Question About Iran For Obama From Huffington Post “Reporter” Was Coordinated By White House
Here’s video of Obama calling on a “reporter” from liberal news site The Huffington Post:
Did that exchange seem a bit…choreographed? That’s because it was:
In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran.
“Nico, I know you and all across the Internet, we’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming out of Iran,” Obama said, addressing Pitney. “I know there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?”
Pitney, as if ignoring what Obama had just said, said: “I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.” ...
CBS Radio’s Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent, said over Twitter it was “very unusual that Obama called on Huffington Post second, appearing to know the issue the reporter would ask about.”
Very unusual indeed. And, when questioned about it, the White House confessed that they had “reached out” to the Huffington Post to ask that very question:
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.”
The toughest question on Iran…that the President knew was coming before hand.
I honestly don’t know what’s worse. That the Obama administration would be choreographing questions from reporters or that they’d be so miserably bad at it that what they were doing would be obvious to even the most casual viewer.
