BUSH PRESS CONFERENCE ROUNDUP….So did reporters have to get questions pre-approved at Thursday’s press conference? The short answer seems be no, but here’s all the evidence one way or the other.
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Radio reporter Nadja Middleton said in passing, “journalists’ questions had to be pre-approved by the White House.”
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Les Kinsolving of WorldNetDaily quotes Ari Fleischer as saying, “It was me who gave the president a suggestion on the reporters to call.”
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White House communications director Dan Bartlett, talking about the general theme of the press conference, told the Washington Post, “In this case, we know what the questions are going to be, and those are the ones we want to answer,”
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Washington Post associate editor Robert Kaiser said in an online chat that “this administration (unlike some others) does not suggest questions to reporters in advance.”
So the order of questioning was certainly prepared beforehand, the general subjects of the questions were probably tacitly agreed on, but the exact wording of the questions probably was not. And that’s probably where it will stand unless something new crops up.
