President Obama’s press conference today was barely finished today when Fox News posted a story on their website about how a Huffington Post reporter got “first rate treatment.” Read what’s got them in a tizzy while I get them some cheese to go with their whine:
White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest personally escorted National Editor Nico Pitney to the jam-packed presser from the lower press and personally created space for him near the front of the briefing room.
No one else received that kind of treatment. After the president’s opening statement, he called on Pitney second to The Associated Press and by name. He also appeared to have some advance heads up into the coming question.
As a matter of fact, it seems the White House knew that HuffPo was soliciting questions from Iranians, and invited Pitney to ask on their behalf. Such villainy!
Oh, and about that special treatment. Sure, it’s a little bit special for a blogger, but I’d point out that Fox’s Major Garrett, along with al of the other TV people, got to sit down in the first 2 rows, and routinely get to ask the President and/or Robert Gibbs, a Facebook quiz’s worth of questions.
As one of the few bloggers who ever gets a question in at briefings, I can tell you that none of us want to hear the TV people crying about this. Just eat your goddam steak and let us enjoy our bone.
Update: Ed Morrissey says Politico’s “whining” about it too. I checked it out, and they’ve obviously updated it since then, lowering the pitch. Still, I had a tirade all ready to go, so here is why I don’t want to hear it from Politico, either.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve called the Obama press office, during and since the campaign, and been the first reporter to ask them about a story, only to have them promise to call me back and then feed the answer to Politico hours later. I get that they’re the bigger platform, it’s not their fault, but again, cry me a freaking river. In the spectrum of injustice, the President rewarding responsive journalism ranks pretty low. From Politico:
Deputy press secretary Bill Burton responds: “We did reach out to him prior to press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on. And, he ended up asking the toughest question that the President took on Iran. In the absence of an Iranian press corps in Washington, it was an innovative way to get a question directly from an Iranian.”
t who are more obsessed with cream than with 
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aftermath. Of course, you can’t give anyone credit for anything without some naysayer coming along to say “Nay,” and Slate’s 
I had a really long and complex (and surprisingly coherent) post written up about the Iran elections. And then WordPress ate it. (Yes, WordPress ate my homework. No, it’s not funny, I was working on that for hours.) It’s late and I’m pissed off and on a computer that switches to French keyboard configurations without warning, so you get the abbreviated version, which, on the off-chance that WordPress is just dicking around, will be restored to the original later. If not, what you see is what you get.
