Many mainstream reporters spent the week parroting the Republican charge that Hillary Clinton hasn't done any press conferences in some 270 days. When people pointed out that Clinton had actually taken questions at a conference of Black and Hispanic journalists several weeks ago, some reporters then clarified that those questions had been moderated—"not the same as an open press conference."
After working nearly two decades as a reporter, including a stint on the campaign trail in '08, I am sympathetic to reporters who want to do their job and getting continually shut out by a candidate is vexing. Unfortunately, mainstream reporters tend to get so used to "access" that they expect it, which has two effects: 1) they can suffer from an extreme lack of journalistic creativity; 2) they lose sight of their real mission, which is to inform the public about a candidacy. Directly questioning a candidate is just one tool in their tool box to achieve that end.
Journalists naturally want to pin down candidates on issues so the public knows what that person intends to do and, if elected, whether they're making good on those promises once in office. But the fact of the matter is, one-on-one interviews—the kind Clinton has generally been doing—are hands down the best way to actually tease out a candidate on the issues. Open press conferences, by comparison, often yield little more than the spectacle of journalism.
During the four years I covered Obama, I did three one-on-one interviews with him but never got called on at a press conference. As much as I wanted that opportunity, not in a million years would I have traded the optics of a presser question for what the constituency I was writing for—LGBTQ Americans—was able to learn about Obama from those sit downs.
As a matter of governance, press conferences are an important way for a president to keep the public informed. But on the campaign trail, press conferences are often a distraction from the issues that constituents actually want to hear about. In fact, Hillary Clinton seems to think there’s not only a qualitative difference between press conferences and interviews but also between interviews conducted by national reporters vs. local reporters. One of the most revealing reports I read on the topic, an NPR piece, included the following excerpt about an exchange between Clinton and reporter Glenn Thrush of Politico:
"Once you get to a national press position, like yours and the others that are traveling with me, you're really under, in my impression, a kind of pressure to produce a political story," Clinton told Thrush.
"A headline," Thrush offered.
"That's your job," Clinton said. "A headline, right? I totally get it."
Clinton said by contrast she picked up valuable clues about a region's concerns from talking to local reporters. "They will actually say, 'Well, you know, this is a problem that we're having. What do you think about it?' " Clinton said. "So there's actually a conversation that goes on."
Clinton seems to enjoy what she learns in an actual give and take, such as in town hall settings, and she also believes national reporters feel pressured to grab a headline. From my personal experience as a constituency reporter, I know there were definitely times when I opted to ask a less sexy question because I believed it was more important to my readership than the splash of a gotcha question. Had I worked for a mainstream national outlet, I may have chosen differently.
Clinton is certainly not the first politician to try to limit her liabilities by avoiding events—press conferences, in this case—that don't favor her, while maximizing her presence in settings that do work to her advantage. The NPR piece found that she had indeed done some 350 interviews—more broadcast than print, more local than national, and often aimed at outreach to people of color in black and Latino communities.
If there's something troubling about her approach to the press, it's that many of the interviews she gave were shorter, between about three and eight minutes long, which doesn't give reporters much time to explore topics and ask important follow up questions. Three minutes with a candidate is like the blink of an eye. Eight minutes is nominally better.
I do believe the traveling press corps performs an important function. When you watch someone enough, you get used their temperament, their quirks, their standard lines, and you know when something unusual is afoot. It's a lot of minutia that amounts to a narrative over time. That's worthy of documentation even if each individual turn might not prove all that important in the larger scheme of things.
Hillary Clinton is doing what any smart politician would do: Letting Donald Trump self-destruct in a sea of media coverage. Why in the heck would she want to divert any attention away from that spectacle? If I have a strategic concern about her lack of press conferences, it's about optics (does it feed the "untrustworthy" narrative?) and the fact that she may look less polished at answering gotcha questions during the debates. The debates will reach a whole new audience of voters so it's not a good place for a trial run on a response.
Journalists, on the other hand, should be doing what journalists do: Finding ways to illuminate the issues and how candidates would deal with them. There's plenty of opportunities to do that outside of the theater of a press conference, even for the traveling press corps. But in terms of "open" press conferences. Meh.
Kerry Eleveld is the author of Don't Tell Me To Wait: How the fight for gay rights changed America and transformed Obama's presidency.