It is always rare for a politician to actually answer the question asked, but does the media normally try to make it seem as though answering a different question is the same thing as answering the question proposed?
Read this excerpt from a NY Times article detailing a town-hall style meeting Obama held with Chinese students during his recent trip:
Responding to a question that came via the Internet during a town
hall meeting with Shanghai students ? ?Should we be able to use Twitter
freely?? ? Mr. Obama first l [sic] started to answer in the slightly
off-the-point manner which he often uses when he is gathering his
thoughts.?Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used
Twitter,? he said. ?My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the
phone.?But then he appeared to gather confidence. ?I should be
honest, as president of the United States, there are times where I wish
information didn?t flow so freely because then I wouldn?t have to
listen to people criticizing me all the time,? he said. But, he added,
?because in the United States, information is free, and I have a lot of
critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me,
I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me
a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don?t want
to hear.?
The question Obama answered was: “How do you feel about free information in the US?” Why do the authors try to make it sound as though he said anything more than something slightly related to the question?
