President Barack Obama took questions only from women reporters at his year-end press conference on Friday — eight of them.
CNN senior correspondent Chris Moody tweeted the gender-selective occurrence along with pictures of the reporters whose questions were entertained by the commander-in-chief. Obama also didn’t take any questions from TV reporters.
The first question went to Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown, followed by Bloomberg BNA’s Cheryl Bolen, The Associated Press’ Julie Pace, McClatchy’s Lesley Clark, Reuters’ Roberta Rampton, Wall Street Journal’s Colleen Nelson, Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and American Urban Radio Networks’ April Ryan,
Politico reports.
The selection lit up Twitter. PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill tweeted:
According to the Telegraph, the questions elicited responses from Obama that Sony Pictures’ decision to yank
“The Interview” after hackers’ threats was a “mistake”; that Cuba will change as a result of normalization of relations between it and the United States; that construction of the Keystone XL pipeline will only nominally help consumers and workers; and that blacks are better off now than when he took office in 2009.
The political news website noted the front row at presidential news conferences, which is packed mainly with TV reporters, normally gets most of the president’s attention – and that President George W. Bush was even scolded once for only calling on male reporters.