Obama and news conferences

[pnorman]

A friend just recently stated that: "....it seems Mr. Obama is afraid to hold news conferences. He loves to give us his oratory but shies away from any dialog with the press......"

I'm off TV, and follow such thingd only by the internet, so I don't have a clear idea on that. Is there any real "merit" to that allegation?

[Clovis Sangrail]

1. fwiw

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/newsconferences.php

[babylonsister]

2. That's a great link! nt

[pnorman]

6. Yeah, that's what I was trying to Google for but with no luck! RATS!

Much thanks for that link! But here's what I came upon in my search: http://mediamatters.org/research/201005210052

So apparently Obama was a little low in the Press Conference category, but not all that low. My next Google qwest will be about ratio of vacation days to days in office.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. While running for office, he claimed he's take questions voted

upon by the public, on a regular basis. By the standard of what he said he was going to do, he has fallen far short. He did that 'vote for the questions' thing one time.

[katandmoon]

5. He said a lot of things while running for office...

[KoKo]

8. True...but they all do.......

[bigbaddan]

4. He should give a news conference.

NT

[KoKo]

7. He's afraid of anything but Fox News? "The View?" or "Oprah?"

:shrug:

[babylonsister]

9. Charming as usual. nt

[Igel]

10. Yes and no.

He has lots of news conferences.

Most of them end with "no questions" or take a token question or two. This is essentially making a statement to the press; if the statement's long enough it's a speech.

He doesn't really do the format that involves giving a 10 statement on a topic and then taking 30 minutes of questions.

In other words, the focus in "it seems Mr. Obama is afraid to hold news conferences" is in the following sentence: "He loves to give us his oratory but shies away from any dialog with the press." You can take that as providing the relevant definition of "press conference"--one that involves dialog.

[AtomicKitten]

11. Pres Obama is caught in a conundrum here.

It seems according to his critics he's either overexposed or he's ducking the press.

I seriously doubt he gives this bit of specious criticism a second thought.

[Mass]

12. Sure. This is why the media were complaining he was giving too many press conferences, not that long

ago.

Just another media/GOP meme.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

13. He seems to be in front of the corporate mediawhores

more than Bush did. I thought that Bush shied away from the corporate whoremedia for most of his (P)residency, particularly close to the 2004 election. Anyway, I thought that-according to the corporate mediawhores- one of Obama's problems is that he was "over-exposing" himself at one point? He's truly damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn't. It's just part of being a Democrat nowadays, it seems. :shrug: Given how stupid and biased the corporate mediawhores are, I honestly can't say that I blame President Obama for not wasting time that, frankly, needs to be spent on governing, on those empty wastes of space.
I think that that is one of the main reasons we're not able to get our message out as well and why Republicans have what seems an endless amount of airtime on cable news shows- they simply aren't as interested in doing their jobs as the Democrats are.
Think we can make this election the ultimate job performance evaluation for the Republican Party? :shrug: THAT'S what we should REALLY be making this election about IMHO. Who's actually doing their jobs and who's NOT? The Republican Party has mostly been goofing off and shooting spitballs at President Obama and the Democrats in Congress for the past 1-2 years. Do the American people believe that they deserve to remain employed with a record like that? Would they tolerate employees like them????