John Roberts
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New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny gained new fans for his goofy "enchanted" softball question at Wednesday night's press conference. On Thursday's American Morning on CNN, former White House reporter John Roberts proclaimed "Good job, Jeff!" and strangely compared Zeleny's Obama softball to Bush hardballs in 2004 pressing him to confess his greatest mistakes. Roberts cited former Time writer John Dickerson -- and forgot he asked a similar hardball in the same press conference.
The only similarity in these questions is they knocked the president "off his talking points." That, and they both betray a liberal bias. Here's the exchange between Roberts and his morning co-anchor Kiran Chetry:
ROBERTS: Yes, the great thing about that question was is he didn't have one talking point to go to to answer it. So he was really forced to think about his answers. He was very thoughtful about it as well.
CHETRY: And I was falling asleep last night, I was thinking as a White House correspondent, right? And you're sitting there and you know you have one shot and you rarely get a follow-up, right? Unless you sort of just try to throw it in.
ROBERTS: The Bush administration, you got none.
CHETRY: And here too, even the mike's gone. So you can hear somebody shouting something. So how do you decide what to ask?
ROBERTS: Well, you can either try to make news. Right? Or you can try to ask a question for which they have no talking points. Try to throw the president off his talking points and get a real answer, and I think Jeff Zeleny did that last night. It was really interesting. That's the most interesting question that's been asked at a presidential press conference since 2004 John Dickerson from -- I guess he was with "Time" back then -- stood up and said, Mr. President, can you tell us what your biggest mistake is? And George Bush said -- can't think of anything right now.
CHETRY: There was awkward silence.
ROBERTS: Yes. CHETRY: Of course, that's one of those historical moments.
ROBERTS: But those are those interesting moments in those press conferences.
So good job, Jeff.
CNN's John Roberts Hails Jeff Zeleny's 'Enchanted' Question: 'Good Job,
Jeff!'
By Tim Graham May 1, 2009 - 08:59 ET
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/05/01/cnns-john-roberts-hails-jeff-zelenys-enchanted-question-good-job-jeff
