, producing a bland answer about cooperating with Congress.
The AP’s Julie Pace at least asked the president to respond to dissidents who say his recognition of Cuba would give the Castro regime unwarranted benefits. McClatchy’s Lesley Clark also raised Cuba, but she asked about a five-part question—never a good idea--prompting Obama to cut her off and discourse at length.
In order, the reporters Obama called were Carrie Budoff Brown, (Politico), Cheryl Bolen (Bloomberg), Julie Pace (Associated Press), Lesley Clark (McClatchy), Roberta Rampton (Reuters), Colleen Nelson (The Wall Street Journal), Juliet Eilperin (The Washington Post), and April Ryan (American Urban Radio).
This could have been the laughable moment of the whole thing, this exchange:
CHERYL BOLEN: I am wondering, do you see a Republican Congress as presenting a better opportunity for actually getting tax reform next year? Will you be putting out a new proposal? Are you willing to consider both individual and corporate side of the tax ledger there? And also, are you still concerned about corporate inversions?
OBAMA: I think an all-Democratic Congress would have provided an even better opportunity for tax reform.
