Who Was Called On?

By Christine on July 23, 2009 1:12 AM

In the President’s fourth prime-time press conference on health care, Obama took ten questions after a six or seven minute statement at the top. He skipped over WaPo, the NYT, CNN and Fox News (and HuffPost). Answers seemed longer than usual- in his past three prime-time press conferences, the press corps got in 13 questions.

Previewing an upcoming trip to the Cleveland Clinic, President Obama called on the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Steve Koff, but McClatchy’s Steve Thomma jumped in and stole his thunder. The mistake was corrected by the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Lynn Sweet, whose question about Harvard professor Henry Gates’ arrest followed Koff’s.

In this order: AP’s Ben Feller (Jennifer Loven had the night off, but that is still four-for-four for the AP), Reuters’ David Alexander, NBC’s Chuck Todd (with a follow-up), ABC’s Jake Tapper, CBS’ Chip Reid, Chicago Tribune‘s Christi Parsons (whose first name was spelled incorrectly on the White House’s seating chart, btw), Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman, McClatchy’s Steve Thomma, the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Steve Koff and the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Lynn Sweet.

According to the seating chart we saw, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz was seated on the President’s right in the front row, but was not called on for a question.

Obama got off the air with one or two minutes to spare, just before 9pmET, leaving the nets with little time for commentary.

RELATED: FBDC’s tally of who has been called on at past prime-time pressers. Also, WaPo‘s Tom Shales‘ review: Obama Goes Off-Topic, Clearly.

AND MORE: Fox didn’t carry the presser on the network and didn’t get a question in, but still managed to win the night with “So You Think You Can Dance.” TVNewser has the numbers here.

After the jump, check out C-SPAN’s video of President Obama’s answer to Parsons’ question on transparency…