Andrew Beaujon of Poynter writes about the big interview with the president that ran on Sunday:
Jackie Calmes and Michael D. Shear’s interview with President Obama packed in enough news to fill three New York Times articles and one media story: “It was the paper’s first exclusive chat with the president in nearly three years,” The Huffington Post’s Jack Mirkinson writes.
In the interview — full transcript here — Obama discussed income inequality, said he would approve the Keystone XL pipeline “only if it does not ‘significantly exacerbate’ the problem of carbon pollution” and vowed to implement Obamacare. All newsworthy, all wrung from a 40-minute interview.
But Calmes and Shear showed what must have been superhuman forbearance by not asking Obama about his administration’s pursuit of reporters’ phone records, prosecution of leakers, or its insistence that Times reporter James Risen should testify in a leak case.
How do you not ask about the NSA or whistleblowers?
The president gets away with his “phony scandals” line because we have a phony media.