WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS: GET OVER YOURSELF.

I hadn't blogged about the populist revolt of the White House Press Corps over Nico Pitney's question to President Obama, because I'm honestly in disbelief that it's become any kind of issue. This is such a flagrant example of reporters placing their personal anxieties and interests ahead of anything the larger public is interested in. It's pure, whining, narcissism: a blogger got to ask a question, without having spent years fluffing the powerful or focusing on the trivial in order to get a comfortable seat in front of the podium. The White House Press Corps spent about 15 minutes discussing this issue yesterday, which prompted Jake Tapper to ask "Can anyone ask about something that the American people actually care about?" Well, no!

The sour grapes in the press are over the fact that the White House had apparently let Pitney know he might be called on the night before the press conference, because of his work culling on-the-ground Internet reports of the unrest in Iran. Pitney now stands accused of helping the White House do "message control." The subtext, in case you hadn't figured it out, is that only old-fashioned reporters, the ones who ask questions about the president's smoking habits, or what breed of dog he's chosen, can be trusted to get to the nitty gritty, while bloggers are mere partisan puppets.

Of course, Pitney did ask a tough question, and the president evaded it. Over at The New York Times, Kate Phillips admits as much, noting that Pitney had spent time working on the same "arduous task" of sorting through information coming out of Iran as the staff at the Times. "No one is diminishing his work," Phillips says. Sure. Phillips is just accusing Pitney of being "an actor for the president’s agenda" -- which isn't diminishing to a journalist at all.

Phillips then quotes Jeff Zeleny, who says of Pitney's advance notice, “That never happens. I’ve never been notified in advance of a question.” Maybe If Zeleny had gotten a heads up the last time I remember him asking the president a question, it wouldn't have included the word "enchanted." But hey, I'm not diminishing his work.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who fails in his anti-Pitney column to inform his readers what Pitney's question actually was, writes, “The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world — Iran included — that the American press isn’t as free as advertised." (Translation: Nico Pitney gives aid and comfort to our enemies.) But Obama didn't answer Pitney's question about whether or not, and under what conditions, the U.S. would recognize Ahmadinejad. So how could this possibly be an instance of Pitney becoming "an actor for the president’s agenda?" The point of "planted questions" is to knock them out of the park with a prepared answer, not to avoid the question. By any objective evaluation, the president's agenda wasn't helped by Pitney's question--and not because the press corps had a temper tantrum about it.

-- A. Serwer