Reliable Sources Confrontation Was Pretty Lame

I can imagine Howard Kurtz, host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, was pretty excited about the prospect of an on-air confrontation (primarily between Washington Post writer Dana Milbank and Huffington Post blogger Nico Pitney … with the highly-conservative TownHall commentator Amanda Carpenter present to eagerly assist Milbank with a double team Pitney). Sunday was the day that Reliable Sources turned into a cable news television version of MTV’s The Real World. It did not work well for television as it just sounded like two guys who didn’t like each other arguing about something that is little more than a nontroversy. Back to Nico Pitney. Personally, I commend this man for his work to build sources in Iran and his work to try and understand the conflict in Iran from those who were on the ground in a country in such historic turmoil following a disputed presidential election. Instead of us applauding Pitney for his work to build sources, grind out information and present it to people, he gets bashed by a right winger who probably can’t stand Huffington Post (Amanda Carpenter) and a mainstream media, big newspaper snob (Dana Milbank) who probably (perhaps out of some sort of jealousy) enjoyed taking such a shot at Pitney and (as probably an added bonus) President Obama’s White House to try and portray both in the most negative light possible.

Yeah, I wonder if Kurtz knew what Carpenter, Milbank and Pitney were going to discuss when they came onto the program?

Is it reliable when you know two people are going to double team one person on a show that is supposed to be about (among other things) fairness, balance, objectivity and accountability in the media?

OK, Milbank and and Pitney had a lively exchange (the video is below) that became rather heated (more so than you would expect for Reliable Sources).

After the confrontation heated up, Milbank left Pitney with this thoughtful nugget from inside his head (according to Pitney):

The only thing that surprised me was when Dana turned to me after our initial sparring and called me a “dick” in a whispered tone (the specific phrase was, I believe, “You’re such a dick”). Howie Kurtz wrote on Twitter that he didn’t hear it, which is understandable — he was doing the lead-in for the next part of the segment on the ABC White House special. But it happened (I urge Howie to watch the video of the panel during the ABC intro) and it was frankly pretty odd.

I find the entire issue odd and stinking of partisanship and snobbishness. Pitney asked a better question and probably did more research than some of the snobs who are trying to throw him under the bus. You know, I suspect many people who watched that segment, and got a feel for Milbank, would hardly be surprised to hear him say something along those lines.

I’ll end with some impressions of the Sunday-morning confrontation:

Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nico-pitney/debating-the-iran-questio_b_222001.html

Crooks and Liars (this entry, among other things, debunks a claim of alleged favoritism for Pitney in terms of his positioning in the room):
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/reliable-sources-dana-milbank-gets-h-0

Hullabaloo:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/pitney-vs-milbank-by-digby-just-to-put.html

Huffington Post Question Story Being Blown Out Of Proportion

Many reporters on the left, and some reporters from the so-called mainstream media, are throwing a it about a question that the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney was allowed to ask President Obama during a White House press conference. This is another one of those manufactured controversies from individuals on the right wing and from individuals from the mainstream media overcome by a powerful sense of jealousy.

Here is the exchange during the press conference:

OBAMA: Since we’re on Iran, I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

OBAMA: Nico, I know that you and all across the Internet, we’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?

QUESTION: Yes, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions on tonight from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of — of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

OBAMA: Well, look, we didn’t have international observers on the ground. We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country.

What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It’s not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.

And that’s why I’ve been very clear, ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

What we can do is to say, unequivocally, that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with the peaceful dissent, that — that spans cultures, spans borders.

And what we’ve been seeing over the Internet and what we’ve been seeing in news reports violates those norms and violates those principles.

I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that — that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.

The White House apparently was following that Nico Pitney was communicating with individuals inside of Iran as that country’s turmoil was all over the media. White House spokesman Bill Burton came out with a response: “We did reach out to (Nico) 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.”

This is a totally overblown story spun out of very little. There is no evidence that the president knew what the question was going to be (even if he had an idea what the subject matter might be). I could care less if he wanted to take a question about the situation in Iran from a reporter that the White House felt was in contact with people on the ground in Iran.

Pitney asked a question that was a hell of a lot better than others I’ve heard asked at presidential news conferences.

Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/23/nicos-question/

POLITICO:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Obama_calls_on_HuffPost_for_Iran_question.html?showall